Hey Guys,

I want to start by saying that I am a big fan of Hafta and Newslaundry. I have been following news laundry since 2014 and turned subscriber last year. I hope you guys continue to do the good work. In the past, I was quite impressed by the work of Democracy Now (its a news organization which works on a similar model as NewsLaundry). But, over time it started doing less and less ground stories and instead switched to stories done by other new media organizations and opinion pieces. I hope NewsLaundry doesn’t head in that direction.

Hafta

The hafta special on Ambedkar was quite amazing. I read Castes of India and Waiting for a Visa and both really gave me a lot more insight on Ambedkar. I would highly recommend watching Ravish Kumar’s show on Bhim Geet.

I know I may be in minority but I really like Abhinandan’s jokes :).

I feel like there is a lot of focus on Times Now debates and a lot of Arnab bashing. There are good shows on TV like Ravish Kumar’s Prime Time and Srinivasan Jain’s Truth v/s Hype. Can we have more discussion about the good shows as well?

News laundry

I would like to know when will Ranga Nichod be resumed? I really like Anand’s views on various topics.

I really like the fact that you guys are thinking out of the box with efforts like Rashtraman, collaborations with Indiaspend, Boomlive, Factly & Clothesline.

Is there any plan to start news coverage in entertainment and sports section? The journalistic coverage for both these sections in other newspapers, TV channels, new age media is either pandering to the celebrities in the respective fields or is restricted to panel discussions.

I look forward to the policy podcast.

Thanks,

Akshay Sheth

Subscriber

Hi Newslaundry,

I’m a huge fan of Newslaundry. I wait for the NL HAFTA every week. Although I miss Dhobhi Ghat and Cleaners.

I love hafta and I feel its very important for young people because it not only brings them up to date with news but also puts it in context. Many young folks don’t follow news because they read news paper and fail to understand it because they don’t know anything else about the matter and don’t understand why its important. Putting it in context –  like talking previous rulings on similar cases, history of the law for example. – makes them more informed. I say this because most of my friends don’t follow news. Their main news source is Memes and FB shares. And mostly it is a piece of news which can be made into a thug life video.

I agree that Newslaundry revenue model is better than the mainstream media model but I don’t think that its the best. Just to play a devils advocate here, consider this hypothetical situation. Tomorrow lakhs of BJP supporters subscribe to NL and you, in order to maintain their subscription, started being bigots. Although I believe you wouldn’t do that. But this system has the mentioned flaw, And so does democracy.

I feel this model is second best to an idea Jaggi once mentioned somewhere that true journalist will come out some privately funded philanthropical University with objective of public good. I hope something like this happens in India.

But all that aside I really admire the work you do. Keep it up.

And before Abhinandan says anything i want to tell you that i am a subscriber.

About the gift.  I am a Web Developer and would like to help you make Newlaundry website better. For Free. Thats my gift. Sorry if you were hoping for an audio recording system 😛

Regards,
Praveen Sanap

NL Hafta Team,

My name is Abhijit Patwa,and I am a fifth-year undergraduate student at Iowa State University studying Mechanical Engineering and Political Science. I have been an avid listener of the Hafta and find the conversations stimulating. While I don’t have comments on any single news story discussed this past week, I do have a few comments on what was talked about.

One of the things that surprised me most from this past week’s Hafta was Ms. Trehan’s admission that she admires Arnab Goswami because he has introduced a new “genre” of reporting to Indian journalism. While I realize that as a twenty-something year old with no background in journalism, my opinions are perhaps slightly banal and idealistic, I find Goswami’s tradecraft anything but admiration worthy. Goswami has introduced, or rather main streamed, a new genre of reporting: he’s gone from news gathering to news making, and that has a dangerous prospect.

Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post reporter that uncovered the Watergate Scandal, once said, “I think all good reporting is the same thing – the best attainable version of the truth.” My understanding of news and journalism is rooted in perhaps what it first promised; when the first American Newspaper, Benjamin Harris’ Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, first appeared in Boston on September 25, 1690, it promised to furnish news regularly one a month. But, the editor explained, it might appear oftener “if any Glut of Occurrences happen.” The responsibility for making 1 news was entirely God’s (or the Devil’s, I suppose). The newsman’s task was only to give “an Account of such considerable things as have arrived onto our notice.”²

While the theology behind this way of looking at events disappeared, the view lasted longer. In his account of James Gordon Bennett, founder of the New York Herald, the Victorian historian James Parton wrote in 1866, “The skilled journalist, recording with exactness and power the thing that has come to pass, is Providence addressing men.”3 Of course with the advent of broadcast journalism and 24-hour newscycles, that view seems antiquated. The current attitude seems better explained by Arthur McEwen, the first editor of San Francisco Examiner, who defined news as “Anything that makes the reader go, ‘Gee whiz!’.”

In fact, Daniel Boorstin, in his stimulating book, The Image, argued precisely this: Journalism has changed from recording events in order to increase understanding and awareness to manufacturing them to increase excitement. Boorstin contended that people have come to expect more drama and innovation from the world than was actually there, and that this led to the creation of what he termed “pseudo events.”

While Goswami is certainly not the first, or the only journalist to do this, he has made the practice commonplace. The following passage from Boorstin’s book is rather befitting : “Nowadays a successful reporter must be the midwife- or more often the conceiver- of his news. By the interview technique he incites a public figure to make statements which sound like news.” The spectacle constituted by such news reporting continuously constructs and reconstructs social problems, crises, enemies, and leaders and so creates a succession of threats and reassurances. These constructed problems furnish the content of political journalism and the data for historical and analytic political discourse and studies. These entities that are most influential upon public consciousness and action, then, are fetishes: creations of observers that then dominate and mystify their creators.

The other brief comment that I’d like to make is about the American Presidential Election campaign, and the rise of Trump. Up until Ms. Trehan’s piece a few weeks ago, I found the talk on Hafta about this rather un-nuanced and banal. I was glad to hear the Sullivan piece and the Lofgren response finally discussed, and some well-informed engagement.

I do have a few recommendation for books, pieces, and a new podcast, should it interest any of you:

• ARTICLE: I Know Why Poor Whites Chant Trump, Trump, Trump
• PODCAST: Revisionist History  (While no episode has come out yet, it sounds interesting and something to look forward to.)
• BOOK: Why the Right Went Wrong: Conservatism–From Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond by E.J. Dionne . Thank you for engaging [i]with your listeners, and keep fighting the good fight!

1.  http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/amerbegin/power/text5/PublickOccurrences.pdf
2. Ibid.
3. James Parton, “Famous Americans in Recent Time,” Making of America, p.