Hi Abhinandhan and team,

Love Hafta for all the engaging discussions on weekly news and fact-based Tippanis. Can’t thank enough on recent election coverage, kudos to the team.

Couple of long suggestions for the Newslaundry business team, please discuss and see if there is merit:

1. I have contributed to a couple of Sena projects which in turn gives me subscriptions, which is awesome. But can we have an option to switch these to sponsored student subscriptions? I am already subscribed until the end of 2023 with my Sena contributions, and I don't see myself stopping to contribute for future projects.

2. For all the reports on your website, can we have a way to tip the reporter? I like how Sena is set up but I think there is value in having retrospective contributions. You can follow the same structure as YouTube with 35 percent (or 50 percent as you are still growing) to the bottomline and 65 percent to the reporter, this will help in retention and quality of reporting. More paid-for reporting is always good. Also, note to not prioritize this segment of revenue in the business, as this can become a perverse way to strive for certain content pieces like clickbait and will go against your mission and vision. So, keep the contributions anonymous to reporters and readers.

Finally, I am a consultant in the business analytics space, so please feel free to add me to your “friends of Newslaundry” list and reach out for any pro bono analytics/ business consulting. Happy to help.

Thanks,

Vara Prasad

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Great work as always, NL team. Dhulai karte rahiye! I wanted to bring up a couple of observations:

Loved Nidhi’s interview with Metroman (Metroclown?). She asked some pointed questions and his responses to them showed his ignorance, naïveté and arrogance about the BJP’s playbook, and politics in general. All his interviews reveal his arrogance – making statements such as “if I lose, it’s Kerala’s loss” (paraphrased) in the Indian Express – and him walking off was icing on the cake.

However, I do have some reservations about Nidhi’s interview with Shailaja Teacher. I felt she was interviewing more as a fan than a journalist. There were so many pointed questions she could have asked with respect to the continuing cases of Covid in Kerala, political violence, the concerns of “Hindus” in the state, and why there is possibly a BJP wave, and so on. I’m sure it’s a continuous learning experience for some of your journalists, so please take this as constructive feedback. I do have to say though that the vile comments that accompanied the tweets on both these videos (BJP troll bots in full flow) were highly unwarranted and crass.

I feel there’s some general ignorance about the role of vaccines in controlling Covid. The vaccine is not going to cure Covid, rather it controls the severity of it. You can contract Covid even with the vaccine, just that the impact and severity of it will be limited compared to those without the vaccine. Thought I’d highlight this, since there was some “surprise” shown at people getting infected after vaccine shots in last week’s Hafta.

Thanks for all your work!

Regards,

Nitin Krishna Menon

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Hafta team,

Please be careful – Anand in particular – with assuming that India's Covid death stats are accurate. India has long struggled with gathering accurate and usable data of any nature and large chunks of this so-called "data" are on a par with garbage.

Deaths and their causes in particular are notable blindspots for the privileged classes who assume that most Indians die in hospitals. Spoiler: they don't. Only some 21 percent of deaths in India are medically certified and, until recently, data was so poor that a death survey was run to determine how many people were dying and to estimate what the cause was. Note the keyword, “estimate”. India doesn't have a good handle on how many are dying and of what.

An anecdote for what it's worth. My uncle died six weeks after testing positive for Covid. Two weeks or so after his Covid diagnosis, he was counted in the "recovered" stats. Four weeks later, pneumonia killed him. His wasn't counted as a Covid death. I am certain you'll find millions more cases like this if you only look.

A word of caution, again for Anand: “More than 65 percent of the total Covid-19 deaths reported in India so far are from just four states, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Delhi. In all these states, the death registration is 100%.” Although this is from September 2020, notably, none of those four states are Uttar Pradesh, or Bihar.

Regards,

Eldrich Rebello

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Dear Mehraj and Jayashree,

On the last Hafta, Abhinandan read out my email congratulating Ayan Sharma for the story and I was amused by the sighs and laughter from Mehraj and Jayashree. Mehraj's "Hey, we do the writing bit, hello" was classic. Wow.

I totally get you, not in an empathetic sense but in real sense. I get my fair share of having to edit dissertations of my students too. 😅

I understand, a lot of skill – language, fact-checking and emotional work – goes into editing any text of any length. I totally appreciate your work. Thanks a lot for your wonderful contribution in providing a crisp and logical content for the readers of Newslaundry.

Mehraj mentioned the antitrust case against Google in 2013. The big bad oligopoly is spreading like an octopus, influencing our lives in so many ways we can't imagine, in practically every sphere of our life.

Thanks Raman sir for recommending 1232 documentary. I had watched it before listening to Hafta and loved it. I was hoping it would be mentioned either on Hafta or A&A.

Jayashree said that in India, we have put together a diverse kind of people as a country. Abhinandan thinks we have cultural similarity of casteism that binds us together. That was interesting. Yes, casteism is divisive, but yes it does make its presence across India. In that sense casteism is unique to India. But I am not sure it keeps us united as India. I always have wondered how come we are a country, a nation, without any common language, so much diversity across states?

What binds us together, according to me, is our colonial past, independence movement and constitutional provisions that have put us all together without compromising our unique regional, linguistic identities. Constitutional provisions/institutions are being undermined today in most innovative ways by setting up narratives which are vague but seemingly important. The time is really dark. Importance of political discussions like Hafta is more than ever before.

It was a pleasure to listen to you all. Thanks everyone at Newslaundry for your real journalism.

Swati Vaidya