Finally – after years of reading Newspaper with a cup of filter coffee in the morning – I am breaking free from the thing called Newspaper.
The disillusionment started with Indian Express becoming more of yet another run of the mill Masala Newspaper. When the world was burning with Wikileaks – IE choose to look the other way.
“Tata Sumo turns turtle on NH-4”
“Mugging on ORR, techie loses mobile,laptop”
“Old Couple Murdered in Jayanagar”
I started feeling that it is a random generator which picks these news. Of course there were these moments of brilliance – when the editorial will go hammer and tongs against the establishment. But it was becoming less and less.
Then Nadia Tapes leak happened. With it Vir Singhvi – whose columns I used to love – was chucked out. Swapan DasGupta left IE long back to write for ToI. Gurumurthy and TJS George’s columns were coming very sporadically..they were getting old. IE could never find anyone to sit at their desks.
Finally I gave up – and switched to ToI for 2 months.
“Should item numbers be done by popular actress” – center page editorial debate.
“Strawberries good for health” – with an accompanying photo revealing all other details.
“Property News” – actually Ads – you can’t guess which is which anyway
And always the opening page – being sold to companies with deep pockets. It is like a coupon book the whole newspaper. There was no sincere intelligent editorial. Swapan Dasgupta’s editorials didn’t have the punch it used to have -felt very much tamed. The leaks, scams, Anna Hazare – all had a passing reference – something that should have been the front page news.
Finally with my disillusionment complete – I gave up.
Now I have filter coffee with a book in hand. It is so much peaceful.
And for the world and scams – I get them on my twitter & facebook feeds – can make my own judgments – I am grown up now.
