CITIZENS JAIN India, Which Has a Population of a Billion Two Hundred Million, Newspaper Circula- Why India’S Newspaper Industry Is Thriving

by fifty per cent, to twenty-four billion ANNALS OF COMMUNICATIONS dollars, according to the Newspaper Association of America, and net-profit margins now average five per cent. In CITIZENS JAIN India, which has a population of a billion two hundred million, newspaper circula- Why India’s newspaper industry is thriving. tion and advertising are rising. There are an estimated eighty thousand individual BY KEN AULETTA newspapers, eighty-five per cent of which are printed in one of India’s twenty-two official regional languages, and the circulation of English-language newspapers is expanding by about one and a half per cent annually. Many non-English newspapers are growing three times as fast, as about twenty million more Indians become literate each year. But, because English-language papers attract an upscale readership, they draw seventy per cent of the available ad dollars. The Times of India has a daily circulation of four million three hundred thousand, the largest of any English-language newspaper in the world. The Economic Times is the world’s second most widely read English-language business newspaper, after the Wall Street Journal. Both are owned by B.C.C.L., along with eleven other newspapers, eighteen magazines, two satellite news channels, an English- language movie channel, a Bollywood news-and-life-style channel, a radio net- work, Internet sites, and outdoor bill- boards. The company generates annual revenues of a billion and a half dollars, a paltry sum compared with an organi- zation like News Corp., which produces thirty-three billion. But the pre-tax profit margin of B.C.C.L.’s newspapers is a re- markable twenty-five to thirty per cent. The company commands half of all En- he square that borders the Dadar driver in exchange for their daily stacks of glish-language print advertising, half of Railway Station is the largest of newspapers and magazines. Afterward, English-language-newspaper readers, a sixty-fiveT newspaper-delivery depots in with helpers, they sit on the sidewalk in- third of TV news-channel ads, and al- Mumbai. At 4 A.M., forty trucks and serting supplements and sorting the most a quarter of all radio and Web ads. vans packed with newspapers and maga- stacks into neat bundles. Then they pass It is the largest outdoor advertising com- zines have parked and slid open their the bundles to deliverymen—there are pany in India. The company has no debt. back doors; the trash-strewn streets are some eighty-three hundred in Mum- One reason that Indian newspapers otherwise deserted, and the loudest noise bai—who pack as many papers as they thrive is the absence of digital competi- comes from the cawing of crows. During can onto motorbikes, rickshaws, bicycles, tion. Less than ten per cent of the popu- the next few hours, two hundred and and shoulders, and set out to slip them lation has access to the Internet, and, thirty-one thousand newspapers will be one by one under or beside the doors of with two-thirds of the population surviv- unloaded, half of them published by the city’s residents. ing on less than two dollars per day, ex- Bennett, Coleman & Company, Ltd., India is one of the few places on earth pensive smartphones and tablets aren’t India’s dominant media conglomerate. where newspapers still thrive. In the about to replace print media as the news- Venders cluster around the back of each United States in the past five years news- reading platform of choice. Also, Indian truck, handing up wads of rupees to the paper advertising revenues have plunged papers are cheap, costing between five and ten cents daily. There are few news- Samir and Vineet Jain. Their success is a product of anunorthodox philosophy. stands in India—only five per cent of BISWAS SAPTARSHI GROUP/GETTY; INDIA TODAY NARENDRA BISHT/THE RIGHT: LEFT TO PHOTOGRAPHS ALEX WILLIAMSON; BY ILLUSTRATION

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TNY—2012_10_08—PAGE 52—133SC.—LIVE ART R22652 papers are sold over the counter—and stories are rare. The Times of India sees home delivery is free, paid for by the pub- itself not as an agenda-setter but as a bul- lishers. The actual price of each paper letin board, a mirror to what happened is even lower, because of what Indians yesterday. The first section had many call raddi, their recycling program. Sub- ads, and there were several advertising scribers save their newspapers, which are supplements. picked up by raddiwallahs each month; The paper’s innovations begin in its the customer receives about ten cents per eight-page second section, which is titled pound, and the raddiwallahs sell the the Bombay Times but is known in- bundles back to the paper companies to house as Page Three. The section brims be recycled. with color pictures of seductive women The success of Indian papers, espe- and muscular men, along with stories of cially the Times of India, is also a product Bollywood stars, handsome cricket pros, of their content and the unorthodox phi- and international celebrities. The lead losophy behind it. B.C.C.L. is a family- story that day described how aspiring ac- owned business, run by Samir Jain, the tors, including a sultry Saiyami Kher, “are vice-chairman, and his brother, Vineet keen to start their innings in Bollywood.” Jain, the managing director. “Both of us Jain explained that, like the surrounding think out of the box,” Vineet told me on stories, it was written by members of the a recent afternoon. “We don’t go by the reporting staff and paid for by the celeb- traditional way of doing business.” His rities or their publicists. Most of the company’s dominance can be explained section was