Media wars..

… have come to Chennai.

New Indian Express relaunch = 11 April
Times of India launch = 14 April

My opinions on the English newspaper options in Chennai

The Hindu
1) Grand old lady of mount road. 2) Knows its audience well. Everybody knows that Chennai wakes up to drink filter coffee and read the Hindu. 3)Very good for local news. Every banana peel accident makes it to the Hindu. Okay-okay for national news. Very ordinary for international news. 4) Supposedly uses very good English. But this has been steadily deteriorating. Typos are very common now. 5) Supposedly good crossword. I don’t solve crosswords, so I wouldn’t know. 6) Biased towards current government always, at the centre, and at the state. If the government doesn’t want people to know about people dying in Tibet, Hindu will be careful in its coverage of the issue. 7) Shitty editorial and op-eds. But it reprints Guardian and NYT op-eds which are good. 8 ) Metro Plus used to be better. Now its a bore. How many years will one read Shonali muthualay and Sudhish Kamath? Hindu’s new youth magazine NXG is only ordinary. 9) Does a great (sometimes biased) job of covering the December dance and music festival. Fairly good job of covering city events.

The New Indian Express
1) They’ve improved newsprint quality a lot. TOI style graphics are now common. 2) Lesser number of pages than the mammoth Hindu. Less on local news. Doesn’t print much about open manhole covers in Perungudi which cause grave inconvenience to residents. Sigh. 3) Good editorial. Great op-eds. Although sometimes slightly anti Congress (and anti Sonia Gandhi). 4) Sunday magazine used to be better. Now boring. 5) New tabloid Indulge is fun to read. Much better than NXG. 6) Brave journalism. Worth buying just for the Express exclusives. 7) Used to cover city events badly, but is getting better at it. 8 ) Has brand value and a decent base in Chennai to sustain for a while in spite of competition.

Deccan Chronicle
1) The less said about it, the better. 2) City section is unreliable. They’ll print any stupid rumour. Once, they printed a bogus story on IIT. The day before the print, they’d got an official communication from IIT that it was made up. Their response was – ‘We’ll print this (the bogus story) tomorrow and we’ll print your side of the story later’. They neither printed our side of the story nor did they print an apology. After this incident, I just dont believe any story printed in DC. 3) Their billboard advertisement has a smiling girl with big breasts with a single sentence caption (e.g. – ‘Look who is smiling now’). Somehow I dont feel like reading a paper which sells itself by showing off the feminine form. I’d buy otherthings that do that — condoms for instance. But not newspaper.

Times of India
1) The newspaper which famously sent a memo to its editors saying that dying cotton farmers do not sell TOI, Lakme India Fashion week does. Which is often proven in the print area that these events get in TOI. 2) Print butts of arbitrary (but good looking) Russian atheletes (female, ob!) on the front page. Or wives of footballers. Or vague protests with the first line of protesters being big breasted DPS chicks. 3) Good overall news coverage. Great job with Godhra riots. 4) Good editorial. Good op-ed. Good guest columns. 5) Has a good marketing team that knows how to sell a newspaper. Great entry ad campaign (Next Change?).

Summary
I am very excited about the New Indian Express relaunch. I’ve been reading it for the last 10 years in Chennai. Its print quality and editing and overall look and completeness of coverage has gone from bad to worse. Except for the last 6 months or so, in which it has improved a lot. The rebel spirit with which it prints investigative and controversial stuff is very inspiring. And good op-eds. The packaging is bad. And hopefully a relaunch will settle that!
TOI launch is a good news only because it will force Hindu to mend its ways. I didnt like TOI in Mumbai (pale in comparison to HT). Unlikely that I will like it here. But then, one never knows. They do print some good stuff, like Jug Suraiya. And who doesnt like footballer wives and DPS babes?

Update on 11 April: The relaunched New Indian Express looks awesome!

Update on 14 April: TOI Chennai looks like TOI Mumbai, except that the Chennai pg3 dudes and babes are a little darker than the Mumbai pg3 dudes and babes, but that is expected. And also, TOI has Chennai flattering stuff written all over the place. Chennai is a mix of traditional and modern and Chennai is a mix of IT and industry and Chennai doesnt drink and fuck as often as Mumbai and Chennai this and Chennai that. Like we didnt already know and needed an outsider to come and tell us. Oh, my eyes are now open. I am proud to be a Chennai boy now that TOI has told me that its legitimate to be so. How badly do they want to sell? Maybe they should shape their newsprint like a bikini. Oh, sorry, thats too modern for Chennai. Perhaps a Sari. Dissapointed, to say the least.