The poor content quality of TOI

This is about newspapers. In particular, it is a rhetoric against the poor content quality of probably the most popular newspaper. If you subsribe to the Times of India, then you probably would have read the article titled "Please, May I Have This Dance With You?" (page 4) in TOI dated 24th May. In this, the author (a TOI person) tries to extoll and defend the paper by very creative/innovative ideas. I'm sorry to say that I'm quite in agreement with the gentleman who gave the writer of the article a "dressing down", critisizing it of having nothing to read.

The writer has given several creative lines of reasoning to defend the paper from the above accusation. All of these stand invalid when one brings into perspective the real and true purpose of a national newspaper, which, I'm sure all would agree, is firstly to provide a comprehensive reporting of the national and international events, and secondly to provide a platform for high-quality debate, serious discussion, analysis, views and opinion building on the former.

Firstly, while explaining the editorial approach, the writer likens it to the "Yoga Vasishta" and the issue of detachment versus involvement. Just to remind you, the very purpose of a news journal is to get the general public involved in the happenings and current affairs, not making them detached from it. Moreover, the detached look at events that the writer refers to may be the modus operandi of "the liberated sage who is disinterested in the events of the past, present and future", but for the common person, it is a more down-to-earth and essentially an involved approach.

Citing the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (wrongly spelt in the article as "Heidelberg"), the writer explains the detachment, disinterestedness and lack of agenda of the paper by saying that these qualities would make it more "accurate" and "truthful". Let's just say that truthfulness as applied to a newspaper is simply reporting the news as it happens, which thus applies only to the factual reporting. Where the view-based material is concerned, "truth" has no meaning there, because an article/debate/analysis is a personal/intellectual assessment and an opinion making exercise done on an event or an issue, and thus has no bearing on true or false.

Presenting things with humour and in an amusing and light perspective is all very well, but again, this is not what a newspaper is meant for. Just to make a comparison, the editorial content of TOI is not much of "good reading" if compared to say, The Hindu. I'm not critisizing any of the regular TOI writers on this, in fact some of the articles like "Swaminomics" are really good. But just look at the daily supplements like Delhi Times/Bangalore Times. 70% of it is filled with advertisements, and the rest is hardly anything to read, in fact many a times I've found previously published material being repeated. The general language, tone and unserious attitude reflected in the content just does not make for high-quality reading matter.

An important purpose of a daily newspaper is to provide the readership with intellectual stimulation through articles, views, debates and discussion forums. Sadly, this purpose does not seem to be catered to by TOI, which is ironical considering the publishers' claims on achieving the widest readership in the country. If indeed it does command such wide reach, it is the publishers' responsibility to ensure that the publication also commands a commensurate quality.

I hope not to offend ardent readers of TOI :-) Just a personal observation. Disagreements/opinions/comments are welcome :-)

Ankur Sakhuja.