Lets make our newspaper better

Posted by Ritesh - 10/11/08 at 08:11:47 am

Keeping up with the national news has become a drag lately. The source of fresh information and ground breaking stories aka news channels and papers, seem like they are playing the old vinyl in repeat mode. Take the grandmaster of all news in India, the Times group, who with their brilliant and articulate reporting has the country hooked onto their constant stream of infogasms. Never has there been a paper, which has exemplified neutrality, just in time journalism and masterful critic of all things news. Or as a visiting professor from UK told me once, in England its called Sarcasm.

Sadhu reading Newspaper

Sadhu reading Newspaper - courtesy bouyant on flickr

Anyway. After carefully examining the quality and content of most newspaper, I propose a set of new sections to be added to the newspapers. The logic is that most of these incidents aren’t really stray and its better to dedicate a specific section in the newspaper so that people looking for their scoop needn’t struggle hard. The best part about TOI is their ability to generalize information just at the right instant of time and make an entire section of it. How else can you explain sections like crime-beat(reporting cases everyday faithfully), numerology, Masseurs, citizen journalism, Dubyaman, Bizzare, Education Classifieds (yes, Education) and  God in Gucci.  As information overload occurs, its time we help organize these commonly occuring patterns into daily sections to help the general public  locate this information. I am just playing the Google of the print media. My new sections include:

  • Ministers involved in fraud or ousted from the assembly for being convicted section.
  • Foreign National Molested Yesterday section
  • Politico – religious tension today section
  • Company layoffs today section
  • Daily Economic Indigestion section
  • Prasad Bidapa and Family Sightings section ( this can go along with the Other unknown people I dont care about on page 3 section )
  • Daily Actress Tantrum section
  • What Celebrity did wrong yesterday ( or rather what he/she shouldn’t be wearing section)
  • How to break up with your partner today section ( and yes, the relationship advice on papers suck !!)
  • John Abhram and Bipasha Basu Drool Corner
  • Cricketer’s Love Interest section
  • Boy who fell in the borewell yesterday section (this is cruel, but has happened too many times to remain non generalized )
  • Church, Mosque and Temple’s damaged yesterday section
  • Celebrity Arrested yesterday section ( this can also be called the Times Shows Solidarity To … section )
  • Saas Bahu’s and Reality TV daily ( this is a contender for a seperate newsdaily right now. If rumours are to believed, the Times group, after their launch of the widely popular Mirror, are contemplating starting this paper. I hope it does, cause I cant stand the sight of the supplement being bigger than the actual newspaper, on saturday’s especially .)
  • Ridiculous Poll/Survey of the day section ( where three villagers are questioned about ridiculous things that nobody really cares about – for example the day Kumble decided to retire, Times Asks – Should Kumble have retired ? Answers to which should have been  a. why do you care, its his life, let him lead it the way he wants to  b. Arent you running a newspaper? I get the impression its a gossip tabaloid   and  c. Where’s the money you promised me for wasting my time answering this stupid question ? )

Well thats as much as I can think of an empty stomach. Please do add comments and let people know of any more generalizations that you have spotted. What say ?

Powered by WordPress with GimpStyle Theme design by Horacio Bella.
Entries and comments feeds. Valid XHTML and CSS.