The Times of India

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The Times of India
The times of india.svg
260px
20 August 2013 front page of the Kolkata edition of The Times of India
Type Daily newspaper
Format Broadsheet
Owner(s) The Times Group
Editor-in-chief Jaideep Bose
Founded 3 November 1838
Language English
Headquarters Mumbai
Circulation 3,321,702 Daily[1] (as of December 2013)
Sister newspapers The Economic Times
Navbharat Times
Maharashtra Times
Ei Samay
OCLC number 23379369
Website timesofindia.indiatimes.com

The Times of India (TOI) is an Indian English-language daily newspaper. It is the third-largest newspaper in India by circulation and largest selling English-language daily in the world according to Audit Bureau of Circulations (India).[1][2] According to the Indian Readership Survey (IRS) 2012, the Times of India is the most widely read English newspaper in India with a readership of 7.643 million. This ranks the Times of India as the top English daily in India by readership.[3]

It is owned and published by Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. which is owned by the Sahu Jain family. In the Brand Trust Report 2012, Times of India was ranked 88th among India's most trusted brands and subsequently, according to the Brand Trust Report 2013, Times of India was ranked 100th among India's most trusted brands. In 2014 however, Times of India was ranked 174th among India's most trusted brands according to the Brand Trust Report 2014, a study conducted by Trust Research Advisory.[4][5]

History

Times of India Buildings, ca. 1898

Beginnings

The Times of India issued its first edition 3 November 1838 as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce.[6][7] The paper published Wednesdays and Saturdays under the direction of Raobahadur Narayan Dinanath Velkar, a Maharashtrian Reformist, and contained news from Britain and the world, as well as the Indian Subcontinent. In 1850, it began to publish daily editions.

In 1860, editor Robert Knight (1825–1892) bought the Indian shareholders interests, merged with rival Bombay Standard, and started India's first news agency. It wired Times dispatches to papers across the country and became the Indian agent for Reuters news service. In 1861, he changed the name from the Bombay Times and Standard to The Times of India. Knight fought for a press free of prior restraint or intimidation, frequently resisting the attempts by governments, business interests, and cultural spokesmen and led the paper to national prominence.[8] In the 19th century, this newspaper company employed more than 800 people and had a sizeable circulation in India and Europe.

Bennett & Coleman Ownership

Subsequently, The Times of India saw its ownership change several times until 1892, when Thomas Bennett and Frank Morris Coleman, who drowned in the 1915 sinking of the SS Persia, acquired the newspaper through their new company, Bennet, Coleman & Co. Ltd.

Dalmiya Ownership

In 1946, they(who)sold the company to sugar magnate Ramkrishna Dalmia, of the then-famous industrial family, Dalmiyas, for Rs 20 million.In 1955 Vivian Bose Commission of Inquiry found that Ramkrishna Dalmia in 1947 had engineered the acquisition of the media giant Bennett, Coleman by transferring monies from a bank and an insurance company of which he was the Chairman. In the court case that followed, Ramkrishna Dalmia was sentenced to two years in Tihar Jail on charges of Dalmia was prosecuted for embezzlement and fraud.[9]

But for most of the jail term he managed to spend in hospital. Upon his release his son-in-law Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain to whom he had entrusted running of Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. rebuffed his efforts to resume command of the company.[9][10]

Jain family (Shanti Prasad Jain)

In the early 1960s, Shanti Prasad Jain was imprisoned on charges of selling newsprint on the black market.[11][12] And based on the Vivian Bose Commission's earlier report which found wrongdoings of the Dalmia - Jain group, that included specific charges against Shanti Prasad Jain, the Government of India filed a petition to restrain and remove the management of Bennett, Coleman and company. Based on the pleading, Justice directed the Government to assume control of the newspaper which resulted in replacing half of the directors and appointing a Bombay (now Mumbai) High Court judge as the Chairman.

