Catering and contributing to the easy visuals craved by numbed attention spans, The Hindu has just unveiled a new 'beta' website. Chhetria Patrakar had long assumed that the folks at the venerable Madras offices would never move away from their archaic site, perhaps out of veneration for a relic of bygone days. With all of the print publications under the wings of the The Hindu Group [sic] already redesigned by a Tampa-based firm called Garcia Media, Mario Garcia, Jr evidently had little else left to do. So what's with the outcry, once the web redesign came at last, about the print-media leviathan falling to a swifter digital media? The clean and intuitive interface makes news newsworthy, even if it shouldn't be (keyword: SRK). Meanwhile, all the minor faults can fall under the excuse of the site's mere beta form – brilliant! Following a string of site makeovers by Rediff, The Times of India, the Hindustan Times and Outlook, the Southasian media web is looking as charming – and user-friendly – as ever.
Meanwhile, a reconstruction of types is taking place in the form of post-war efforts in northern Sri Lanka. Regularly contextualised by Lankan papers as a metaphor of state grandeur and sky-scraping generosity, construction work on a 172-metre-tall transmission tower in Kokavil recently got underway. The Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has funded SLR 150 million of the SLR 400 million project to replace the previous tower, destroyed by the LTTE in 1990. Set to beam television, radio, wireless and cellular services by end year, CP will take this opportunity to suggest a bit of user scepticism, to prevent against any Sensationally Transmitted Diseases.
This region of ours seems to be infested with the virus Very sensacionalis. While CP condemns the banning of ostracised BJP leader Jaswant Singh's book Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence, one cannot help but find Singh's own subsequent comparisons to Rushdie's The Satanic Verses a bit disingenuous. That the book topped the non-fiction bestseller list during the first week of its release only further solidifies the suspicion. Singh may no longer be allowed to brainstorm with the big boys in Shimla, but he's about to gain big bucks and much footage.
And so the Journalist has found itself a new nemesis: the Blogger. So often discounted as a gasbag, a cheap thrill, an opinionated cockroach – there are just too many of them – of the information underworld, the Blogger has now emerged as the champion of honest and investigative reportage. At least in certain instances. An anonymous blogger on pkpolitics.com recently exposed the corrupt activities of three Pakistani journalists – Rauf Klasra, Nazir Naji and Muhammad Malick – documenting their amassment of wealth, often in the form of land bequeathed by the federal government. Repaying the favour in the form of vulgarities, the accused have made wild guesses as to the blogger's identity – he/she hails from the CIA, from the Taliban, and even from Richard Holbrooke! So the whistle blows behind a web of guise.