filled with ads, or with sto- simply, he added, though its methods are ries that were ads; a similar section ap- not taught in most Western journalism pears in each city in which the Times is schools. “We are not in the newspaper published. An internal company report business, we are in the advertising busi- in June lauded the strategy as “so impor- ness,” he said. With newspapers sold so tant that today nearly all Bollywood cheaply and generating little circulation movie releases pay for promotional cov- revenue, newspapers depend more on ad erage ahead of movie releases, and actors/ revenue, he said, and, “if ninety per cent actresses pay to develop their brand of your revenues come from advertising, through coverage in the paper.” Tucked you’re in the advertising business.” under the section’s masthead, four words Jain sat behind a small wooden desk in small type inform the reader that the in an office the size of a large closet; the contents are an “advertorial, entertain- windows were covered by white shades, ment promotional feature.” Jain insisted drawn against June’s monsoon rains. At that this meets the transparency test. “It’s forty-six, Jain looked professorial, in dark on my masthead,” he said. “It says ‘adver- slacks and a pale-blue dress shirt, black- torial’ clearly. All newspapers in the framed eyeglasses, and short, parted hair world do advertorials.” But in the Jains’ that has begun to turn gray. “Earlier, the newspapers the advertorials are written newspapers were written more for the in- by staff reporters, and a reader needs a tellectual élites,” he said. “It was too seri- magnifying glass to be alerted. ous at some point. It was not relevant to Jain got the idea for this section sev- our readers.” eral years ago, after reading an interview Jain picked up a copy of the Times of with Richard Branson, the owner of the India from his desk. The front page of Virgin Group, in which Branson re- the paper displays not six or seven stories marked that the reason he parachutes but ten or eleven, plus a jumble of small from airplanes and performs similar boxes containing disparate news items, stunts is that, with this free publicity, he with no large photographs or design ele- annually saves his company tens of mil- ments to provide a sense of neatness and lions of dollars in advertising. “When I symmetry. Jain flipped through the front read it, I said, ‘Oh, my God, eureka—I’m section, which featured a mixture of na- stupid!’ ” Jain said. “Why these guys are tional, local, and international news: a not advertising in my paper is because monsoon alert, graft charges against a I’m giving them free P.R.” If a Bolly- Presidential hopeful, a Mumbai train wood studio or a car company sponsored collision, and a story about the Taliban’s a fashion show, the show won’t be ig- praise for India’s refusal to get militarily nored by the paper, Jain said, but the involved in Afghanistan. Investigative name of the studio or the company won’t

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TNY—2012_10_08—PAGE 53—133SC. appear. “They are promoting a brand,” ads that appeared on the papers’ front in a chapter on the Indian press, in Nich- Jain said. “Pay me for it.” The Jains call pages. At the Times of India, or the olas Coleridge’s book “Paper Tigers.” In- this ad-sales initiative Medianet, and Jain Times Group, as the company is often dian news-service photographers are contends that it is more honest than what called, the business side need not ask per- under standing orders to snap his picture, existed before, when reporters were mission. The entire front page might be but they rarely succeed, because he at- slipped envelopes with cash or accepted sold as an ad, for four hundred and fifty tends few public functions. His wife, favors in exchange for positive coverage. thousand dollars. Or two-thirds of it Meera, with whom he had an arranged Why shouldn’t the paper, instead of the might be sold, or half, or a wraparound marriage when he was twenty-seven, is reporters, collect the bounty? Medianet banner might be attached to the page; or said to have no interest in the business generates about four per cent of the com- the front-page ad might be followed by and keeps an even lower profile. I met pany’s revenues, a sum that is expected to another, on page 2, with the normal page Samir two years ago, during one of his double within a few years. 1 buried inside the paper on page 3. For trips to the U.S. to speak with people in Another innovation, conceived by his a hefty fee, the Times of India will even the media. He told me about the unusual brother Samir, is referred to as “private change the name on its masthead to, say, ad-sales strategies he had implemented, treaties” or “brand capital.” Under this Wakudoki India (as it did on June 21st), a and of his newspapers’ vibrant growth. If program, the newspaper offers a deal play on a Toyota ad campaign that claims I visited India, I asked, would he talk to smaller companies: it accepts ads in that the car “makes your heart go waku- with me about his business? He said that exchange for equity in a company. doki.” Samir and Vineet Jain make no he would. B.C.C.L. insists on one-third cash as a pretense that what they do is a public He didn’t. Although Vineet and Times down payment and accepts real-estate calling. Rather than worry about edito- executives generously coöperated, Samir ownership in lieu of equity; the resulting rial independence and the wall between declined to meet. “The reason he probably ads appear throughout the paper. The the newsroom and the sales department, doesn’t give interviews is because he company has a stake in more than three they propose that one secret to a thriving doesn’t want the fame,” Vineet told me. “It