Vinod Mehta and CP Kuruvilla : Like George Harrison and Guitar George

When the demise of celebrated editor Vinod Mehta made it to the front pages of leading newspapers, I could not but help think of how just a few weeks earlier, CP Kuruvilla had passed away quietly in Ernakulam. On Valentine's Day.

The two editors are a study in contrast for journalists of the 1980s vintage. Mehta was all over the place: writing books, attending cocktail dinners, loudly discussing gossip, fighting newspaper owners, hiring glamorous reporters and being glam himself.
Maybe it was natural the Lucknow Boy, being from the city of Nawabs,
The Ernakulam Boy, whose voice barely rose above whispers, is a study in contrast.
Not that "Kuru" as he was known, was not sung after his passing though it was among those who knew him up close. His love of anonymity was his claim to fame as these obituary tributes in The Telegraph , Business Standard and Firstpost would testify.
Both Mehta and Kuru loved their liquor, as the legend goes. But at least one of them was not drunk on fame.
I call it the contrast between George Harrison and Guitar George.
George Harrison was the lead guitarist of The Beatles, and attained world fame, for his music, for his love affairs and his long association with the Hare Krishna cult.
Guitar George is a figure familiar only to those who listened carefully to Dire Straits' rock classic, Sultans of Swing.  and its lyrics 

Check out Guitar George, he knows-all the chords
Mind he's strictly rhythm he doesn't want to make them cry or sing
They said an old guitar is all he can afford
When he gets up under the lights to play his thing

Kuru, for me, was the Guitar George of Indian journalism. He knew all the chords -- as in knowing every story there was to be known. He kept track of gossip and published the ones that made people sit up. While discussing his brainchild, the famous backchat column "None Of Our Business"  he once told me: "If somebody doesn't lose sleep over your story, it is not journalism." Or something to that effect.
The wicked grin in place, a strange mix of adventure and affection, he would tell us reporters what to do, raise his eyebrows in occasional appreciation, and watch us like a mother would watch a toddler -- in silent appreciation or admonition, as the case maybe.
When Arif Mohammed Khan sued me for an election campaign story -- alleging defamation because I quoted his rival saying that Khan had used money power, I received a teleprinter message, terse and funny.
"Congratulations. You have arrived. ....has sued you. For only ...."
I was ready to apologise (in my eagerness to keep the publishers out of unwanted controversy), but I was backed to the hilt.
Kuru would back his reporters like hell. But would not take any nonsense. Journalists who love their bylines got a strange mixed bag from him. If he found the story original, even if you had filed it with a "Staff Correspondent" tag, you would see it displayed well with a byline the next day.
The opposite was also true: a hyped story will get buried, or worse, spiked (killed)  -- as we say in the profession.
S.C. Anantharaman, my bureau chief in Business Standard, where Kuru was my deputy editor, called me after his passing. Ailing, weak but still keen to discuss Kuru, he showed me clippings from the good old days. These were about Reliance Industries under the influential Dhirubhai Ambani facing trouble over unauthorised sale of shares overseas. "You sure of the facts?" is all Kuru asked him. The story went on to rock parliament at the height of the much talked about Ambani-Govt nexus of those days.

Ananth also told me how Kuru once published a story on a high court verdict against Kolkata's celebrated industrialist Rama Prasad Goenka. Kuru put it on the front page of Business Standard. All the publisher could suggest was. "You could have put it on the inside page." He was zealously guarding his editorial independence.
And then there is the famous story about how the censor during Indira Gandhi's Emergency rule ordered a story taken off from the front page, and Kuru replaced it with the following lines from Tagore:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

