The print media in India

**hehehewalrus** · 3rd February 2005, 08:50 AM

Originally Posted by jaiganes

Coming to a small controversy, during late 1990s R.Mohan was covering much of Indian cricket team's adventures and misadventures. R.Mohan had a flowing language and great sense of putting the thoughts that we ourselves would have observed while following the game (which experts like shastri would have missed). Everything went fine and suddenly after the match fixing scandal, he stopped writing for hindu and is now writing for a portal. After he stopped, S.Dinakar was given the responsibility even though Dinakar was covering only hockey for hindu. I have heard rumours about R.mohan's closeness to majority of Indian cricketers (particularly Sachin) and how this caused some concern in the editorial board of the hindu's sports section. The rumours do not stop just there , I have stopped myself to this considering the fact that R.Mohan is not a hubber and therefore would be unethical of me posting anything more.

JG, I disagree with your views on RM. While he had the vocabulary to use words like "obdurate", "gregarious" even during the pre-GRE days of indian fans, his technical knowhow was quite limited. His articles were just bombastic and had a lot of cynicism on it. He has absolutely little grasp of strategy. I am surprised you put down Shastri for I personally found Shastri among the sharpest. Definitely better than RM. As far as technicalities go, Rajan Bala was brilliant though a Gavasker chamcha.

By the mid 90s, RM was becoming less and less likeable, you could notice the trace of arrogance in his posts. While decade long writers from Hindu's stable like Thyagarajan, Nirmal Shekar desisted from using the first person, by 1996 Mohan started boasting "I have listened to over 800 stories from Ian Chappell over 800 pints of beer". I dont miss him much.

S.Dinakar is a kid for all general stuff - mostly cricket. You could easily tell by his style that he writes from watching TV -

and hasnt travelled abroad. Vijay Lokapally and G.Viswanath were substandard. There was a superb writer KN Anand who used to write rarely in the 80s, he was as good as Nirmal. Local sports was covered by Sanjay Rajan, Suryanarayanan, Vinod.

The Sportstar's multiple page posters started from Feb 18 1989 starting with Steffi(Robin Singh on cover).

**Google Adsense** · 3rd February 2005 08:50 AM

**jaiganes** · 3rd February 2005, 10:12 AM

Walrus wrote

He has absolutely little grasp of strategy. I am surprised you put down Shastri for I personally found Shastri among the sharpest. Definitely better than RM.

Earlier I wrote

R.Mohan had a flowing language and great sense of putting the thoughts that we ourselves would have observed while following the game (which experts like shastri would have missed).

I was just pointing out the fact that R.mohan wrote things that we as common cricket fans would remark on seeing something that happened during the game. Something trivial, like the number on Azhar's blazer and stuff like that.

We can ask this question in any quiz competition and even hindu's avid readers will have difficulty responding to this question. How many times has Hindu changed its font face and how many different types of cricket score cards does it employ? Personally I feel Hindu's score cards for major matches to be better than Times Of India, Deccan Herald and IE.

**hehehewalrus** · 3rd February 2005, 11:49 AM

Originally Posted by jaiganes

We can ask this question in any quiz competition and even hindu's avid readers will have difficulty responding to this question. How many times has Hindu changed its font face and how many different types of cricket score cards does it employ?

I think it is in 1991 that the Hindu changed its font from something like Lucida/Courier to Times New Roman. I remember Sportstar changing the Font starting with July 2nd week(Michael Stich on cover).

The cricket scorecard started having Balls, Fours and Sixes from October 1996 Titan Cup I think.

Is it right?

Originally Posted by jaiganes

Personally I feel Hindu's score cards for major matches to be better than Times Of India, Deccan Herald and IE.

Its a great thing that TOI gives a scorecard

**Cinefan** · 3rd February 2005, 04:05 PM

Since Cricket writers are being discussed,i am very impressed with Ayaz Memon who writes for The ToI.He has a very simple style of writing&is effective in bringing out images for both the people who saw the match&for those who didn't.He is measured in both criticism&praise,is technically sound&has got good cricketing knowledge.He doen't show off by using words which the majority cannot understand.

Jaiganesh,what's your take on him?

**jaiganes** · 4th February 2005, 09:10 AM

Ayaz off late has dipped into television comentary as well. He was a part of SOny MAX (i guess) challenger trophy coverage. He gave after match comments on day's events. Currently he is with ESPN doing their cricket round up programs. His views are balanced and he puts them forward in an unhurried way. Though I find a streak of a Ganguly supporter in there, his views on strategy are very good. For a cricket writer he has amazing brevity. To fill in your views in the least amount of space TOI gives someone, it is an essential quality and he has it. I need to see him write more on non India matches to really see how he analyses the game in depth. Definitely a good writer overall. Pity is that I have switched to Hindu, so I have to read his articles on the web!

**hehehewalrus** · 13th February 2005, 04:22 AM

Gorgeous photos!!!

http://www.thehinduimages.com

**jaiganes** · 14th February 2005, 09:22 AM

AMAZINGGG!!!!
Thanks walrus!!!

**Sandeep** · 15th February 2005, 02:50 PM

Indian News papers are becomming more and more tabloids. They dont conduct any kind of investigative journalism. All they do is this person said so, that person said so etc.

News papers have become nothing but history logs that records incidents of the day.

One british person came to bangalore and was staying in a hotel. He requested for a news paper and he was given "Times of India". His responce was "I asked for a News Paper not a Tabloid". He gennuinly thought that it was a Tabloid.

Hindu stands as the only exception, though these also investigative journalism is missing.

**mandangi** · 18th February 2005, 05:20 PM

Nowadays values in print media are reducing. In Andhra Pradesh there are many news papers which support some politicians or political parties if they belong to the caste of that politician or political party head.