Friday, April 15, 2005

Navel-gazing at The Hindu


Can you imagine a newspaper that actually issues a guide that tells the readers how to navigate through it? The Hindu, the great 115-year old newspaper from the South, recently went through a re-design. I have to say the newspaper is much nicer now, but does it need a guide? Come on ...

I thought only the Times of India is into serious self-promotion, with articles about itself (and its affiliates, surrogates) that look like news. Yesterday, The Hindu had two articles (one of them by N. Ram, its Editor-in-Chief), and interview with Mario Garcia, the designer, and a report about a function organized to celebrate this redesign. Today, it has one full page of readers' response to its new look, which Ram says, "offers a more contemporary, elegant, and functional newspaper".

Serious case of navel-gazing, this.

On a slightly different note, why is it that our newspapers do not provide any information about the authors of their op-ed articles? I think it is absolutely essential, even when the author is on the newspaper's staff.

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