hundred and fifty companies, and this newspaper business lies in dismantling doesn’t drive him. He doesn’t want to be accounts for up to fifteen per cent of its that wall. covered in newspapers and talked about. ad revenues. He’d rather be humble.” The brothers are In the U.S., several years ago, editors amir Jain may be one of the more un- both press-shy. “On a rational basis, they of the New York Times and the Wall usual media executives in the world; believe we should not explain to our Street Journal debated whether readers certainlyS he is one of the least visible. He competitors what we are doing,” Ravi would be served, or journalism harmed, has never granted an interview and made Dhariwal, the company’s C.E.O., said. if the business department sold discreet only a brief appearance, two decades ago, “They will follow us eventually.” Samir Jain is fifty-eight, but he looks older, his once stark-black hair now gray. He follows a strict vegetarian diet and has a slim frame and face; his clothes tend to- ward the baggy, his buttoned shirt collars loose. He often speaks in parables. Na- mita Gokhale, a well-connected novelist who co-directs the Jaipur Literature Fes- tival, once sat next to Jain at a dinner. Jain told Gokhale, “I think history doesn’t exist, and if I were Prime Minister I would ban the study of history.” Gokhale devilishly responded, “What I’ll do is give you two tight slaps and a kick, and if you can’t remember it I’ll agree there’s no history!” Jain politely smiled, turned away, and ignored her the rest of the evening. Jain spends about half the year at the company’s offices in New Delhi and Mumbai, and divides the rest between international travel and spiritual re- treats, particularly in the holy city of Haridwar, a six-hour drive north of New Delhi, where he has a home. Here he and fellow-congregants wash away their sins in the River Ganges, do yoga, meditate, and chant. “The Cloud ate my homework.” Inside the company, an aura has en-

TNY—2012_10_08—PAGE 54—133SC—LIVEART—A16350 veloped Jain; when he enters a room, the nineties, his father, pursued by gov- executives rise. They know not to inter- ernment charges of fraud and seeking rupt him during his daily nap at 3P .M. or medical treatment for a weak heart, left when he is engaged with his “spiritual for the United States; Vineet joined family.” They groan when they are in- Samir in 1993, as the deputy managing vited to an event at his house, knowing director, after graduating from the they will not be served alcohol. But he is American College of Switzerland. Al- not a forbidding figure; he always invites though the brothers confer on all points visiting Times executives to board at his of the business, Samir concentrates on home, sharing family meals. “The first newspapers and broad strategy, while filter he uses in any decision is ‘Will this Vineet focusses on television, radio, and be spiritually O.K.? Will I be able to go the Internet. Company executives rarely to my guru?’ ” Dhariwal told me with ad- address Samir by name, preferring in- miration. “He discusses a lot with his stead to call him V.C.; they address guru, I think. And if his guru doesn’t Vineet as M.D. bless it, I think he just drops it.” When Samir Jain first took over, the various businesses of B.C.C.L. were in he Times of India has belonged to decline. With national literacy rising, he the Jain family for more than sixty decided to gamble on newspapers. He years.T It was started in 1838, by British led long strategy sessions. “His mind was owners, then swallowed five decades later very clear about what business we were by a joint British holding company, Ben- in,” Bhaskar Das, who became Samir’s nett, Coleman & Company. Not until principal sales executive, told me. “We 1946, a year before India won its inde- knew we were in the business of aggre- pendence from Britain, did an Indian, gating a quality audience. Before that, Ramkrishna Dalmia, purchase the paper we just sold advertising space.” Das, and the holding company. An ardent na- who joined the Times Group in 1980, tionalist, Dalmia was a champion of the is a member of the company’s board of independence movement. He was also a directors and now serves as president and man of many whims. He fathered eigh- principal secretary to Vineet. He is tall teen children with six wives, three of and lean, with a chiselled jaw and silver whom lived concurrently in separate hair that falls to his shoulders, and wears homes. Dalmia was more interested in designer glasses. “We are a derived busi- politics than in newspapers, and he en- ness,” Das said. “When the advertiser trusted the company to his son-in-law becomes successful, we are successful. Shanti Prasad Jain, the grandfather of The advertiser wants us to facilitate Samir and Vineet Jain. Under India’s consumption.” first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jain encouraged his executives to push Dalmia was prosecuted for embezzle- back as he honed plans to forge a stron- ment and fraud. When he was released ger business. “He’s one of the most chal- after two years in prison, in 1964, his lenging and stimulating men I ever met,” son-in-law and daughter rebuffed his T. N. Ninan, a former editor of the Eco- efforts to resume command of the com- nomic Times, who is usually a critic, said. pany, creating a rift between the Dalmias “His mind is active. He reads people’s and the Jains. motives very well.” Jain recruited man- Shanti Prasad’s son, Ashok Jain, took agers from consumer-product compa- over in the nineteen-sixties; in 1975, nies like PepsiCo and Unilever and in- Ashok’s eldest son, Samir, joined the vited them to attend editorial meetings. company as a junior executive, after re- Credit cards, which, at the time, were ceiving a university degree from St. Ste- hard to get in India, were secured for phen’s College, in New Delhi. During members of the sales team but not for the next seven years, Samir concentrated the editorial team. This was Jain’s way on the media business, while his father of downgrading élitist newspaper edi- focussed on running the more than ten tors who might want to leave a mark on companies that made up the non-pub- the paper, thereby constraining his abil- lishing parts of B.C.C.L., including ce- ity to make business decisions. “Editors ment, jute, and textile businesses. By the tended to be pompous fellows thunder- late eighties, as vice-chairman, Samir had ing from the pulpit, speaking in eighty- assumed command of the company. In word sentences,” Rahul Kansal, Jain’s

