The Comparison of The Times of India and The Hindu from an infotainment perspective

SOC 474Term Project

Made by:

Akash Chauhan

Akash Kashyap

H. Sripath

What we intend to do: Show the rise of Infotainment, Tabloidization

in the news media fuelled by the increasingly consumerist behaviour of the urban society.

Look at the history of the two newspapers and at the present ownership and how it affects the newspaper’s current situation

Compare the two newspapers with an emphasis on the infotainment and culture industry perspective

A few points:

Consumerism:

• Used to describe the effects of equating personal happiness with purchasing material possessions and consumption

• Logic behind consumerism is the fact that in an industrialized economy where the overall wealth of the people is improving, the people achieve happiness by the ability to spend money on new products and gives some meaning to their lives

• Thus in such a society, it is necessary for the industry to keep producing a new product every few years

A few points:Culture Industry:• The term culture industry was coined by Theodor Adorno

(1903-1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895-1973).

• Popular culture is like a factory producing standardized cultural goods to manipulate the masses into acceptance without any choice of their own

• With the rise of the Culture Industry, it is argued that culture is now dominated by the forces of market exchange and profit

• The logic of the culture industry is that of the industrial mode of production and the consumerist behaviour of industrial societies. There is a loss of the freedom of thought in a culture industry

A few points:

Infotainment:

• Infotainment refers to the segments of programming in television news programs which overall consist of both "hard news" segments and interviews, along with celebrity interviews and human drama stories

• There is an increased focus on marketing, not journalism.

A few points:• Hard News consists of the idea of: Seriousness and Timeliness

• Soft News consists of articles on Arts and entertainment, sports, lifestyles, "human interest", and celebrity gossip.

Tabloidization: Tabloidization is media trend involving a shift “away from

government and foreign affairs” to a more entertainment-style of journalism.

For example….. What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think about what Bill Clinton did?

Is it by any chance Monica Lewinsky? This is a direct effect of the huge media emphasis on the scandalous news items in order to promote sales.

FRONT PAGE OF THE TWO NEWSPAPERS

Comparison of the front page tabs

History of the newspapers:The Hindu:

• Est. 1878 by a group of 6 men led by G. Subramania Iyer.

• The newspaper started printing at its own press, christened 'The National Press', established on borrowed capital.

• It issued a quarter-size paper with a front-page full of advertisements until 1958.

• In the late 1980's its ownership passed into hands of the family's younger members

• Worldpress.org lists The Hindu as a left-leaning independent newspaper. This political polarization is supposed to have taken place since N. Ram took over as editor-in-chief on June 27, 2003

• The Hindu is a family-run business. It was headed by G. Kasturi from 1965 to 1991, N. Ravi from 1991 to 2003, and by his brother, N. Ram, since June 27th 2003. Other family members are directors of The Hindu and its parent company, Kasturi and Sons.

History of the newspapers:The Times of India:

• The Times of India was founded on Nov 3, 1838 as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce, and served the British residents of western India

• It adopted its present name in 1861

• Originally British owned and controlled, its last British editor was Ivor S. Jehu, who resigned the editorship in 1950

• The Times of India is owned by Bennet, Coleman & Company (Controlled by Indu and Vineet Jain) popularly known as The Times Group which also publishes The Economic Times, Mumbai Mirror, TIMES NOW, Femina & Filmfare, Planet M, Radio Mirchi and indiatimes.com web portal to name a few.

• It has been by and large viewed as a pro-establishment paper. It tends to vary in its support between the BJP and Congress Party, depending on who holds the reins of the Central Government. The executive editor at present is Jaideep Bose

• It has come under attack because of tabloidization of its content and focus on infotainment rather than “hard news” in recent times.

History of the newspapers:

Conclusion:• TOI has placed more emphasis on an industry like

setup and has branched out into various other fields in the news and entertainment industry

• Hindu Group which has been a tightly owned family business with its entire focus on the newspaper

• This difference can be seen in the emphasis placed by the TOI on the entertainment business and the infotainment and tabloid style news prevalent in it today as compared to The Hindu which has in general stuck to the "hard news”

• We can also see the effect of the size of Bennet, Coleman and Co. in the ads in TOI promoting its own brands (Radio Mirchi, Times Now etc.) using the newspaper medium

Comparative Study of various sections of The Hindu and The Times of India:

Newspaper Total no. of pages Articles dedicated to Page 3

Times of India 16 8 to 11(apart from the supplement Kanpur Times*)

The Hindu 24 2 to 3

Comparison on the basis of the number of Page 3 articles:

TOI has a significantly higher proportion of articles related to celebrities and tabloid style journalism as compared to the Hindu on the same dates (6th to 10th November, 2006)

**It should be noted that the result provided in the table below does not include the daily supplement (Kanpur Times) which is essentially a tabloid style paper dedicated to gossip and celebrity photos.

TOI Hindu

A Comparison of the international section

TOI

Hindu

Comparative Study of various sections of The Hindu and The Times of India:

Comparison on the basis of the space given to the Advertisements:• The larger space given to advertisements in general reflect the consumerist nature of our

society and the increased emphasis on colourful eye catching products designed to capture the readers attention in the newspaper.

• The newspaper also benefits from the increased revenue this space generates everyday. • It also reduces the necessity to come up with extra columns of hard news for the paper. • TOI here also surpasses the Hindu based on the ratio of ad-space to the total no of pages.

