Times of India ?. I wish it would improve its standard and recapture its days of glory.
There have been many reviews about the pros and cons of this paper but I will not get into all that. Quickly, I will try and summarize my version of why it deserves thumbs up and down.
Thumbs Down
? Has become more a Page 3 thing (I am not being influenced by Madhur Bhandarkar). A few months earlier, Sameer Jain, one of the proprietors of the newspaper candidly said that he could run the entire paper on the strength of marketing executives. No need for journalists. In fact, the newspaper has become a propaganda vehicle of other Times Group products.
? The newspaper has no real frontpage stories ? no real breakthroughs in investigative journalism. Gone are the days of Dileep Padgaonkar.
? Page 3 phobia is also catching up on the frontpage of the newspaper.
? The news coverage lacks in depth analysis.
? Not much attention is paid to international affairs. If you really want to know what is happening in the world at large, I would recommend Asian Age.
Friends, the problem with TOI is that it has not grown over the years. As a child I remember my parents going gaga over the stylistic achievements of this brand. However, with time we all grow, our tastes have undergone a drastic change. But TOI still resorts to the same stylistic innovativeness that have now become stale. No effort is made to make the news worthy of reading forgetting analysis. As I mentioned earlier, the entire effort is about stylizing and marketing. Glitz in TOI rules supreme.
However, despite all its flaws I still subscribe to it. Reason being I am a slave of habit and my mornings are incomplete without TOI and my morning cuppa chai.. Apart from this and some columnists like Jug Suriya, Shobha De and Gurucharan Das, Times of India has nothing really to offer me. But I still trudge along like a faithful servant.