Evening news is where they begin with ‘Good evening’, and then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.

Dear NL Hafta family:

Let me start with some appreciation, as unless we appreciate Hafta there is no way we’d listen to its hour-long podcast or would bother writing to you.

Presently, NL Hafta is my only source of news headlines from India except from bhakt or anti-bhakt facebook friends (I have categorized my socially conscious desi facebook friends in these two groups). I live in the greater DC area but work in central Virginia. Every weekend I commute about 180 km on the road to and fro to visit my family. During my drive depending on the time of the release of Hafta I play it either on Friday evening or Monday morning. So a very big thank you to the entire NL Hafta team for giving us such a detailed coverage of the weekly major events including thoughtful analysis, puns, arguments and invited guests. Overall your format is absolutely engrossing and rarely boring for a news junky like me.

What I love about Hafta:

More female participants than male: As Kartik is a silent participant in the Hafta, so most of the time Hafta has more female voices than male. Hope India will adopt your model in every single sector. After all, we can re-learn about the strength of women from the Indian female performers at the Olympics. Fun-fact: Not only in India, but also among the US athletes this year women won more medals than men.

Avinandan conducts the Hafta really well: The only AAPtard of NL gives turn to everyone, keeps asking the right questions and doesn’t forget to move to the next topic. His humor is definitely a big plus to the hour-long podcast involving mostly serious topics. In this format, I won’t mind even if it gets longer.

A chat-pata bhel puri mix of different views: Madhu is conservative and jingoistic, Anand is an atheist, Manisha is sort of Centrist, Dipanjana a liberal and Avinandan an ultra-liberal (naxal). I wish to know the view of Kartik as well. However, the most pleasing part is that in spite of the differences of your views and frequent arguments, you all sound to be part of a coherent Newslaundry family.

The invited guests: Almost always they are very knowledgeable with quite a bit of experience in reportage and expertise in their respective fields. It definitely adds value to the show.

Hafta is regular: Rain or shine, whether the participants are on or off, maybe they are on a vacation or over the phone there will be a Hafta. NL never misses it. I cannot say how much I love this particular aspect. At this stage, without NL Hafta for a week, I might get withdrawal responses.

Relevant Links/reference provided: Surely a great addition that adds enormous value post conversation.

Part of Hafta that irks me:

“In fact I have written a piece on it”: If I take a shot every time Anand says this line I’ll get drunk every weekend. It’s time for Anand babu to write more pieces. It’s surely hard work however, he is a kick-ass writer. And by the way is there any concise source to get all those pieces that Ranga uncle has written? We need a piece on that at least.

You pay too much attention to your reader’s grievances: Cursing or eating or making it too long or too short; you seem to be concerned about every single issue taken up by the readers. Do I need to remind you guys that you can never satisfy everyone? So chill and go with the flow. Please eat or curse or make it as long as you want. It’s a free and one of the best news podcasts anyway.

You rarely plug the other shows of NL except the Awful and Awesome:  Surely the Awful and Awesome is truly an awesome weekly entertainment update from these two bong ladies. It has the right portion of info, ignorance and Bengali snobbishness to make an awesome entertaining cocktail. However, what’s wrong with the “why so serious” that you never plug it in Hafta? Good grief that I discovered this NL-show on youtube. It’s the most ballsy show of NL. Sometimes it’s even more hilarious than the Clothesline. So please do plug others, especially for people like me whose main connection to NL is through the Hafta.

What I hate about Hafta:

Avinandan’s brut pledge for subscription: Every time he mentions this while reading NL-Hafta reviews I feel like punching him. However, I don’t want him to stop doing that. One needs to keep appealing for money as there is no other way to sustain independent media. And that’s the only reason I went back to the NL subscription page to find if they have a better payment method now. In past, I have made online payments to NL a couple of times but I was never confident about the mode of international transaction. Recently I found that the PayPal method of payment still sucks. As whatever amount of money or number of months I chose for my subscription, PayPal charged me just a dollar! Hope NL fixes this issue ASAP to make the payment procedure free of such glitches. Bottom-line, in spite of my personal hatred I won’t suggest Avinandan to stop pledging for subscription for one moment. I will also highly recommend NL to open other avenues of fundraising such as by one-time donation through selling merchandise.

My personal suggestions:

US events and politics: With the imminent US election I have noticed more and more discussion in Hafta on US politics. However, as presently none of you live in the US, so I found many of your concepts and ideas about United States to be erroneous and ill-informed. It’s one thing to mispronounce Ryan Lochte (it’s Lokh-te, like Apte or Amte from Marathi surnames, maybe he has a Marathi origin), but it’s completely shocking to know that Nikku ji considers US as the greatest country in the world, just because it has so-called “freedom of speech”! Furthermore, it seemed to me that the NL family is completely unaware of the scores of issues of the United States which deserves worldwide attention. Severe racial injustice, tragic socio-economic conditions among the black community, complete lackluster attitude of the government on environmental issues, Obama’s war, absolutely shattered trust of people on mainstream media and an uprising of non-mainstream media over the last decade are some of these enormously important issues. The last one will actually blow your mind. I wish that NL had someone, maybe like upcoming Nobel laureate Jagdish Bhagbati, to inform its readers about these hugely important issues of United States. But unless you are getting such wise men how about someone like me participating in a discussion to let your audience know the reality of the “greatest country in the world”? If you don’t like “tuccha” folks like me then all I can say quoting Avinandan that “improve your taste”.

