MediaWatch India

Musings and notes on the media industry, and related matters of interest including technology, digital publishing and evolution of the Internet and new media. With particular reference to India. This blog is not a lofty idealist perch. It believes in the business of the media. (Please leave your comments if possible. It helps)

19 August 2023

The Decline and Slide of Indian Journalism

This piece must be the best thing to have happened to Indian journalism in a long time. Incisive, well-researched and hilarious in parts,...

31 August 2017

Talking sustainability: connecting a zillion dots

Being a media person gives one -- over the years --- an opportunity to straddle and touch different viewpoints. That makes moderating pane...

19 May 2016

Tamil Nadu assembly election results explained (video)

Here I am, explaining the Tamil Nadu election verdict of 2016

21 August 2015

New storytelling tools can change the game -- take a look at Thinglink

Look at the picture above. Good old captions can be dramatically converted into presentation-like points-- with fancy hyperlinks to en...

24 June 2015

Memories of Praful Bidwai: A spirit of the 60s

In the early 1980s, when I started out in the profession at T he Times of India 's newsroom in its headquarters in Mumbai (then Bom...

16 March 2015

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...

10 March 2015

Positive way to do media PR -- an example

I keep talking about how PR agencies and executives have become intrusive, often irrelevant and sometimes clueless. I need to set the re...

8 March 2015

Vinod Mehta was a Lucknowi Nawab with a Punjabi heart and English humour

I have never spoken to Vinod Mehta, though sat next to him once at a lunch at the Italian ambassador's residence. At this point, I foun...

28 August 2012

Cracking the uneasy relationship between PR and journalism

Public Relations and journalism are a feted pair -- condemned and glorified in a love-hate relationship of many dimensions. Here is an inte...

25 April 2012

Six rules to harness content

Here is a presentation video of my talk at the India Social Summit in April 2012

7 October 2011

Speaking on Steve Jobs

Not often that I speak on TV and that in Hindi. But the death of Steve Jobs did it. Here is the link.

15 November 2010

Emerging picture on content shows pick-and-choose globalisation

So what is happening to content -- the broad word we use to describe everything from data and articles to video and audio --be it songs or n...

12 October 2010

Plagiarism: Last Refuge of the Hack In A Hurry?

We have been talking of "cut-and-paste" journalism ever since word processing happened big time. But then, as they say in Hindi, ...

4 October 2010

Exposing the expose - How media spin should be watched

So you think investigative journalism is cool? Or that a sting operation rocks? The thing can be nasty and explode on your face - especially...

2 August 2010

Does social media screw up breaking news?

Here is an interesting perspective. "Distributed verification" of breaking news is great, but nothing like well-verified, well-pac...

28 July 2010

Paid News gets a strong backlash...

Media is turning its guns on itself. Good stuff. Here i s a report.

27 July 2010

WikiLeaks: The Al Qaeda of the Free Press?

The phenomenon has just begun, but WikiLeaks --as the "stateless" organisation (why does this remind me of Al Qaeda ?)-- may well ...

18 July 2010

"We need more opinions in news"

Here is an interesting perspective from respected technology blogger Michael Arrington on the importance of opinion in news. This is a tric...

13 July 2010

The Angry Old Man vs Jackass Journalist

Dear Mr. Amitabh Bachchan, Chances are very low that you will read this blog because you are a superstar while I am not. But I was tempted t...

14 June 2010

Newspapers are out, online is not (yet) in. OECD ponders

The Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has conducted a study on the business of newspapers and the future of news ...

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About Me

Madhavan: Journalist, 25 years up in the profession --has worked for the Times group, Reuters and HT. Writes on nearly everything, but technology, policy and business have been the main focus areas.

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