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TNY—2012_10_08—PAGE 55—133SC. executive president and brand chief, AS THEY HELD GUPTA GUILTY.” Shekhar vance, because he knew that with lower told me. “They saw themselves as part Gupta, the editor-in-chief of the Indian circulation revenue the paper would need of nation-building, as part of a big dia- Express, a more hard-hitting paper, said more ad income. By 1998, the Hindustan logue. It did not connect too well with that when he and Samir Jain encounter Times had slipped to second place in younger Indians.” each other Jain usually hands him under- New Delhi. When Jain cut the price of Samir Jain pressed his executives to lined copies of Hindu scripture and “affec- the paper in Bangalore to a single rupee, create a more youthful paper. Articles tionately” admonishes him that “my pub- Siddharth Varadarajan, one of his editors would be shorter, sentences snappier; lication is too dark.” and the current editor-in-chief of the there would be more sports, less politics, Little more than a decade after Samir Hindu, told him, “This is predatory pric- more Bollywood, more color, lower neck- Jain assumed control, the company had ing.” Jain responded, “Absolutely not. By lines, and few book reviews. “You can’t become the largest media corporation in lowering the price, I am expanding the write about Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday India. “I would give all credit to my number of readers.” The gamble paid off: for a fifteen-year-old,” Das said. “You brother,” Vineet Jain told me. The com- home subscriptions to the Times in- can give a passing reference for the grand- pany also benefitted from a warmer eco- creased fivefold. father.” He added, “Everyone wants to nomic climate; starting in 1991, India The inspiration for one of Samir Jain’s feel young, think like the young. Youth is privatized many industries and reduced more innovative pricing strategies was an aspirational band, not a demographic regulations. The government would con- the zoo in Calcutta, his home town. As band. So if you make the paper youthful tinue to be the sole provider of news that he walked by on a Monday, normally a it satisfies everyone.” aired on state radio; elsewhere, market slow day after a busy weekend, he was forces were usually allowed to dominate surprised to see a long line. To boost at- “ spirational” is a word one hears often the media. tendance, the zoo had lowered its ad- around the Times offices, as a way Although the Jains were friendly to mission price that day, he learned, which ofA characterizing the sunny outlook that advertisers, they played hardball. “We tell gave him an idea: one day a week, on the Jains say their readers want. “We advertisers that if you want to be in the Wednesdays, he would halve the price of keep saying the glass is half full, not half Times of India you have to drop our Ma- the paper. Circulation rose, so Jain intro- empty,” Vineet said. Poverty, given that rathi competitors and take the ads to our duced “invitation pricing,” lowering the it’s not a condition to which one aspires, Marathi paper,” a senior executive, who price three days a week in certain loca- receives scant coverage. In the early nine- asked not to be named, said. “We told ad- tions. The strategies pioneered by Samir teen-nineties, Palagummi Sainath, now vertisers that if you want the Times of Jain at the Times of India—setting ag- a rural-affairs editor at the Hindu, wrote India in Mumbai you drop the Hindustan gressive prices, employing focus groups several dozen newspaper reports on ru- Times.” When the salmon-colored Fi- to learn what readers crave, and, above ral poverty as a freelancer at the Times. nancial Times prepared to expand into the all, treating advertisers as the primary Later, when he spent four years living Indian market, Samir Jain worried that it customer—have since become standard among the Dalit community, often de- would undercut his salmon-colored Eco- in the industry. “His legacy is really mak- scribed as the “untouchables,” he didn’t nomic Times. So in 1993 he registered the ing this business a profitable business,” bother submitting the pieces he wrote term “Financial Times” as a trademark of Sanjoy Narayan, the editor-in-chief of about them to the Times. He recalls a his company, and declared that if the the Hindustan Times, conceded. “Before Times editor once asking him why he him the newspaper business was run al- was pitching a story on rural poverty: most like a nonprofit.” He added, “He’s “How is this relevant to our readers?” been emulated by everyone else.” By the mid-nineties, the Times referred to itself, as Das did in his conver- he Jain family is very close. With sation with me, “not as a newspaper but Samir’s twenty-seven-year-old as a brand,” with target audiences that daughter,T Trishla, and her husband, advertisers coveted. Although there is no Satyan Gajwani, the brothers share a absence of bleak news in theTimes —rail- Gatsby-like home on three and a half way accidents, terrorist attacks, bureau- acres in the exclusive New Delhi area off cracy, corruption—“our general take on British paper entered the country it would the Motilal Nehru Marg road. Their life, and it comes back to our editorial be violating his intellectual property. Two neighbors are billionaires, celebrities, and philosophy, is one of optimism,” Dhari- decades later, the case is still winding its government officials, who live in “bunga- wal told me. When a tsunami struck way through the Indian court system. lows” hidden by high walls and tall, leafy south India, the Times “tried hard to find Jain’s artillery against existing com- jacaranda, acacia, gulmohar, and neem some good stories there”—heroic res- petitors involved reducing newspaper trees. A visitor to the Jain home is greeted cues, families reunited. Recently, when prices. In 1994, when the top-selling at the dimly lit stone entrance by a statue Rajat Gupta, who was born in India, was paper in New Delhi was the Hindustan of Ganesha, the elephant god, revered convicted in New York of insider trad- Times, Jain slashed the price of the Times as the “remover of obstacles” and wor- ing, the lead story on page 1 of theTimes of India by a third, to one and a half ru- shipped by many Hindus as the supreme focussed on the human dimension and pees, or about three cents. He took care deity. Inside are three living areas, with was headlined “JURORS WERE IN TEARS to build a bigger ad-sales force in ad- two separate kitchens, dining rooms, and

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TNY—2012_10_08—PAGE 56—133SC.—LIVE ART R22644D the idea of running small, boxed editorials, under the rubric Times View, along- side some front-page stories, as a way of proposing a solution, he said, and because “the editorial page is only read by five per cent of readers.” He does not worry that including editorials with news stories might lead readers to think the news has been slanted to conform to ei- ther a commercial or a political interest. He extended the innovation to the Eco- nomic Times this year. When B.C.C.L. relaunched its twenty-four-hour satellite news channel, in 2006, Vineet spent weeks laboring over the name, finally settling on Times Now. He wanted talk- ing heads to argue, not discuss. He wanted “a breathless nowness and im- mediacy, not leisurely features and anal- “I beg your pardon, but a mustache is required in the dining ysis,” according to “The Times of Media,” room. Would you like us to provide you with one?” the company’s official history. “It is about creating the illusion of breaking news, even if it is in fact news that’s already •• been broken.” Vineet and Samir share a belief that living rooms. Samir’s living room is more cause he is uncaring, he added, but be- government affairs and politics should formal, with wooden floors covered with cause Jain avoids the topic. The Times not be the focus of their lives or of their dark Persian rugs, walls adorned with has adopted a similar stance. “We don’t newspapers. Even critics praise them for centuries-old Indian and European paint- have many pictures of death,” Vineet having no political agenda to advance ings, and stained-glass windows. The said. “We don’t put death too much on their business. Hobnobbing with gov- rooms of Vineet and of Trishla and the front page.” As Samir’s spirituality ernment leaders holds no interest for the Gajwani are brighter and more modern. increased, his schedule became some- Jains. When President Obama visited On the top floor, Trishla paints in a stu- thing of a mystery, even to fellow-exec- India, Vineet declined an invitation to a dio, seeking to insinuate into her paint- utives. Tom Glocer, the former C.E.O. state dinner. “What will I do?” he said to ings, collages, and sculptures text from of Thomson Reuters, whose company me. “It’s just meeting somebody, shaking the English literature she studied at had a joint television news venture with hands. What’s the point?” Besides, he Stanford. the Times of India, was impressed with added, “the closer I get to politicians, the The matriarch, Indu Jain, who holds the management of the company. Yet he more they’ll interfere. It’s a Catch-22. the title of chairman, resides nearby, in had met Samir Jain only once. “When- Politicians are no one’s friends.” If he be- the home in which the Jain brothers ever we were supposed to have a meet- friended them, they’d call and complain grew up. (Their father died, in 1999, of ing, I was told he was off to some shrine,” about a story, or pressure him to run a heart failure at a Cleveland hospital.) Glocer said. different story. “You start getting calls Indu has also embraced gurus, but As Samir receded from view, Vineet every day. We don’t get any calls. It’s so Vineet has not. “She keeps pushing me assumed more responsibilities. In 2003, easy,” he said, smiling. to join,” he told me. “Once in a while, to he helped launch Medianet, their ven- Vineet said that he is comfortable make her happy, I’ll come. But I stay ture to induce celebrities and brands to thinking of himself as the younger away from gurus. I’m not going to waste pay to have news written about them; brother. “I think of one hundred small three hours listening to a discussion two years later, he helped implement pri- ideas, he thinks of three big ideas,” he every day.” vate treaties. He has also focussed on said. Sometimes Samir imparts fatherly Close associates say that Samir’s in- transforming B.C.C.L. into a multime- advice: “He would say, ‘Relax. Work volvement with a guru and his ashram dia company, making investments in less. Have a good balance. What are you deepened after a series of family trage- radio, television, and the Internet. chasing money for?’ ” But, Vineet said, dies. A few years after his father’s death, Because these businesses are mostly “for me, it’s not work. I love creating Samir’s teen-age son choked to death on in Mumbai, Vineet spends more time something. It’s so much fun—I hardly a piece of food. The following year, his in that city; he shares a house with his take holidays. For me, this is a holi- sister Nandita, who also worked at the brother there, too. Although Vineet in- day.” Unlike Samir, Vineet is divorced company, died in a helicopter crash. sisted that he and Samir do not deter- and was often seen in the company of “You never talk about death with Mr. mine content, he also said, “I am the beautiful women; people who don’t Jain,” a senior executive said. Not be- content architect.” He takes credit for know him sometimes mistake him for a

