When journalists make a business case for why their rival newspaper is also a must-read
Raju Narisetti -
Tuesday, December 09, 2008 9:40 AM
It is not unusual in New Delhi to get marketing pitches for why The Times of India or Hindustan Times are the essential morning reads. I don't know what the overlap of readership is between both papers but each one does try to say they are the must read and not the other.
What is interesting to me is how journalists and editors at both papers seem to be doing their best to convince Delhi's readers that they actually can't do without both papers. Both newspapers of 9 December are a good example of what I mean. Both are full of stories on Indian state assembly results where the Congress party won three states while the Bharatiya Janata Party retained Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Let's look at how both papers wrote about what actually happened in Madhya Pradesh in terms of the Congress party losing:
The Hindustan Times story by NK Singh is headlined Development plank, Cong did it for BJP. The Times of India story, by Team TOI, is headlined Infighting to blame for Cong debacle. So far, so good. But it quickly gets rather interesting for the reader.
Here is HT's Singh on what happened, laying the blame squarely on Suresh Pachouri of the Congress:
“Another factor behind the BJP victory was the Congress party itself. It looked as if the party was determined to lose. And the person most responsible for it was probably the state unit chief himself, Suresh Pachouri, a former union minister, who was sent to Madhya Pradesh last February. He proved to be a disastrous choice. Pachouri has never won a single general election in his life; in fact, he lost the only election he ever contested. He runs his politics, Rajya Sabha style, whose member he has been for the last quarter century.Till February the general atmosphere in MP was that the Congress was coming back to power. That started changing almost immediately. The Congress remained a divided house till the time it went to polls. In fact it could never put its act together. Probably for the first time in Madhya Pradesh, only one leader, Pachouri, got a larger than life projection in the official campaign of the State Congress. This was, of course, done at the cost of other charismatic regional leaders such as Jyotriditya Scindia, Kamal Nath, Digvijay Singh and Arjun Singh. Many Congressmen, used to working under a collective leadership at election time, found it hard to swallow. The acute groupism resulted in complaints of favouritism in ticket distribution, leading to large-scale revolt, including that of regional satraps like Mukesh Nayak, Mahavir Prasad Vashishth and Balendu Shukla. It cost the party a number of seats.” (Read full story here)
Here is Team TOI on what happened, seemingly blaming everyone but Suresh Pachouri for the debacle:
"To begin with, it doesn't need an exhaustive analysis that Pachauri is promising to figure out why Congress lost MP; the party was routed because of factional fights between at least four "serious" chief ministerial candidates. Thus, hurt and angry, Pachauri sat alone in the party headquarters, flanked by a handful of loyalists. Ever since he was sent by Congress president Sonia Gandhi as MPCC chief, Pachauri had been waging a lonely battle.
So let there be no doubt: Pachauri's rivals — Union ministers Kamal Nath, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Arjun Singh, and AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh — queered the pitch for him. Nothing could bring them on a single dais with Pachauri. On the contrary, Kamal Nath tried to prove his acceptability to all factions and even organized a party workers' convention in Chhindwara in August. While Digvijay accepted him as "the leader", other factions looked away. Jyotiraditya repeatedly said that just because all leaders had gathered in Chhindwara did not mean Kamal Nath was Congress's CM candidate.
A week before the state went to polls, Congress released its election manifesto pledging wheat at Rs 1 per kg and sops for farmers, free salt to tribals and free dhotis and sarees. When the manifesto was released by Union defence minister Pranab Mukherjee, none of Pachauri's four rivals were on stage. In fact, soon after the release function, Kamal Nath told reporters that "another manifesto" would be announced with more sops! Digvijay campaigned for his supporters, Kamal Nath for his, Scindia for his 'durbaris'. And though all stalwarts squabbled bitterly over the CM's chair, none contested the assembly elections himself — not even Pachauri. With top leaders refusing to contest, the second rung was left rudderless." (Read full story here)
So was Pachauri a lonely, tragic victim undone by Congress rivals (Times of India) or was he the cause of the disaster by keeping his Congress rivals out of the limelight (Hindustan Times)? Or are the facts somewhere inbetween? Incidentally, for two rather opinionated stories, neither one of them is labeled as opinion or analysis.
This Romantic Realist thinks that perhaps instead of going at each other with massive marketing campaigns, a smarter strategy might be to convince readers to buy both papers--if nothing else to get to the bottom of stories?
ps: by way of full disclosure, Mint is published by HT Media Ltd, which also publishes Hindustan Times.