Under Government of India

Following the Vivian Bose Commission report indicating serious wrongdoings of the Dalmia - Jain group, on 28, August 1969, the Bombay High Court under Justice J.L.Nain passed an interim order to disband the existing board of Bennett Coleman and a new board under Government be constituted. The bench ruled that “Under these circumstances,the best thing would be to pass such orders on the assumption that the allegations made by the petitioners that the affairs of the company were being conducted in a manner prejudicial to public interest and to the interests of the Company are correct”. [13] Following that order Shanti Prasad Jain ceased to be a director and the company ran with new directors on board appointed by the Government of India, barring a lone stenographer of Jains. Curiously, the court appointed, D K Kunte as Chairman of the Board. While a freedom fighter and a man of impeccable integrity, Kunte had no prior business experience and was also an Opposition member of the Lok Sabha.

Back to Jain Family

In 1976, during the emergency in India, the government transferred ownership of the newspaper back to Ashok Kumar Jain (Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain's son and Ramkrishna Dalmia's grandson and the father of Samir Jain and Vineet Jain).[14] The Jains too often landed themselves in various money laundering scams and Ashok Kumar Jain has to flee the country when the Enforcement Directorate pursued his case strongly in 1998 for alleged violations of illegal transfer of funds to a tune of US$1.25 million to an overseas account in Switzerland.[15][16][17][18]

Editions and publications

TOI's first office is opposite the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in Mumbai where it was founded.[7]

The Times of India is published by the media group Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. The company, along with its other group companies, known as The Times Group, also publishes Ahmedabad Mirror; Bangalore Mirror; Bangalore Times, Delhi Times; The Economic Times; Ei Samay, (a Bengali daily); the Maharashtra Times, (a Marathi-language daily broadsheet); Mumbai Mirror; the Navbharat Times, (a Hindi-language daily broadsheet); and Pune Mirror.

The Times of India has its markets in major cities such as Mumbai,[19] Ahmedabad, Aurangabad, Bangalore, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Calicut, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kolhapur, Kolkata, Madurai, Patna, Puducherry, Pune, Kochi, Lucknow, Nagpur, Nashik, Panaji, Mysore, Hubli, Mangalore, Raipur, Ranchi, Surat, Trichy, Trivandrum, Varanasi , Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam.[citation needed]

Editorial controversies

  • On 26 June 1975, the day after India declared a state of emergency, the Bombay edition of The Times of India carried an entry in its obituary column that read "D.E.M O'Cracy beloved husband of T.Ruth, father of L.I.Bertie, brother of Faith, Hope and Justica expired on 26 June".[20] The move was a critique of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's 21-month state of emergency, which is now widely known as "the Emergency" and seen by many as a roundly authoritarian era of Indian government.[21][22]

Times Group Network

  • Zigwheels: A website focused on cars, including reviews, road tests, and other special features.
  • Speaking Tree: A spiritual network intended to allow spiritual seekers to link spiritual seekers with established practitioners.
  • Healthmeup: A health, diet, and fitness website.
  • Cricbuzz: In Nov 2014, Times Internet Acquired Cricbuzz website. A website focused on cricket live updated, news etc.

Notable employees

Recent updates

In late 2006, Times Group acquired Vijayanand Printers Limited (VPL). VPL previously published two Kannada newspapers, Vijay Karnataka and Usha Kiran, and an English daily, Vijay Times. Vijay Karnataka was the leader in the Kannada newspaper segment then.[23]

The paper launched a Chennai edition, 12 April 2008.[24] It launched a Kolhapur edition, February 2013.

References

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  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Auletta. Page 55.
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Further reading

  • Auletta, Ken: "Citizens Jain – Why India's Newspaper Industry is Thriving". The New Yorker, 8 October 2012, Pages 52 to 61.
  • Hirschmann, Edwin. "An Editor Speaks for the Natives: Robert Knight in 19th Century India," Journalism Quarterly (1986) 63#2 pp. 260–267
  • Merrill, John C. and Harold A. Fisher. The world's great dailies: profiles of fifty newspapers (1980) pp. 330–33

External links

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