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Mind your language: The Hindustan Times
New Delhi, Mar 06: It looks like the Navbharat Times. It reads like the Navbharat Times. And yes, it is a Hindi paper. Why then does the masthead say
New Delhi, Mar 06: It looks like the Navbharat Times. It reads like the Navbharat Times. And yes, it is a Hindi paper. Why then does the masthead say "The Times of India"?
Welcome to the latest attempt to diddle the readership surveys.
The Times group has now decided that some editions of the Navbharat Times will carry the Times of India logo and masthead. The content will remain the same — only the name will change.
Is there a logic to passing off a Hindi newspaper as an English paper from the same group?
Yes, there is. If your target is the readership surveys, that is.
Readers of the Times of India will be familiar with the current litigation over the National Readership Survey because the controversy has featured in every section of that paper — from the front page to Sacred Space to Speaking Tree to Talking Hedge — at interminable length, day after day.
Readers of the HT may be less familiar with the details, but broadly the controversy rests on the methodology of readership surveys. Surveyors usually show various newspaper mastheads to a small sample of readers and ask if they have read any of the papers in question.
Like all opinion polls, sometimes the surveys get it right and sometimes they make mistakes (the subject of the current litigation). But even when they do get it right, they can’t measure how many copies are actually sold. If an English paper dumps free copies in say Hindi newspaper households, these will still show up in readership surveys even though nobody may read them.
But now there’s a new twist. When Navbharat Times readers are shown copies of the Times of India masthead, they will claim that they get this paper at home — even though the paper they actually get is entirely different from the Times of India.
If newspapers are prepared to go so far to diddle readership surveys, then don’t all such surveys lose their credibility in the process?
Welcome to the latest attempt to diddle the readership surveys.
The Times group has now decided that some editions of the Navbharat Times will carry the Times of India logo and masthead. The content will remain the same — only the name will change.
Is there a logic to passing off a Hindi newspaper as an English paper from the same group?
Yes, there is. If your target is the readership surveys, that is.
Readers of the Times of India will be familiar with the current litigation over the National Readership Survey because the controversy has featured in every section of that paper — from the front page to Sacred Space to Speaking Tree to Talking Hedge — at interminable length, day after day.
Readers of the HT may be less familiar with the details, but broadly the controversy rests on the methodology of readership surveys. Surveyors usually show various newspaper mastheads to a small sample of readers and ask if they have read any of the papers in question.
Like all opinion polls, sometimes the surveys get it right and sometimes they make mistakes (the subject of the current litigation). But even when they do get it right, they can’t measure how many copies are actually sold. If an English paper dumps free copies in say Hindi newspaper households, these will still show up in readership surveys even though nobody may read them.
But now there’s a new twist. When Navbharat Times readers are shown copies of the Times of India masthead, they will claim that they get this paper at home — even though the paper they actually get is entirely different from the Times of India.
If newspapers are prepared to go so far to diddle readership surveys, then don’t all such surveys lose their credibility in the process?