Media Reforms
It is the season for reforms now, what with people demanding administrative, electoral, judicial and even constitutional reforms towards betterment of our lives. For me, however, media reforms are the most important for making my daily life happier and less irksome. In spite of the regulatory bodies for the print media like the Press Council of India, my difficulties as a user have not been addressed by their regulations. They only deal with the CONTENT of the news and not from the point of view of user- convenience of the readers.
My newspaper reading started in early 1950s in Delhi as a teenager. The Hindustan Times those days was printed in an unchanging format of pages to facilitate turning to the right page for reading the editorial, the middles, articles, sports news, local crime news, news from abroad and even obituaries. Advertisements were there then also, but mostly notices inviting tenders issued by the government and photographs of missing persons inserted by the Delhi Police. . No advertisements of soaps and detergents, electronic goods, tuition classes, Daily editions were usually in multiples of 4 pages making it easy to hold the paper with both hands in the middle, sitting relaxedly in a chair sipping coffee. My father, myself and my young nephew would rush to grab the paper as the delivery boy threw it at our door. We did not redistribute the pages amongst ourselves as was done in Corporation Public Reading Rooms. Instead, we breathed down the neck of the one who was reading and urging him to read quickly. Yet, it was a pleasure reading the newspaper those days and when the paper did not come on public holidays, we felt that the day has been a waste.
Contrast the above with the travails of the newspaper reader today. A single sheet containing important news and not advertisements is loosely tucked inside. It falls off every now and then. Often a couple pages wider than other pages are added with strips of the extra width jutting out like the sore thumb. These aberrations apart, headlines making news in front page are continued in an inner page, many a time with a different heading.
Full page advertisements occupy first two sheets, which makes the news worthy of first page, appears actually on the 5th page which however is numbered as page 1. Full page advertisements range from Coaching Classes, with photographs of All India Rank-holders with names such as Aggarwals and Bansals , to the e-commerce merchandise seller announcing festival sale with hefty discounts, to builders putting up panoramic view of their forthcoming housing projects in exotic spots with artificial lakes with names like Chateau . Then there are the inserts of fliers of various sizes and shapes containing the menu of the local restaurants or services of the gender-neutral beauty parlor. Last but not the least are the full page announcements of forthcoming Business Conferences organized by either the newspaper or some industry association with names of eminent panelists for selecting the best entrepreneur/ start-up/ life-time achiever etc. of the year and of course the names of speakers from foreign business schools and our own Cabinet Ministers and some spiritual guru followed in the subsequent days photographic coverage of the event occupying even more full pages .These have reduced the importance and the space for Letters To The Editor, the reader’s only column called his own
As an octogenarian addicted to my daily quota of newspaper reading from page one to the last page item “printed and published” as the cliché goes, where do I go to read a paper with ONLY NEWS
