Thursday, August 31, 2006

National Readership Study 2006

The recent study estimates that approximately 222 million in India read newspapers, dailies and magazines. I am happy to hear that there are so many readers in India. And the average time spent is 39 minutes a day- which is quite good again.

The only sad aspect of this survey is that the highest read English daily is Times of India.

When I returned to India three years ago, I subscribed to Times of India because everyone else was doing it. Man! It was such a horrible experience. I was appalled at the level of ribaldry, gossip and trash they were covering. There wasn’t an iota of serious journalism. Every day I would just throw the paper away in frustration. I switched to The Hindu upon my dad’s advice. It brought sanity back into my life. Now, I look forward to newspaper everyday and relish reading their news and analysis. I think The Hindu is one of the top 5 reasons why I like India. It is such a great read. The editorial is worth every sentence. Taking the cue, I started to subscribe to The Frontline- another excellent magazine. They release one every fortnigh and I enjoy reading each of their articles taking my own sweet time.

So, if

An apple a day keeps the doctor away;

Times of India everyday keeps sanity away!

4 comments:

  1. Having grown reading Hindu (though I am not a communist) and Indian Express (though I am not a RSS fanatic), I assumed that English papers will be like this.

    When I head that these are not the widely read papers I had an image about HT and TOI.

    few years ago, when I went to Delhi, and had to read the Times of India, I could not believe that they publish a paper like that.

    Horrible !!!

    Feels nice when you have some one else also feeling the same

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  2. Yes the Hindu made mornings worthwhile. Thank goodness for the good things. Now in the UK I get the same feeling when I read The Gaurdian. Lets not even talk of TOI- but its a sad commentary on us that it is so popular.

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  3. sujai,
    Yes Hindu is doing a serious journalism. But the problem is you cant believe a brahmin who proclaims himself as a communist. And the "Hindu" newspaper is a living example of it. Next time, you read that newspaper for a month or so. Then you will notice something. Some days he supports reservation & some days he doesnt. (i.e.) He(N. Ram, Chief Editor) might be communist on friday and become brahmin on saturday. He shows communism more and brahminism indirectly. So many dont feel it. Another point is, he is a mouth-piece of China and more importantly Sri Lanka. Note: He is a reciepient of Lanka Ratna.
    But certainly comparing other newspapers he is providing relevant news. But his supporting Sri lanka and China at the cost of India is dangerous. In this respect there is no newspaper in India as worst as this. That is the reason why you can see often, massive protest against this newspaper & burn it in Tamil Nadu

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  4. Hindu gets trashed all the time in TN either because of its anti LTTE stand or because of its supposed tilt to Brahmin ideology (which I have never noticed). The only thing I hate about the paper is its obsession with retd. Chief Justices who write such bland, boring articles one can almost fall asleep reading them. The day Hindu decides to dump such opinion pieces it will gain more readers.

    ReplyDelete

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