The TOI story : how a newspaper changed the rules of the game

The Times Group transformed the mediascape in the 1980s and '90s. The TOI Story is about the Times of India Group, its journey during the early 1980s and '90s. During this decade, it reinvented itself from a staid, conservative, low-profit group running multiple publications and journals, to a market-focused, lean, innovative and profitable group, driven by only a handful of brands. While the driving initiatives sparked numerous controversies within and outside the group, eventually the Times Group helped redefine the media space in the country, expand readership, transform content and advertising. It persuaded publishers to see newspapers as a profitable business rather than a lever for political influence. At the centre of this transformation was Samir Jain, the youthful, maverick, visionary, reclusive owner of the group, blending spiritual values in his personal life with audacious commercial ambitions and courage and an uncanny sense of how the world around him was changing. Commercially, Samir Jain was the best thing that could have happened to The Times of India. But he destroyed an institution and made it a great big factory PRITISH NANDY The newspaper industry in India was once organized around unstated but fairly rigid regulations. Until the 1980s, when Bennett, Coleman and Company Limited, owners of The Times of India, The Economic Times and other publications, rewrote the rules whether they were about pricing, advertorials or editorial freedom. Over the next two decades, the Indian newspaper industry found itself utterly transformed. In 1985, The Times of India had three editions with a circulation of a little over 5.6 lakhs. By March 2012, it had become the largestselling English daily in the country, with fourteen editions and a circulation of over 45 lakhs. As it grew, the newspaper ended up reinventing the rules of reportage, editorial policies and marketing initiatives for the entire industry. Yet, very little is known about how the Times Group changed the dynamics of the Indian media business. Sangita Malhan, a former journalist with The Times of India, set out to remedy this. She began by interviewing the journalists and corporate honchos who had played crucial roles in the transformation of the paper. What she has unearthed is a fascinating story of clashing egos, changing visions and corporate makeovers. A must-read for industry insiders as well as all those who are interested in the way news is produced and consumed in India.