My fellow mumbaiites would be familiar with this. After sustained hype, DNA finally landed at the doorsteps on July 30. A whole 48 pages at Rs. 2. ( thts supposd to b a special ’’founder-partner’’ price. which means it will cost more later on ). the ad-campaign promised a lot. DNA did conduct some consumer surveys (the findings ? no one wud ever know ). And they have come out with a newspaper that is a littttle bit different from the others.
Here are some points :
Promised a lot with ’’created by you’’ shouts. They DO have a page for readers’ contributions. From articles and poems to ’’it happend to me’’ sort of columns.
The same page has an interesting feature. A bunch of readers are hosted at some coffee shop where they voice their opinions on teh current state of affairs. Tho it is a good initiative, im afraid the quality of opinions nd comments dished out so far is pretty sorry. I hope they take it up from here and make it a genuinde ’’katta’’. The other pages also have some areas where readers can contribute.
Tho I hav no stats to back me, I think the QUANTITY of news easily rivals the other biggies. ( express and asian age are not even in the reckoning here )
Imitating the ToI, they have a helluva lot of supplements for Sports, Education, Mototing, Education, Lifestyle etc. the only problem is keeping track of what comes when. a mini-chaos here.
a good thing. they SEEM to have separated the Page-3 and put it on a diff supplement altogether. ( After Hrs. its calld..) Good move. me thinks. 6. Sports coverage seems to be good so far. But it could do with a few more syndicated columns.
Overall quality of reporting is difficult to judge, at least for me , at least for now. But I do not have ne complaints yet. as I mentioned before, they do have a lot of stuff which eventually means a lot of different stuff.
Packaging is NOT the best. the masthead is unimpressive and u really have to look twice ( or thrice ) to make sure ur looking at the front page. fails to make any impact there.
Still not settled down, which explains columns and sections jumping about and new ones popping up here nd there.
a few innovations. A page for our Senior Citizens. Good Idea, methinks. Also, the news on the inner pages is categorised Zone-wise. So a page for North and East mumbai, a page for South and West Mumbai. Interesting. Lets see how long they can sustain this.
National Coverage suffers. Times has a certain edge on this front.
FEWER ADs. Wow. we love that. duno if thts a policy or just tht they are still to rope in the advertisers. No island ads and all tht crap pls.
I MAY BE WRONG HERE, but I hav yet to discover the Editorial page. maybe its an oversight ( pls correct me if it is one ), but there seems to be no Editorial Page or an Op-Ed page. Duno why..!! but for me, a newspaper w/o an editorial is incomplete. Overall, a very interesting product. Just get a feeling that they are yet to settle down tho.
Not very easy on the eye. Looks slightly cluttered to me. Shud learn from the ToI in this case.
Anyway, if ur the one who just haaas to read the newspaper every morning, DNA is a good bet. Lacks the aura and the slick packaging of the ToI, but it does hold its own neway. p.s : Hindustan Times better pack up soon.