2005-2014

"Now this guy has not given me ads, but I am going to ask him to advertise on his terms," says Eric D'Souza, general manager, Dainik Bhaskar. He is referring to a media buyer who is buying space for a big FMCG marketer for the forthcoming International Women's Day. D'Souza calls up his boys, collects some dummies, and turns to me: "Let's talk in the car". Seated inside, he shows me the dummies of...

In 1964 the Pulitzer Prize went to The Philadelphia Bulletin in a new reporting category. The award honored the Bulletin for reporting that police officers in that city were running a numbers racket right out of their station house, and it presaged a new wave of scrutiny of police corruption in American cities. The award had one other significance as well. It marked formal recognition by the print...

After almost a decade of smooth sailing, media company profits plummeted this spring as a rapidly declining stock market spurred a broad downturn. Starting in Silicon Valley and then spreading across the country, executives began to talk about hard choices to maintain profitability, including potential layoffs and other cutbacks affecting editorial content. At one newspaper, the San Jose Mercury...

You may as well get used to mistakes like those in that headline. If the résumés and cover letters that have come across my desk in the past year are any indication, we, the print media, are doomed. I have advertised four open editorial positions for my sports-related trade magazine in the past sixteen months. Every day during my search for qualified candidates, I'd open my mail with a quiver of...

The success of any investigative story or series rides or falls on how early the editor becomes a collaborator in the process. By editor, I mean the lucky soul who will be doing the manuscript editing at the tail end of the process. There are four points at which he or she can become involved: 1. At the initiation of the story itself; 2. During the reporting; 3. After the reporting but before the...

In a letter to the chief of police of the Indian province Jammu-e-Kashmir, Ashok Suri, RSF protested the attack on Surinder Oberoi, a journalist with Agence France-Presse (AFP) and RSF correspondent, by a police officer in Kashmir. The organisation expressed concern that no serious investigation was conducted and that no sanctions were taken against the officer responsible for this attack. RSF...

Jessica Siegal's fingers were gliding around a goblet of white wine that she held in her left hand. She was dressed in a black, hugging ball gown, fringed at the wrists and hemline in smooth fur. Without my soliciting, she whispered into my ear the right questions to be asked to the guests at the black-tie Committee to Protect Journalists dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria. "I teach interviewing at NYU...

One night in mid-November, several dozen journalists gathered in the Tribeca loft of the writer Jacob Weisberg to celebrate the publication of The Slate Diaries, a collection of journal entries by assorted contributors to the online magazine. Among those in attendance were Michael Kinsley, the editor of Slate and a columnist for The Washington Post; Hendrik Hertzberg, a staff writer for The New...

The receptionist at Inside.com's front desk is color-coordinated to the online magazine's spacious northern Chelsea loft. Her teeny, bright sea-green halter top conveniently shows off a prominent tattoo on her right shoulder, and it is a near-perfect match to a turquoise floor-to-ceiling tube-shaped room that is about twice as wide as her desk. What is it? "Oh, that's the conference room," she...

While selling a newspaper to both consumers and media planners, it's generally numbers that make the most convincing argument. But after having stolen a march over its nearest rival, The Times of India (TOI), Delhi's largest-selling newspaper, The Hindustan Times (HT), is focusing on the quality of its readership, rather than the number of people reading the paper. Take the advertising for the...