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

1
The Comparison of The Times of India and The
Hindu from an infotainment perspective

• SOC 474
• Term Project

Made by Akash Chauhan Akash Kashyap H. Sripath
2
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
  newspapers current situation
• Compare the two newspapers with an emphasis on
  the infotainment and culture industry perspective

3
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

4
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

5
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.

6
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.

7
FRONT PAGE OF THE TWO NEWSPAPERS
8
Comparison of the front page tabs
9
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.

10
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.

11
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

12
Comparative Study of various sections of The
Hindu and The Times of India
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.
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
13
TOI
Hindu
14
A Comparison of the international section

TOI
Hindu
15
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
16
TOI Front Page
Hindu Ad
17
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 164 64
The Hindu 24 4 to 6
Kanpur Times
18
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.

19
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.

20
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.

21
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

22
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.

23
IITK Juntas response

• I 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

24
IITK Juntas 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
  dullTOI 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

25
IITK Juntas 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.
• ? ?