NEWSPAPERS

Everyone of us likes to see a newspaper in the front of our doorsteps everyday morning as soon as we get up. The fresh smell from the newspaper. The sharp folds in the newspaper. Ah! What a site in the morning. Steaming hot coffee and newspaper who doesn't like it?

Now, moving on to the serious part about this, what about the news inside these papers? In a recent issue of business line, i was shocked to see the front page was blank. On closer scrutiny, there was a small box in the middle of the page, which had some advertisement of a company. Well, has the quality of papers gone down so much that the front page, which has to contain the main news, is being sold to companies for the purpose of advertisements?

I recently did another activity. Took out a 30 cm scale and measured the area in which news and classifieds or ads where there. To my surprise, it was almost 50:50. Well, this means we as citizens are paying approximately Rs. 4 for a NEWS paper from which we expect news and we get only Rs.2 worth of news. Is this why we need these papers? If its for advertisement then why do we have to buy newspapers? Isn't the television enough?

Now, moving on to the quality of these news, that is even more pathetic. Well, lets do a simple analysis:

Take any of these news:

1. Santhosh Madhavan the god man

2. Bob Woolmer the Pakistan Coach's death

3. The Mthoot murder case now

4. The 26/11 Mumbai Blast

or any other equally sensational issue. The news in the paper will be like this, starting from the next day to which the incident occured:

1st day - A half page news with headings in red color, or white color in black background and the heading size almost 2 inches with a big color photo of the subject in the first page

2nd day - A quarter page news having 3 or 4 columns normal size headings and no photo in the first page.

3rd day - An even smaller column with smaller headings in a corner of the first page.

4th day - The same size column but news shifted to second page

5th day - No news about the news. it just vanishes.

Well, i too agree that as new news come, the importance given to the old news have to reduce. But, as they have delivered the news to us, they have a duty to keep us informed. Take the case of Bob Woolmers death, does anyone know what is its state now? Or the death of the CM in the near past. Does anyone know the truth about it? Well, what to say about this scenerio?

Anyway, i feel that the quality of newspapers these days have gone down. We, as readers and subscribers of the same have to demand better news reporting and follow up of news.

Anyway lets hope for the best

Vande Mataram