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TNY—2012_10_08—PAGE 58—133SC—LIVEART—A1685358—133SC. playboy. “Samir is into God,” an Indian raised by workers. Ajit Balakrishnan, ing Times reporters for jobs, “and they publishing executive says. “Vineet is the founder of Rediff, an early and suc- told me they couldn’t write this story” into women.” cessful Indian portal and e-commerce because the subjects were private-treaty site, sees the focus on government cor- clients. His publications enter into barter lthough blurring business and edito- ruption as a dodge by the wealthier, En- deals with companies, Purie said, but rial content has clearly worked well glish-speaking classes to avoid issues of “we don’t say we won’t write negatively Afor the business side of the Jains’ enter- real substance, like primary education about you.” prises, critics are quick to point out what and health care. The élites are “constantly In a 2010 interview with the maga- has been lost. “Samir Jain is the sharpest living under fear that as democracy deep- zine Outlook, Dhariwal, the company’s and most creative mind in media in the ens, and people vote independently, their C.E.O., said that each partner in a pri- country,” Shekhar Gupta, of the Indian own role and comfortable place in soci- vate treaty signs a contract that stipulates Express, told me. But Gupta lamented ety is eroding,” Balakrishnan said. Crit- “that he will not get favorable editorial the paid news and the private treaties and ics claim that the company’s paid news coverage.” He added, “Give me one in- the power that the Jains have granted ad- and private treaties skew its coverage and stance where our private-treaty invest- vertisers. “The seed of the problem lies in shield its newspaper advertisers from ment has had favorable editorial men- the idea that you call focus groups, where scrutiny. Vineet Jain calmly insisted that tion, or a story has been suppressed.” you figure out what it is they like to read a wall does exist between sales and the The Hoot, a Web site devoted to in a newspaper and then tailor the con- newsroom, and that the paper does not media criticism, has pointed out one such tent accordingly,” Gupta said. For stand- give favorable coverage to the company’s instance. When an elevator operated by ing by his principles, however, and not business partners. “Our editors don’t a construction company putting up a engaging in similar practices, Gupta has know who we have,” Jain said, although nineteen-story luxury apartment com- paid a price: the circulation of theExpress he later acknowledged that all private- plex crashed in Bengaluru, killing two has not risen above three hundred thou- treaty clients are listed on the company’s workers and injuring seven, the Times sand in the past decade, and he admits to Web site. story did not include the name of the making only “modest” profits. Aroon Purie, the C.E.O. of the India construction company, Sobha Develop- The poor quality of the journalism at- Today Group, which includes dozens of ers, a private-treaty partner, “unlike all tracts the heaviest criticism. After gradu- magazines, four TV news channels, sev- the other English and Kannada newspa- ating from the Columbia University eral radio stations and Web portals, and pers which explicitly did so,” the site School of Journalism and working for alone newspaper, believes the Jains have noted. “The third casualty in the acci- most five years as a copy editor at the granted too much power to advertisers. dent” was “honest reporting and freedom Wall Street Journal, Naresh Fernandes re- “They have set standards where advertis- of the press.” turned to India in 2002, as a news editor ers can ask for anything,” he told me. Palagummi Sainath, of the Hindu, for the Times. “This wasn’t the paper I Brazen advertisers have said to him di- offered an example of how the Times had idolized all my life,” he said one eve- rectly, “If the Times of India does it, why sometimes bends news to favor its ning over a beer at the worn Press Club, can’t you do it?” He described interview- advertisers. A full-page article, titled in an area of Mumbai where reporters gather to drink. Rain pounded on a can- vas roof. Fernandes recalled admonish- ing his reporters in a memo, “A quote is exactly what somebody said and the way he said it.” A fellow-editor dressed him down: “You’re bringing American standards to the newspaper.” Eight months later, Fernandes resigned. Certain biases are baked into the coverage. The Times shows a greater interest in government corruption than in corpo- rate corruption. In 2005, the Honda Motors plant in Gurgaon experienced an eight-month-long conflict between management and non-unionized workers over wages and work conditions, pro- voking violence and charges of police brutality. A doctoral study of the Times’ coverage, by Vinod K. Jose, an editor at the magazine The Caravan, showed that the paper aired the concerns of Honda and the harm done to India’s investment climate, while largely ignoring the issues

