Earlier, TOI was the gold standard in Indian newspapers. But now, it is so bad that I stopped reading it two weeks ago.
This paper has been coming to our family since ages, so I did not personally subscribe to it. It comes bundled with Bombay Times(which amazingly hasn’t been rechristened to Mumbai Times) & Mumbai Mirror in my area.
And whether you like it or not, you better pay for that Mumbai Mirror. The price of TOI is also outrageous, especially on weekends. It feels like you’re paying for the ads.
I certainly have read other papers which provide much better content, and lesser biased versions of stories than TOI. TOI is full of advertisements. Off late, it presents news in a very influential manner, trying to set opinions in the mind of readers rather than allowing them to decide for themselves.
BT is not worth commenting about but it is really sad when the main paper is taken over by film scandals which happens often. And since TOI is sponsoring mega award shows and beauty pagents now, the year is divided into segments where in every segment the paper is nearly fully covered by the event in question.
I like the comics section in BT but that goes for a toss with repetitive strips and its page also keeps changing as per advertisers’ comfort. Mumbai Mirror provides for less biased news, but has several agendas of its own. Also the excessive gory visuals accompanying every article these days is the reason why a sensitive reader like me decided to trash the paper.
If I were still to read the paper, it would be for the comics, certain editorials especially the hillarious ones by Jug Suraiya and the cartoons by Mr. RK Laxman himself. It also has some important job related advertisements. The Speaking Tree section is generally good, too.
I won’t suggest other papers, but I have now switched to an Android app that provides for a selection of papers that I can access by mere touches on my screen. And that gives me the option to go through only those articles that I know I can safely read.
TOI going down this way is a sorry state of affairs.