But, strangely, Ananth told me about how, when being interviewed for the Business Standard job, Kuru developed cold feet to ask for a salary of Rs 600 per month!
"How can I possibly do that?" Ananth recalls him asking in Malayalam. This was in stark contrast to his pleading for higher salaries for those who worked under him.
His phenomenal memory for stories ("That story is old, it appeared on page 7, column 3 of  xxx  last week") would keep reporters from fooling him.
But, as I recall, when I filed a story about ANZ Grindlays bank desperately borrowing money to cover a big  amount in the now infamous Harshad Mehta scandal  I found my story as the lead the next morning.
 "Is it on Page 1?" I asked Kuru (the then Calcutta paper did not arrive in Delhi until afternoon, those days). "What do you mean?," he said. "It is the lead"
I as a reporter did not know how big the story was. He could smell it.
A lot more can be said about him. But for me, he was Guitar George.
I wonder if he would have given me a byline on this obituary. I  would not mind getting a call from him. "What is this story?" he might say. "I am not dead yet."

Breaking News--That's Ram Gopal Varma's next muse

He is done with Veerappan, the Mafia and skinny beauties. Ram Gopal Varma's next muse is Breaking News.
RGV was across the road from my office today at Religare's elegant art gallery, in the company of Amitabh Bachchan, who, a little birdie tells me, will play a character fashioned after NDTV's Prannoy Roy (story revolves around a channel called India 24/7--good for the brand's ailing stature)

The film, "Rann" (Battle) has the tagline "Truth is Terrible" and seems from early hints like an engaging film.
Ramu (touching his cheek about six times in the 10 minutes I watched him) said the movie's intention is to question the business of TV news channels blindly playing the TRP (television rating point) game.
RGV's film has a social message. Now that is Breaking News, for sure.
But seriously, I am glad my publicist friend invited me to cross the road. For one, the Big B of Bollywood spoke at length in his attractive, articulate way about '21st Century Journalism'--having turned blogger himself.
I also salute Ramu's latest attempt to ponder over the mad business of mushrooming TV channels in cut-throat competition that raises too many questions.
I might accuse RGV of stealing a page from another of the latter-day Cinema Verite kind, Madhur Bhandarkar, who made "Page 3" about the colour pages game, but all that is in good intent.
I like the fact that when media cannot introspect enough, Bollywood steps in. I say this in the memory of my late friend Anil Saari, who called Bollywood the Sixth Estate.
Here is a quick list of celebrated Hollywood and Bollywood movies based on life in the media. Surf on to IMDB and look for details

Hollywood: Network (on TV), Front Page, Citizen Kane (newspapers)
Bollywood: New Delhi Times, Page 3.

Of course, many other movies featured media stories, but these are top-of-the-mind.

H.Y. Sharada Prasad R.I.P.

Does the name H.Y. Sharada Prasad mean anything to you?
To a whole generation of journalists, it was synonymous with Indira Gandhi, to whom he was a media advisor. Amazing how the next generation cannot even recall such names. All things must pass, yes.


From sans serif by churumuri on 9/2/08

sans serif announces with deep regret the passing away of Holenarsipur Yoganarasimha Sharada Prasad, aka H.Y. Sharada Prasad, the legendary Mysorean who served as media advisor to three prime ministers of India, in New Delhi, on Tuesday, 2 September 2008. He was 84 years old, and is survived by his wife Kamalamma, and two sons.

"Shourie", as Sharada Prasad was known to relatives and close friends, was born in Bangalore, educated at the University of Mysore and jailed during the Quit India movement. He joined the Indian Express group in Bombay in 1945, and was a Neiman fellow in journalism at Harvard University in 1955-56.

He edited Yojana, the journal of the Planning Commission, after which followed his stints at the prime minister's office between 1966-78 and 1980-88, under Indira Gandhi and later Rajiv Gandhi. During the Janata government, he worked with Morarji Desai for a few months before being posted as director of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC).

The ultimate exemplar of the "Mysore School of Writing"—not too light, not too heavy—that R.K. Narayan, R.K. Laxman, T.S. Satyan among others exemplify, Sharada Prasad wrote books on Karnataka (Exploring Karnataka with Satyan), on the Rashtrapati Bhavan (The Story of the President's House), and on Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (Selected Works).