TNY—2012_10_08—PAGE 59—133SC.—LIVEART—A16910 “REAPING GOLD THROUGH BT COT - one’s opponent would cost extra. If a that seeks to critique the press. On her TON,” published on August 28, 2011, de- candidate paid nothing, the newspaper right shoulder is a small tattoo in blue clared that Monsanto’s genetically ignored him. ink: “OM?” It reminds her, she says, to modified Bt cotton seeds have “led to a When the report was submitted to “question everything.” Trehan believes social and economic transformation of the Press Council, the thirty-member that Indian culture is hypocritically po- the villages.” It appeared to be a news council initially declined to release it, lite. “Harmony is more important than story, complete with a byline, but close worried that it would undermine the conflict,” she said. “When children are inspection of the small print revealed credibility of publishers. Then it pub- honest, their father tells them they are that it was a “marketing feature,” paid for lished a small part of the report, ex- being rude.” by Monsanto. Reporting for the Hindu, punging names and other specifics. “So Darryl D’Monte, a Cambridge-edu- Sainath noted that the ad- the whole objective of nam- cated editor and writer who once served in vertisement had run “word ing and shaming was lost,” a senior editorial capacity at the Times, for word” three years earlier Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, an blames Samir Jain rather than culture for as a news story in the Nag- independent journalist and much of the industry’s ethical weaknesses. pur edition of the Times. one of the two authors of the “The Times has corrupted the entire face And, he said, both the story report, told me. After more of Indian journalism, including televi- and the ad were misleading: than a year, Thakurta and sion,” he told me, noting that there is less in fact, the Bt seeds did not others finally managed to get international news, less coverage of the grow cotton as promised; the the original report released in arts, less reporting on the many dire land lay fallow, and farmers full. Even then, much of the threats that India faces. Editors are preoc- went bankrupt. Since 2003, Indian press had little to say cupied with what readers think they want more than thirty-three thou- about it. “In India, the print to know about and with what advertisers sand farmers had committed suicide in media doesn’t write about itself,” Sevanti want. “It’s like a cancer that has spread,” the state of Maharashtra, including nine Ninan, who has written for many Indian D’Monte said. “It is the most serious in the “model farming village” depicted newspapers, and who, in 2001, founded threat to journalism not only in this coun- in the story and the ad. the Hoot Web site, said. When it comes try but in the entire developing world.” to self-criticism in the established press, he business strategies embraced by Jonathan Shainin, an American-born ne afternoon, Vineet Jain, sitting on the Jains have gradually permeated editor at The Caravan, told me, it’s “al- a sofa in his home with a stack of TIndia’s media industry. In 2010, a report most like an omertà.” workO on the coffee table in front him, by a subcommittee of India’s Press Coun- Journalism in India can boast of many spoke of the challenges facing his com- cil, a toothless body largely composed of successes. The Hindu has twelve corre- pany. He’d like to invest in more than press potentates and politicians, found spondents overseas, in addition to in- three non-English newspapers; of the that the Times’ Medianet had spurred an depth reporting on subjects like poverty. ten largest-selling newspapers in India, “epidemic” of paid news among newspa- The Hindu and the Express reject paid nine are published in regional languages. pers and some of the more than five hun- news, as does the Malayala Manorama, a The Times ranks sixth in daily reader- dred television channels. “In the 1980s, Malayalam-language paper, based in ship; the Hindi newspaper Dainik Jagran after Samir Jain became the executive Kerala, which has the fourth-largest daily is first, with sixteen and a half million head of Bennett, Coleman Company circulation in India. The Times of India’s readers. Since there are fewer upscale Limited, publishers of the Times of India New Delhi edition alone has a staff of readers than in the English-language group of publications, the rules of the In- two hundred and thirty-five. “I am a se- press, advertising rates in regional-lan- dian media game began to change,” the cret admirer of the Times of India,” guage papers are lower. But, because report concluded. They labelled many of Krishna Prasad, one of the paper’s fiercest more copies are sold over all, there is the practices that followed as “extortion- critics, and the editor-in-chief of Outlook, more revenue. ist,” making clear that these were often acknowledged. “They are far less ideo- Satyan Gajwani, Samir’s son-in-law, criminal acts, as under-the-table pay- logical than most newspapers in this entered the room, and Vineet invited ments were fraud, neither reported as in- country. On any given day, you get more him to join us at the dining-room table come nor taxed. They recounted exam- variety, and on a big news day no one in for a vegetarian lunch. Gajwani, twenty- ples of local reporters selling ads to the this country covers the news in the three- seven and outgoing, had recently been same people they covered and receiving hundred-and-sixty-degree fashion better promoted to supervisor of the company’s commissions on the sales, and described than the Times of India. I think very few digital