Hindustan Times shutting seven newspaper editions: Has Shobhana Bhartia totally lost the plot?

For Indian media, nothing could have been as bad as this news at the beginning of the New Year.

Lay-offs. India's leading English newspaper, Hindustan Times, has decided to close seven editions.

They include four editions and three small sub-editions in North India.

The decision is not only a big blow to journalism and journalists but also affects the media industry in the long run.

Kolkata, Bhopal, Indore, Ranchi are the editions that are being closed. Three other small editions including Kanpur and Allahabad are being shut.

Reports suggest that more editions could be closed soon. The decision will affect the prestige of the premier media organisation. In an era when journalists are finding it tough to get jobs and lay-offs are common, a media company that was in profit, is closing editions.

This will have a devastating effect on other smaller media groups. No one has clear idea as to why the editions, many of which were nearly 15-20 years old, are being shut suddenly.

This will also affect the image of Shobhana Bhartia, daughter of late KK Birla. She is the executive director of the Hindustan Times group. With hundreds of persons set to lose their jobs and established editions dying, it is nothing less than a taint. 

Shocking: Hindustan Times' Executive Editor Shishir Gupta is BJP chief Amit Shah's mole!

Shishir Gupta, the executive editor of Hindustan Times, was working as a mole for BJP!

The report suggesting Gupta being an informer to BJP president, created a stir in Indian media today.

Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal tweeted, asking Shobhana Bhartia, HT's director, if she will sack him.

Gupta is the same journalist whose name had earlier come for his alleged links with an arms dealer.

Then, he was accused of calling the arms dealer, no less than 478 times on phone.

The latest controversy surrounds Gupta's role in providing information to Amit Shah, the BJP president.

Unlike journalists who pose questions or send query through email, here it was information that was sent, so that action could be planned. This was revealed after his email to Shah was obtained through RTI and is part of documents published by Frontline.

Online portal Wire mentions, "In it (email), Gupta draws the PMO and Shah’s attention to “violations” by the AAP government and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal.

"His email set off a series of counter-actions by the PMO over the following months which led, in turn, to an escalation of the turf war between Kejriwal and Najeeb Jung, who was lieutenant governor of Delhi at the time. Jung finally put in his papers on December 22, 2016....".

"Under the subject line “KEJRIWAL AGAINST CENTRE”, Gupta’s email began by noting: “Delhi Chief Minister Kejriwal is on course to abrogate all powers of the Centre in NCR with neither the Home Ministry nor the BJP MLAs/Pradesh unit doing anything to contest it,” the Hindustan Times executive editor told Amit Shah and Officer on Special Duty (IT) in the PMO, Hiren Josh.

"The buzz in Delhi Govt is that BJP will do nothing to aggravate issues with Kejriwal due to its impact on forthcoming Bihar poll.” Nowhere in the email does the Hindustan Times executive editor ask a question or seek a response or clarification from Shah or Josh – the way reporters who correspond with officials about stories they are working on normally do."

Chaitanya Kalbag's stint with Hindustan Times is over

Chaitanya Kalbag was supposed to bring radical changes in Hindustan Times. He came from Reuters and except the initial days, he hardly seemed to bring any positive change to the newspaper.

As an 'unbiased disinterested by-stander' with no likes or dislikes for him, I feel that he failed to deliver on most counts. His articles--those on edit page and the other stories--were mediocre and failed to interest the reader.

The day fire broke out in HT office, he wrote a page 1 article, which I read and my first reaction was, 'Oh my god, does he have any idea what he is writing about'. Many others shared this opinion. His lack of knowledge of India was also apparent.

When Kashi Ram died, he reportedly said that the story should be taken on page 8, until he was told who Kashi Ram was and what was his importance in changing the Indian politics. I remember once he wrote a piece on how the 'world was changing and newspapers will not be the same ten years from now....blah blah'. It was quite like a 'foreign-return' lecturing the ignorant 'desis'.

So he was writing about Korea, without giving a thought to the fact that there are hundreds of districts in India which still don't have 50% literacy. Yes, not even Hindi. Newspapers will continue to grow in this country. Tens of crores (Hundreds of millions) can't even recognize alphabets in this country let alone knowing English. So at least, English newspapers' circulation growth is not going to stop in the next 2-3 decades here. Worst was his treatment of ordinary reporters and sub-editors who were mis-treated and often fired.

May be it was the Barkha Dutt episode which led to his exit. Barkha's edit page article which appears on Saturday had not been published recently because Kalbagh had reservations about it and felt she was projecting her organisations (NDTV) through it. She got pissed off and in protest didn't send the article next week. She also spoke to Mrs Shobhana Bhartia, reported The Hoot recently.

The problem was that he was Editor-in-Chief of a big group but was taking interest in too petty things that should have been left for the Bureau Chiefs, Assistant Editors, Coordinating Editors, REs etc and his mere direction was enough but his intervention worsened things and made him unpopular. Also, during his stint the HT website took the new avatar.

It was a great news site but after the recent change it is neither a news site, nor a portal. They tried to make it a portal but the USP of hindustantimes.com was that it was a pure news site, which it lost after the transformation.

Hindustan Times launches business paper 'Mint'

HT's much-awaited pink paper is finally out.

Mint. Yes that's the name of the paper, different from the run of mill Expresses, Times and Moneys. Wall Street Journal is an exclusive partner.

The website is http://www.livemint.com

Raju Narisetti is the Managing Editor. Mario Garcia has designed the paper. For more information you can go to this link.
Seems financial dailies have a competition. Though Economic Times is a market leader with Business Line, Business Standard, Financial Express and DNA Money also having a chunk of biz readership in the country.