US journalists became self-indulgent, says Murdoch

I am not done with the Murdoch visit to India yet. Always looking for telling quotes from the man, whose furrowed forehead and creased smile attracts me as much as his insights into the business.
Here is my takeaway quote from the visit:

Newspapers in America became
monopolistic. Proprietors became lazy, and journalists became self-indulgent because they were writing for each other and lost touch with the public.

Full interview story from CNBC -TV 18 here

Murdoch's baraat goes to Bharat: And what's his message for Indian media barons?

So Rupert Murdoch is going to invest $100 million in India's regional language channels.
I already watch Vijay TV in Tamil in which he has a hand through Star TV. He is now up for Saam TV in Marathi and Asianet in Malayalam, we are told.
This man knows his long-term onions.
I watched Star Plus grow from a 50-50 joint venture with Subhash Chandra's Zee TV that had a strong contract which limited Hindi content, before the relationship ended. Subhashji got rich, but guess what Mr. Murdoch got?
Two things: 1) Freedom 2) Ground-level knowledge.
I do believe that a serial like Kora Kagaz, which ran in the constricted Star TV, as the forerunner of the famous mother-in-law soaps that took Star Plus to new heights.
If I were an Indian media baron, I would be floating a joint venture with other regional satraps.
You know, cricket is not the only thing Australians are good at.

PaidContent marks a milestone

The acquisition of PaidContent by the UK-based Guardian group confirms (again) my belief that "blog" is just a word -- It can turn into a business and become part of the mainstream media. Indian-born Rafat Ali has taken the group of sites logging the growth of the digital publishing industry in a "collablog" publishing venture to new heights and has thus become a pioneer. He joins the likes of Sabeer Bhatia and Vinod Khosla in marking new milestones in the Internet economy. The New York Times found it relevant enough to write a meaningful story

Ethnic Indians arrive in global media scene (Adventures through the glass ceiling?)

First, a bit of tom-tomming. This post is the 100th since this media blog kicked off about three years ago, when I started this to illustrate the then-largely-unknown concept of the blog to a bunch of media students I was lecturing at COMMITS, a media school in Bangalore..
It is fitting that I should hit this landmark number with a story in Mint on how Indians are rising to new highs in global (read Western) media giant labels such as Time and Wall Street Journal. The story links these appointments to the rise of the "India story" which kind of devalues the merit of the people in question-- as if to say that these people are making it big because they are Indian and not solely because they are capable of running global set-ups. I am not sure if that is the correct way to look at it.
Some of the dudes in question are my former colleagues who left Indian shores for greener pastures. and have worked hard to get where they are. There is plenty of Indian talent both at home and abroad, though some of the people in question have swapped native Indian wisdom and depth for US-ishtyle reportage which has its own charms and balancing qualities.
When I left myself for Reuters, there were those who cautioned me about the perceived glass ceiling in international media companies. I did not find any significant problem, except with occasional individuals or their worldviews that concealed unconscious biases.
I will not say there are no biases at all in Western media organisations, but I will add that Indian companies have their own biases. There was certainly a period in both information technology and media when Indians had to work harder to get to the same spot but that has changed a lot. It is an evolving world in which professional values are being increasingly recognised, though there is some way to go both in Indian and international organisations.
Some look at everything through the looking glass of self-loving mirrors and others through imagined glass ceilings. In the end, the details differ from case to case, person to person.
Now for the big question: These are big labels they work for, but will they stay big? In the "World is Flat" globe of level-playing fields, is the media industry an exception?
Bring on a guitar. I'll sing "the answer is blowing in the wind."

Crime is hot on Indian TV, but it will not pay for long

If there was statistical evidence needed for the overkill that Indian news TV channels are doing with crime stories, especially the Arushi Talwar murder case in Noida/Delhi, it is here.
An article in The Hindu's Sunday magazine says: "A study by the Centre for Media Studies (CMS) says that six channels beamed news and special programmes on the double murder for 39.30 hours out of a total 92 hours prime time — from 19:00 hrs to 23:00 hrs — between May 16 and June 7."

