Companies

Mid Day Multimedia has got yet another stakeholder. This time it is the Indian Express that has picked a 10 per cent stake in the organisation. A similar development was seen last year when Bennett, Coleman & Co increased its stake in the publication to 7.82 per cent. Confirming the development to exchange4media, Indian Express sources said, "This is a financial investment made by one of the...

Speculation is growing that The Guardian is to launch its new Berliner-style format by August, nearly eight months ahead of schedule. Officially, the paper's line this week was that the changed format – 6cm narrower than a broadsheet and 10cm longer than a tabloid – will not hit the streets before next year. Unofficially a Guardian insider said: "If we can do it earlier than 2006, then we will."...

The Hull Daily Mail and twin title the East Riding Mail have unveiled a host of changes after conducting research into reader habits. The new approach, labelled the 'Newspaper for Now', aims to build on the Mail's current daily circulation of 71,000. It includes 'in short' boxes on all page leads, which readers can use to pick up the main points of the story. There is also a 'paper in a page' on...

Since 1896, four generations of the Ochs-Sulzberger family have guided The New York Times through wars, recessions, strikes, and innumerable family crises. In 2003, though, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., the current proprietor, faced what seemed to be a publisher's ultimate test after a loosely supervised young reporter named Jayson Blair was found to have fabricated dozens of stories. The...

After the pioneering and successful initiative of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) to highlight the problems of Small and Medium newspapers and publications on Monday in Delhi, INS is planning to take this initiative to other regions of the country. INS is planning to take the initiative of creating a forum to articulate issues that impact Small and Medium newspapers and publications initially...

The Pune-headquartered Sakal Group of Newspapers, which publishes Sakal, Gomantak, The Maharashtra Herald and Gomantak Times, believes that catering to "focused needs" is where the future really lies for the publisher. The rural farming community in Maharashtra is one such focused group that the newspaper house would like to target. In the next six months, the company will launch a 16-page...

The Maharashtra Herald, the oldest English-language newspaper in Pune, which was acquired and subsequently relaunched by the Sakal group in April this year, has kicked off the second phase of its revamp process spanning editorial, sales and marketing. The process was flagged-off on December 9 with an "upgraded product” that included more number of pages, namely 20 from the regular 16, as well as...

Classifieds mean ‘big money’ for newspapers. With small business players having the moolah, print houses are gearing up to provide them with innovative options. >From help desks to tips on how to make their ads more effective, classifieds have shifted from the main dailies to more creative supplements. No longer are the classifieds merely ROL (run-on-lines), new changes such as maps (in to-let and...

Bhaskar Group has recently taken over Gujarati daily Saurashtra Samachar, the leading newspaper of the Saurashtra region. Girish Agarwal, director, marketing, Dainik Bhaskar, says, "We found Saurashtra Samachar to be a highly rated Gujarati newspaper that would add-value to our publication and when the opportunity of taking over Saurashtra Samachar came to us, we just availed it." The deal was...

The sheer flood of news channels on Indian television prompts one to speculate whether there is scope for any more players in the news broadcast space. Popular news anchor and broadcaster Rajat Sharma, who recently threw his hat into the ring by launching news channel India TV, thinks there is. "Though there is no space for just another news channel, there is certainly a market for a responsible...