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Sambhar Mafia - Cooked To Kill!

Monday, August 01, 2005

The Intolerable Economic Times

The newspaper that opened my eyes to the world of Indian business, finance and economics has started dishing out utter crap. The Blogosphere has its fair share of ToI bashers and I feel that we need some of them to bash the ET as well.

Here is a sample of two of the headlines that I read in the Sunday online edition of Economic Times

Is India the new sexy chic; or it's just all silicon?

Call girl’s ok, but what’s call money?

My observation is that the online edition is the one which comes up with such irrelevant / unrelated / sensational headlines. I still feel that the print edition would be a toned down version of the online edition. Since I don’t have access to the print edition, readers in India can clarify whether the print edition is equally bad. My logic is that ET is read by lot of CEO’s, decision makers, politicians and hence ET might apply more sense in the presentation / reporting of news. Does ET believe that majority of the online readers are youngsters and hence these gimmicks can result in a higher click thru ratio? Ramz might have an answer for this.

Related reading: The Bakwaas Times

posted by Kaps at 1:27 AM

21 Comments:

  • I guess TOI wants ET to be read by "ET's" only.

    By Blogger Venky Krishnamoorthy, at 3:54 AM  

  • print edition is as bad, ET is the tabloid of pink papers!

    By Blogger ada-paavi!!!!, at 8:43 AM  

  • we had a talk about this on Lazygeek.

    my stand is Times of India and Economic times can also be called as Sex and Sensex. ;)

    this is the time newspapers are becoming crap.

    By Blogger KRTY, at 9:19 AM  

  • I dont have an answer for that, really. :-)

    But, kaps, you can check the print edition online. It's at http://epaperdaily.timesofindia.com You need an indiatimes.com id to log in.

    By Blogger Ramnath, at 10:54 AM  

  • Though I am bigtme TOI,ET basher myself, I tend to think TOI,ET know its audience well and caters to them. I am sure they would have done Market research on their customer wants ..

    I am afraid that must be the horrible truth.

    By Blogger Cogito, at 11:01 AM  

  • cogita,

    i think it is the horrible truth. about 6 months b4 i read an article whereTOI cheif seems to ahve said "this sells and so i am right"

    By Blogger Hawkeye, at 11:34 AM  

  • The articles that you had linked to in the ET seem to have reasonable content. I don't however, understand the need to sex up the headlines.

    By Blogger nmk, at 11:51 AM  

  • Gimmick..to get the non-economics initiated to get reading......
    what else to say.....

    By Blogger monu, at 12:24 PM  

  • Its stuff like this that has forced me to stop reading TOI. Hindu better anyday!

    By Blogger Krishna, at 12:54 PM  

  • The venerable-to-some Hindu also seems to be going down the road of daft but attention grabbing headlines. Sample this, from today's supplement - "all's well that ends Wellbike" (!!!!) It left me totally dumbfounded till i noticed that 'Wellbike' refers to a peculiar variety of bikes used by paratroopers in WW2.
    Am sure The Hindu can do better than that! regarding, TOI, I stopped bothering a long time back!

    By Blogger Vaibhav Arora, at 1:07 PM  

  • @Venky,
    LOL

    @Vatsan,
    thanks for the update on the print edition

    @Keerthi,
    I did read your comment in Lazygeek's blog

    @Ramnath,
    Will read the epaper.

    @Cogito,
    ToI group are big employers of B-school grads and the fact about market research could very well be true

    @Hawkeye Bharath,
    u r right...it is the horrible truth

    @NMK,
    What puzzles me is, even if the article has content why do they need such stupid headlines.

    @Monu,
    are u among the non-economics variety

    @Krishna,
    In the business press, we don't have too many quality choices.

    @Puddlefrog,
    that's a nice observation. maybe they are trying to emulate ToI

    @AyeKay,
    u r spot on about the irritating way in which ToI publishes its articles. i hv seen articles been divided into 8 - 10 parts. they don't have any concern for user-friendliness.

    By Blogger Kaps, at 4:48 PM  

  • This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    By Blogger Chez, at 6:10 PM  

  • Well, I think there are some intellectual(??) minds at ET or TOI..!!

    cudnt say e.thing as a comment. So, I've come up with a post on urs.. :-)

    By Blogger Chez, at 6:11 PM  

  • WE have a competitor to TOI in Chennai. It's called Deccan Chronicle..

    By Blogger Vinesh, at 6:51 PM  

  • I completely agree. These headlines are just appalling.

    Headline 1 should be: "Is India the new sexy chic; or is it just all silicon?

    and headline 2 should be: Call girls ok, but what’s call money?

    The way I see it is this: if I want content, I'll read blogs. If I want grammatically correct English, I'll read the MSM. But if the MSM folks start writing like the bloggers (with spell/grammar check disabled) where's a man like me to go?! ;-)

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 8:33 PM  

  • Welcome to the "TOI Bashers group" kaps.. :-)

    Kamesh

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:46 PM  

  • Bingo! Bang on! All like minded people here. :)

    The online edition is a superset of the print edition and a lot more crap creeps in there. But then, the print edition is not without crap either. They squeeze in sleaze in some form or the other. The easiest thing they do is put an article somethiing like "Whats hot in technology" and put a model in there. The article would have no reference to models, but the relationship is the word 'hot'.

    I mean, how ridiculous can they geet? If TOI is porn, ET is soft porn.

    By Blogger Govar, at 11:41 PM  

  • ET-well I think it had very decent headings and articles till recently. Some dumb head has joined who feels that such things will help him sell not understanding the seriousness that a business daily demands

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 1:38 AM  

  • Keerthi, well said.

    Kaps,

    Good post. TOI gets bashed time and again. Last year there were some senior TOI officials at a good B-school function and a student bashed TOI. As you can see, TOI is focussed on what it wants to do: hit a newer low in newspaper journalism.

    One point about executive/decision maker segment - on an average, people spend 20 min (roughly two articles?) with a newspaper. Because execs are more pressed for time than others, they could be spending a little less than 20 min. In the short time, execs, I guess, will go through "relevant news" on the first page and probably skip over to their area of interest (editorial articles/networked etc.)

    A couple of my friends and I did not even notice the crap until someone pointed to it. btw, I dont buy ET on a Sunday. It is a sheer waste of money and time.

    By Blogger Chaitanya Sagar, at 2:40 AM  

  • @Magnus Astrum Anand,
    I did read your post. thanks for helping us out.

    @AyeKay,
    Anand has some solution for us.

    @VineshKS,
    From what I understand DC is targetting the younger crowd and is growing in market share.

    @Antrix,
    There are lot of grammatical errors in blogs (including mine). Given that all of us are students / working professional, i guess we need to live with such errors as one cannot expect us to do a truly professional job.

    @Kamesh,
    Glad to hear from another basher

    @Govar,
    Which is better.....porn or soft porn? Looks like the ToI bug is bitten me as well.

    @Vasanthi,
    They may not be so dumb....these might be the tactics employed by them to lure the readers

    @Chanakya,
    Even I never bought ET on Sundays....they used to charge 7 bucks or something.
    as u said execs / decision makers don't have much time and hence spend very little time reading the newspapers.

    By Blogger Kaps, at 3:48 PM  

  • @kaps: That's exactly my point. The MSM folks are being paid to write unlike (most) bloggers; for them to be sloppy is completely unacceptable.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:59 PM  

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