I do not know anyone who listens to Arnab Goswami: Neither I nor my acquaintances in India live in a cave but they never watch Newshour. So why do you waste hours and hours discussing a media troll who no one cares about except the elite-trash (the likes of Shoba De or Suhel Seth)? Why don’t you take some time to talk about regional channels as well? Are they so clean that NL cannot wring, string or dry anyone of those? I guess there are quite a lot of multilingual staffs working at NL. Please use them to analyze regional news channels. Maybe outsource or open-source them. It’s high time to expand NL beyond the Arnabosaurs.

Please cover news on the environment and population growth more aggressively: Mainstream media will never cover these issues as they don’t get ad revenue for that. These are two of the direst issues that can and probably will completely ruin us and India will be the first one at the receiving end. These must be on your top priority.

That’s that. I wish the Newslaundry family a wonderful time ahead and thanks once again for all the effort for a better today and tomorrow.

Sujoy Lahiri
Research Scientist
University of Virginia

N.B. 1.  By now, Manisha has probably realized that Ryan Lochte actually lied. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when she innocently asked last week that “but why would he lie”? There are thousands of reports out already trashing him from every corner. But please don’t miss this segment from John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight.

 N.B. 2. Project Jan Gan Man was quite a decent effort. But I felt disheartened after not finding myself in any of those frames. I wanted to show it to my son. Shy! I felt like I wasted quite a while rehearsing, recording and uploading my video, which probably went to the “Trash” of someone’s desktop. Hope this letter doesn’t find itself there as well.

 All is well!

Dear Newslaundry Team

I used to visit newslaundry website very frequently. But I could not get much time, of late, to visit your page. But I did hear a few haftas, and I must say I was very disappointed. You guys have very predictable positions.A person with normal IQ can easily guess what Manisha or Deepanjana would say regarding anything related to BJP or Modi. Same is the case with Abhinandan Sikri when it comes to AAP.

What is more disturbing is that you guys start distorting facts to suit your narration. I heard Deepanjana saying that Zakir Naik has never advocated violence and when Madhu prodded her she said that you can have ruh-afza with the apostates or you can shake hand and do nothing. I am sending you the link, here Zakir Naik is not just advocating violence but he is also supporting it through distorted logic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRl5c-xPVA0

I hope the team would be more nuanced in its views and the opinions expressed would be based on some facts and not on preferences.

Thank you
Ashutosh Anand

Dear Team,

Last week’s hafta was unbelievable. Tides of laughter one after another. I put on the podcast after the Sindhu’s match and expected hafta anything but full comedy entertainment.

There is a scene in Yarana movie of Amitabh Bachchan where he is practising his reading as ‘Zindagi soz baney, saz Na honey paye, aur saz-e-dil jab bhi bazey awaz na honey paye’ and guruji replies, ‘tauba tauba KYA kar rahe ho tum’!!! Is it necessary that Mr. CEO reads all letters? Nevertheless, that Hindi letter was fabulous even while being read by Abhinandan.

Moving on, a legendry punch comes from Anand; ’I have a theory but no way to prove it’. Now it proves that he is doing some clandestine experiments as he is neither active in twitter nor writing much articles. Then suddenly came goodbye of Madhu for Rakhi Tea, followed by subtle remark of Manisha; How Posh!

Towards the end, while discussing Olympics and value of medals, Deepanjana said,’No value to anything’ like at the end everything is perishable. This doesn’t ends here, during the discussion on Patanjali, Manisha comments; Jhooth kyun boliengey wo, log jhooth kyun boltey hain. Felt like words coming from Bhramakumari pravachan and was at peace.

 I had awesome time listening to the podcast though I have no clue of any news which you Sarpanch discussed. But from my observation of last few podcasts I would expect panels to prepare on the subject which you have selected to talk. Respect and huge applause to Madhu who sounds more energetic. Special request to Abhinandan and Anand: please do not discuss AAP issues if guys are not sure. How about writing an open letter to each other? 

Before I say Proost, Deepanjana: last week’s awful and awesome deserves three cheers!!! 

Jyoti

In yet another example of ‘how pedestrian your NFL has become” – Listen to your ‘esteemed’ commentators on Ryan Lochte – story of of US Swimmer who lied about Rio mugging..

Comments were:

1)  Why will he lie?

2)  Brazil police has balls  but what they did to the athlete is wrong…..

3)  Too much modi like….

Now fact was ( by now you must have known it as well..)

Ryan and some other  swimmers had stopped at the store to use the bathroom. Lochte had pulled a metal advertising sign off a wall as the quartet of swimmers urinated behind the gas station, he said, but there was no damage to a bathroom or its door, which was locked. The swimmers were trying to leave in a cab when two security guards ordered them out of a cab and were arrested..

———

This case reminds me of a story at TIMES NOW ( yes same one  you ridicule 20% of your show time).  Last year or probably an year earlier- an “AAP”  female activist decided to play traffic cop and stopped a young motorcyclist for ‘allegedly jumping’ the red light ,  it was later proved that the biker did not jump the light , he had just overshoot it. and had only asked the activist on who she was and why she was stopping him, which led to the altercation….but “TIMES NOW” kept playing it as “road rage- assault on women story”, kept on shaming the boy and his family in public almost 48 hours non stop…. It was only later when an ‘eye witnessed’  decided to speak up and help the guy that real thing came up…

——-

So how do you differentiate. from other channels and anchors?..you are reporting the same  half backed stuff anf were full of ‘yourself’ and passing on value judgements on the story ..

Can you please stop such immature behaviour at News Laundry.?

I don’ t expect a reply- just a general reply on ‘How you are great’!
Regards,
Ritesh