businesses. He had met Trishla at a common practice in which many rural newspapers have the depth and breadth Stanford, where he studied mathemati- newspapers issued an unusual advertising to match it.” cal and computational sciences; his par- rate card to political candidates. In a rep- Yet, by Western standards, the In- ents are from India, but he was born and resentative case, for forty thousand dol- dian press is not aggressive. Madhu Tre- raised in Miami. In 2007, as graduation lars, a candidate could arrange to have han, a Columbia School of Journalism neared, the couple planned to move to positive stories written about him for graduate who was the founding editor of New York. After graduation, Samir took fifteen days; thirty thousand dollars the magazine India Today, is an author them to Maui for a week’s vacation, and bought ten days. Negative stories about and founder of Newslaundry, a Web site talked to Gajwani about the family busi-

60 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 8, 2012

TNY—2012_10_08—PAGE 60—133SC.—LIVE ART R22644G ness. The couple moved into an apart- Web users in India, with no pay walls. ment in the West Village. Trishla got a Quoting an April, 2012, Comscore tally, master’s degree at Teachers College, and Gajwani said that their digital ventures, Gajwani went to work as an equity trader which now employ thirteen hundred at Lehman Brothers. “He kept pitching people, attract more unique visitors than me to move to India,” Gajwani said. In any other Indian site. December, 2008, the couple moved into Some in the Indian media believe that the Jain house in New Delhi. “I didn’t the Internet threat is more imminent. A know if I could live in India,” Gajwani case can be made that English-language said, and he could not get engaged before newspapers in India are more vulnerable, he knew the answer. But his future fa- which is the argument advanced by a se- ther-in-law was persistent, treating him nior editor at the Times. “Everyone who like a son, giving him a job and more and reads the Times of India is on the Net,” he more responsibility at the company. The told me, and, with the price of smart- couple married in February, 2011. phones steadily dropping, he expected Vineet continued the strategic discus- the newspaper business to be disrupted sion, acknowledging that the company more quickly. In fact, the editor said he had come late to the television business. believes that the “owners are deliberately Because Samir is profoundly averse to underplaying the likely immediate im- debt, the company did not make a serious pact of the Net, as they don’t want adver- bid in 1992, when AsiaSat, a satellite tisers and readers to go rushing off to the service owned by Li Ka-shing, of Hong online edition.” Gajwani agreed that the Kong, put a transponder up for sale in drop in the price of smartphones will India. The prize went instead to Subhash spur additional online traffic, but he Chandra, who went on to launch Zee En- thinks that India’s slow development of a tertainment, and Zee’s growth now ex- 3G or 4G infrastructure to relay signals ceeds that of the Times. Instead, the Jains will stall the threat. own a twenty-four-hour news channel As servants brought glasses of sweet and a business channel, but these, and its coconut water and sliced papaya, Vineet English-movie and Bollywood channels, said that it was too confining to think of are niche businesses. They don’t own a the Times as being in the journalism busi- soap-opera channel that airs the kind of ness. “If we say we’re in the soap business, entertainment programming that attracts then you’ll not do shampoo,” he said. “If I big audiences and advertising dollars. say I am in the news business, then you “We are always open to an acquisition,” won’t do entertainment supplements. If Vineet said. They have been in discus- you are editorially minded, you will make sions with Sony, which owns a successful all the wrong decisions.” It annoys him channel, in the hope of buying it or, per- that so many newspapers in India have haps, forming a partnership. copied the Times’ policy of exchanging ads “In the long run, we might go pub- for equity without openly admitting it. lic and use the funds to acquire TV sta- But he takes pride in having set the stan- tions,” Vineet said. “We don’t need money dard that most of the industry follows. to grow publishing, but we do to grow “Every competitor at first agitates over television and Internet.” it, gets angry about it, and then quietly If the Jains do take their company apes it,” Krishna Prasad, the editor-in- public, the time to do so will be when chief of Outlook and the founder of sans their newspapers are expanding, so that serif, a media blog, told me. “Each player investors will see B.C.C.L. as a growth in the Indian market, whatever the lan- stock. But that raises a question: How guage, is left with very few options And long before the Internet disrupts the newspapers who say they are not doing it newspaper industry in India? Vineet said are basically lying.” Prasad does not fore- that he believes newspapers in India will see any sort of awakening, in which In- continue to grow for another fifteen dian newspapers become more wary of years, abetted by expanding regional-lan- the power wielded by advertisers and guage dailies. Today, the company’s var- more receptive to the kinds of church- ious sites—starting with its Yahoo-like state ethical questions often posed in IndiaTimes.com, which features health, the West. “The toothpaste is out of the travel, shopping, news, finance verti- tube, and it can’t be put back in,” he said. cals, and e-mail —reach one-third of all “People have seen how sweet it is.” 

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