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Friday, October 8, 2010

The light is quite bright

The business of newspapers is to give news and that, happily, seems to be the business the Hindustan Times is in.


DNA has been far more aggressive in terms of 'marketing'. But finally, HT pulled the rug from below their feet by not only launching its newspaper  earlier than DNA, but doing so with a really Big Bang.

Not with some mega promotion like "buy this newspaper and get X, Y or Z " free and not because the paper itself is free.

HT said "buy me because I have a story you just have to read". The Salman-Aishwarya transcripts will be remembered for a long time to come. It was not a new story, just concrete proof of something we have always known but chilling for sure, to see the words (and such unparliamentary language) in cold hard print.

Questions which arose:
- Why would someone like Aishwarya put up with this kind of abuse? The tapes are from 2001, she finally broke up with him in 2003. If a woman as beautiful, talented and rich as Aishwarya was willing to behave like an insect in her personal life (aap gaali dete raho, main sunti jaaoon), what hope was there, really?

- Kitna sach aur kitna jhoot in what Salman said about his underworld links. If these links existed, why did he get away with it while Sanjay Dutt and Bharat Shah at least went to jail?

- Why doesn't Salman seek psychiatric help?

Since the story had become a national media obsession, HT continued to milk it on the second day of publication while TOI ignored it completely (sister publication Mumbai Mirror had a cover feature on the subject but refered to it 'as reported in a section of the press').

All in all, HT had managed to pull off quite a coup. In one fell stroke it erased the perception many had of it as an outsider, a 'Delhi paper'. Bollywood and underworld are the two things intimately associated with Mumbai. Two things Delhi does not have.

A story with only Bollywood would have been too frivolous to be a lead and there was too much underworld already, everywhere. What HT pulled off was therefore a 'dream debut'! And a tough act to follow for DNA.

On the whole, HT was an interesting read. There were too many typos in the supplement but I guess that should get ironed out in time. Of course, page 3 people were featured but somehow it was not as in-your-face and low IQ as Bombay Times.

Also, the design of HT is easy-on-the-eye and makes that of TOI look a bit jaded.

HT is definitely on my reading list.
How well Mumbai had taken to HT was, of course, clearer in a month by which time the novelty factor wore off and the real readership pattern emerged.

And it just may have some more surprises to come...

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