Newspaper Total no. of pages Average Advertisement Space

Times of India 16 3 to 4 pages

The Hindu 24 4 to 5 pages

TOI Front Page

Hindu Ad

Comparative Study of various sections of The Hindu and The Times of India:

Comparison on the basis of number of colored pages:

• Consumerism in the society drives the newspapers to give out things which attract their attraction, they present things which are eye catching and flashy.

• Since the readers will not hesitate to switch to their competitors, the newspapers try to increase their circulation by the help of eye catching pictures of celebrities and other “hot stuff”.

• The Times of India rarely has a section without a celebrity picture whereas The Hindu is more sedate in this regard with a greater emphasis on hard news.

Newspaper Total no. of pages Colored Pages

Times of India 16+4* 6+4*

The Hindu 24 4 to 6

*Kanpur Times

Comparative Study of various sections of The Hindu and The Times of India:

Space given to infotainment based news in different sections:

The Hindu has on an average two articles appearing in the entire newspaper based on infotainment most them occurring on the International news column and a few on the second page which mostly concerns about health tips and talk of the town.

Times of India has a bare minimum of one article based on infotainment in each separate section on the newspaper. There are celebrity pictures which attracts the attention of the readers.

Case study : Recent electoral results of US as covered by ‘The Hindu’ and ‘The

Times of India’:

• The result of the US elections was a sweeping victory for the Democrats over the Republicans for the first time in 12 years.

• The Times of India while giving the facts and statistics has placed a greater emphasis on the huge win of Hillary Clinton (wife of former president Bill Clinton) from New York and her rumored run for presidency in 2008.

• They try to make or present such news so as to people who are otherwise uninterested in such news also take notice of it.

• Another important fact pointing out in the TOI news is the effect of these results on Indian US nuclear deal which was started by President George Bush which is yet another effort to raise some eyes towards

this news by making it relevant to the readers of certain mindset.

Case study :• ‘The Hindu’ on the other hand covers the news more deeply giving an

insight of the reasons behind such a sudden change of trend in the election results which involves the policies of the US government on Iraq war and various other foreign and national policies. The reactions of the Republican Party and the turmoil created within the party get more emphasis.

• The Hindu thus lays a greater emphasis on the news as it is with a tendency to report the hard news without too much emphasis on the Hillary Clinton angle. On the whole, the Hindu has covered the elections in a more balanced manner, covering both the Republican side as well as the Democrats than the TOI.

We can see that the TOI has laid a greater emphasis on the infotainment

perspective and has been able to maintain its larger share of the readership based on this approach of eye catching headlines and personal interest stories (here Hillary Clinton) rather than the Hindu which has laid a greater emphasis on the hardcore facts of the story.

Readership trends of the two newspapers:

Results of the National Readership survey (NRS) conducted by AC Nielson for the year 2006:

The Times of India: 7.4 million readers The Hindu : 4.05 million readers

The majority of the English dailies are sold in urban industrialized areas. The readership consists of people living in the late industrial phase in a consumerist society.

• This makes it imperative for the newspapers to be eye catching and glamorous in order to survive the competition. In such a scenario, we can see how the Times of India with its increased emphasis on the infotainment and tabloid styles news events to garner more readership with a more colorful presentation and eye catching photos of models and celebrities in nearly every page as compared to the more sedate Hindu

Readership trends of the two newspapers:

The Times of India with its freebies, eye catching presentation and increased visibility is clearly able to capture the majority share of the readers in a consumer based economy and is hence the largest read English newspaper in the country

The general trend among students wanting a greater emphasis on hard news is towards the Hindu while a majority of the students prefer the Times of India for its eye catching news and its special focus on glamour and pin up images of actresses in the Kanpur Times section of the paper.

IITK Junta’s responseI hate either of them.

Hindu: 1. Lack of true content and analysis dubbed under good usage of language. 2. Extremely one-sided view points and often, an editorial stance directly against the ground realities of the situation. 3. Pseudo-secular bandwagon. 4. Ads. in Tamil script in all editions (Not to mean I have anything against any regional language).

TOI: 1. Blatant plagiarism. 2. Creation of fake news to fill space. 3. Non-sense in the name of news. 4. Totally irrelevant pictures and trivia. 5. Sensationalism.

Common reason: Ads promoting sister products from Bennett-Coleman and whoever's the other owner. This is pronouncedly so in the case of TOI.

Nevertheless, I subscribe to Economic Times on weekdays and TOI on weekends.

CKV

IITK Junta’s response My choice has always been The Hindu because of its refined

language, large degree of authenticity of the news and above all for its vast outreach that caters to almost all social strata.

TOI for me bcoz its more glamourous(with pics n all) n it gives more sports news than any other english daily

I prefer TOI. The presentation of the paper, which includes the colour combination and fonts etc. is more amicable. News headlines are such that they grasp your curiosity...

I dislike The Hindu because its so strongly biased towards 'pseudo-secularism’. Plus its too dull…TOI is flashy and tends to do anything and everything just to catch another eye.Is that journalism ... No. Is that entertainment .... Yes! So when I need entertainment , I prefer TOI and for news , I prefer HT or The Indian Express

IITK Junta’s response“There's one similarity I see between the too though.

All Hindu editions, including the Delhi one seem to come from some crackpot's head in Chennai.

And all TOI editions, irrespective of edition, are all the same and come from a common place too: the TOI-let.

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