#MediaMoves

Congrats Sana Salam who joins Times City, Noida as National Copy Editor. Having had stints at media houses like India Today Group, Infomedia18 Ltd. and Skribe – a media services start-up, she has also contributed to Forbes Life, Better Interiors, Harper’s Bazaar and Prevention as a freelance writer. This Delhi based whimsy journalist can be reached at @probablykutty. Tech Journalist, Tresa Nair joins CIOReview India, an IT B2B magazine as an Assistant Editor, Bangalore Bureau. Earlier she has worked for tech SiliconIndia, a Computing and Technology magazine.

A League of Their Own

Perform Group’s football news site Goal.com and Times Internet announced a strategic partnership to create a unique blend of local and international football coverage worldwide. A win-win situation for both, Times Internet will have exclusive rights to the content published by Goal in India while reinforcing Goal’s status as the leading global and regional football site. The Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) will be releasing their much awaited television rating data today. TV channels subscribed to BARC are calling it the D-Day, as they eagerly wait for entertainment ratings that will determine who gets to entertain the advertisers with big bucks.

Big Gains on CX

Big FM bags ten awards including Most Admired Customer Engaging Radio Station title, at Asian Customer Engagement Forum and Awards (ACEF) in Mumbai on 25 April. ACEF Awards recognizes excellence in the field of customer engagement campaigns across Asia. If Finance Minister Arun Jaitley makes good on his intention to increase the FDI cap for media sector “it (media) will be an interesting space to watch out for”- remarks Mehraboon Irani, Capital Market Expert and Head of Nirmal Bang Securities in a chat with ET Now. Last couple of years Indian media market has seen a lot of international media investment opportunities come to fruition.

Setting Record Straight

Weeks after Google was accused of breaking anti-trust rules by the European Union, the company in partnership with eight top European publications including The Guardian and The Financial Times has announced the launch of Digital News Initiative. The programme worth 150 million euros is supposed to support and fund online journalism intended to benefit the news industry. Defending India at a global forum during the 6th annual Women in the World Summit, Barkha Dutt snapped at a reporter for saying India is “very unsafe for women”. She called her out on UK statistics having more number of sexual assault cases than India.

#MediaMoves

Shraddha Uchil joins World Wide Media owned Lonely Planet, a travel guide website as a Senior Features Writer. This Mumbai based journalist & blogger of “Just another Scribe” has earlier worked with BBC Good Food magazine and DNA newspaper and can be reached at @HrRoyalTininess. Azaan Javaid joins DNA newspaper as crime and political affairs correspondent. His stints include dailies like Deccan Herald, The Statesman and The Caravan – a news & current affairs magazine. Delhi based Azaan can be reached at @AzaanJavaid.

Make Over

Starting yesterday The Indian Express daily underwent a complete revamp in its form and content. Aiming to cover news in-depth, this English daily has introduced set of exciting new pages – Investigation Explained, The Ideas Page, Governance, The Urban, India Invisible, The Conflict Zone, Building India and The Way We Work & The Way We Live. Scroll.in wins the Start-up of the Year award at the Mumbai Press Club Red Ink Awards 2015 with Sreenivasan Jain earning the ‘Journalist of the Year’ award for his consistent investigative reporting for popular NDTV series ‘Truth versus Hype’ and Dr. Prannoy Roy (Founder,NDTV) bagging the lifetime achievement award for excellence in Journalism. 25 other journalists including Arnab Goswami of Times Now will also be awarded in 10 categories in an official award in ceremony scheduled for 30th of April at Jamshed Baba Theatre, Mumbai.

New Media Calling

No longer happy to be a photo sharing tool, Snapchat ropes in CNN’s star journalist Peter Hamby as News Business Head for Discover, its newly launched news aggregator that syndicates content from outlets like CNN, ESPN & Vice. Just another example of how journalists are increasingly attracted towards hot shot start-ups, ditching conventional media setups to be part of new media. Calling out HT on missing a trick, TOI sent out a mailer to advertisers that read “Issued in Advertisers’ Interests- Your ads go missing again in HT”. It also enlists the ads that were to be published in HT but weren’t – recommending advertisers to send out a search party of their missing ads! If that wasn’t all, it has also come up with a list of advertisers who haven’t been advertising with HT. Way too much hard selling??

Glocalization

Facebook rolls out a donation feature from where people can directly contribute to International Medical Corps efforts for earthquake-hit Nepal. Facebook will match every dollar donated up to $2 million which will be distributed to local relief. Feels good when you fight for the right, doesn’t it? Just wait till you hear this. TRAI has managed to divulge more than a million email ids of people who mailed the telecom regulator in support of net neutrality all over the internet. Congratulations! You are a ripe pick for spammers this season. Incidentally, to get back at TRAI some very angry and capable hackers attacked the site and rendered it unresponsive for a day.

#MediaMoves

Mahalakshmi Prabhakaran has joined The Times of India as Principal Correspondent of Bengaluru Bureau. Previously a marketing professional, Journalist Prabhakaran has been in the field for half a decade and has worked with Bangalore based dailies like DNA (national) and Bangalore Mirror (regional). Sub Editor Shekhar Tripathi from Amar Ujala joins Navbharat Times as a Senior Sub Editor. This Kanpur based journalist is an avid blogger and can be reached at @AuShekhar.

CNN for C-Level

Market Research firm IPSOS Affluent deems CNN IBN the #1 international news brand in India & Asia Pacific in a recently done survey. The most watched news channel with 47% more viewers each month (than the next placed news channel) also has 125% more viewers than the leading business & finance news channel. Even in the digital space, CNN’s monthly reach is 51% higher than the next largest. CNN is definitely the favourite of C-level execs with 80% viewership share.