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
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:

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
Hindu TOI
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 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
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.

 ”