Here is my prediction. In the next six months to one year, there will be a dramatic shift away from crime news.

A lot of this had to do in my opinion/interpretation with the prices of television and cable connections dropping to points where TV sets and satellite TV became affordable for millions. This class, which I call the "neo-TV-literate" was wooed with stuff that turned them on in the TRP game. At the same time, the cost of launching new channels and the imperatives of winning market share generated a cycle of "competitive populism" in the space from the supply side.

The cycle is playing out like an IPO boom in the stock market and something -- as they say -- has gotta give.
I do not expect gross TRPs to rule the roost at all and we will have an ordered play of TV news channels. I am not going into the ethical, social and responsibility-related issues here. Some of them are valid, but I don't believe in rantings passing off as informed discourse.

Media set for zillion-scale growth (Er, what about crude and food prices?)

I love those forecasts. Everybody from Goldman Sachs to your friendly neighbourhood IT consultancy was making predictions in 1998-2000 about the way the Internet will grow and grow and grow. And then came the Dotcom Bust that saw startups and listed companies alike go belly-up!
Take forecasts with a pinch of salt-- but like your teenage crushes, they always make you feel good, even if they take you nowhere.
This week comes PricewaterhouseCoopers' forecast about growth in the media industry.
Media revenue is globally set to rise 6.6 per cent a year to $2.2 trillion (A trillion is one billion and one billion is 1,000 million) by 2012, says the forecast. The 6.6 number does not sound unrealistic to me, given the single digits, but I am once-bitten, twice shy.
The Hollywood Reporter's despatch mentions Brazil, Russia, India, China (BRIC) as the major growth driver.
It says: "Growth in the roaring economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China -- the so-called BRIC nations -- will outpace the more mature markets of the U.S. and Western Europe, with PwC forecasting 13.6% average annual growth in BRIC compared with just 4.8% annual growth in the U.S. media industry and 5.4% in Western Europe.

By 2012, the report predicts that the media business in BRIC will total about $250 billion, compared with $759 billion in the U.S., about $633 billion in Western Europe and $166 billion in Japan."
Oh, I really love that. And given that newly affordable TVs and exploding mobile handsets will drive new kind of content and games and entertainment, it sounds plausible.
But then, I am reading all this amid a sub-prime crisis in the US (and ergo, global) economy. With crude prices and food prices high in many parts, I need to also worry about the price of salt. If all of us take a pinch of it with such reports, I am sure the price of that grain will go up as well!

Is India ready for a digital publishing explosion? (Because US seems to be getting there)

Sitting in India, it is difficult to map out how Internet publishing will pan out over the next few years, but I do believe that at least for the English media, it will make a big difference. There is a reasonable chance that anyone who writes/reads English will earn enough to buy a PC and a Net connection, with both becoming cheaper.
Here is the big one from the US: Internet is set to become "Medium Number 2" --next only to direct marketing!
This is based on an IDC survey (respected agency, mind you!), which also records that this is despite recession clouds over the United States economy. I only hope such numbers do not go the way of the Web 1.0 hype when B2C, B2B and all that gave way to P2P and C2C in the Web 2.0 way.
Here are the operative parts from the IDC release, and a link to the statement follows:
"During the forecast period, Internet advertising will grow about eight times as fast as advertising at large. IDC finds overall Internet advertising revenue will double from $25.5 billion in 2007 to $51.1 billion in 2012.
"The Internet will go from the number 5 medium all the way to the number 2 medium in just 5 years, making it bigger than newspapers, bigger than cable TV, bigger even than broadcast TV, and second only to direct marketing. Video advertising will be the principal disruptor of Internet advertising over the next five years by attracting the most new marketing dollars"

http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp%3Bjsessionid=GO1LTXAYTD3CACQJAFICFGAKBEAUMIWD?containerId=prUS21260308