Living in US, the only way to access news from back home, is through the various popular Indian websites. Some of the websites that I frequent are Indian Express, Rediff, TOI, Economic Times, NDTV & Hindu. Some of the international websites that I visit regularly are CNN, BBC, NY Times, LA Times, and I can't help noticing the stark differences amongst these websites.The international ones look really professional, and they focus on exhaustive information on the latest developments. Barring NDTV, and to some degree Hindu, I have been thoroughly disappointed with the other Indian websites.
Times Of India believes in attracting its readers through skimpily clad damsels. Mallika Sherawat is featured atleast once a week, and the pictures of International Models perpetually line up their front page. Their front page is not complete without 2 raunchy articles on sex life of some celebrity, with wild headlines screaming, "Britney is animal on bed", or "Ashton not satisfied by Moore" etc. India Times, is more like a soft porn website, which lures people into registering with them just to watch all the skin they have to offer on their website. By the way, I totally forgot to mention the 5-6 different popups that one encounters while navigating through these websites.
Rediff, is only slightly better, as it compensates for lack of sleaze, through its numerous annoying advertisements. The website seems like it was developed by a high school student dabbling with FrontPage for the first time. There are numerous annoying advertisements on matrimony, as if that is the only concern of all Non Resident Indians. Rediff India is only slightly better than Rediff USA. A lot of times the headlines make no sense at all. For eg "Who are the real Dalits of India?", "Sharukh sharif admi hain!" etc. Economic times thinks that the only Indians outside India are software junkies. Their headlines scream, "Techie wife says, she is bored" (I am not creating headlines here, this did appear on one of their issues)
Websites like NDTV, Indian Express seem to have good news coverage and refrain from appealing to the baser instinct of its readers, but again, their websites are not devoid of those cheap flash advertisements and pop-ups. It really surprises me that a nation whose citizens comprise 10% of workforce of Microsoft, and occupy top positions in all highly tauted Silicon valley companies, a nation which probably possesses the best software developers in the world is incapable of having one professional and dedicated news site for its citizens. I might have made a really sweeping statement, but show me one Indian news website which can match BBC, and I shall retract my statement.
On a different note, TOI had the more hits than any other Indian website in 2004 - Is this an indication of what Indians really like to read on web ?
9 comments:
TOI is a tabloid, and whether you believe it or not, their print edition is also inching towards the trash that their website is.
Pop ups annoy me too. Irritating!
But to some extent, I'm trying to understand their business model, and I guess advertisements are a big revenue generator for them. Unlike BBC or CNN which are global and therefore earn higher revenue through telecasts, Indian media is still very much Indian.
As for number of hits, I dont think that has anything with the quality of content. Yes people surf for porn. We all know that already, dont we?
Ooops... sorry for the long comment :)
If ads bother you so much then use Firefox. Install adblock and adblock filterset extensions, use greasemonkey and timespageremover script for ad-free browsing. You dont even have to click 'next' 4-5 times to read a story on TOI, it all comes on one page. Its pretty sweet. If you really don't want any ads then you can use the 'Platypus' extension and edit all annoying content off any page.
@Casablanca....as u said.Probably that Telecast revenue does it for BBC & CNN...
@Mudit...dude u r alive...thats a crash course in spam & spyware protection..I already use Mozilla...will try some other softwares that u have mentioned
totally agree with you on the content and ad quality of indian websites. They drive me nuts. i use firfox too but had no idea abt all those ways to get rid of ads. will ty that sometime...
You can use "My Yahoo" and get RSS feeds from Indian express, TOI, Hindu, India together (or whatever else you want). That way you don't have to go the websites to get the news...you just go to my yahoo. Its pretty easy to configure. "My yahoo" has very little ads and no annoying popups. Almost all indian news papers now have RSS feeds. Actually google has also started the personalized home page thing where you can get RSS feeds from anywhere. I tried that but its not as good as my yahoo which offers a lot of content.
I think hindustantimes.com is pretty good. TOI sucks bigtime I think they have exculsive blogs dedicated to informing ppl abt how much its sux like toisucks.blogspot.com or something. The ad block thing on mozilla is a piece of genius blocks up all external ads on the news pages.
@M...Let me try some softwares, and then I can recommend it to u...
@Transmogrifier.....Hmmm, I should check this My Yahoo thing
@Rohan...I dont read HindustanTimes....Is it part of the Times grp ?(TOI, IndiaTimes etc...)
hmm..intersting discussion.mudit showcasing his trivia skills :).. pointy with his vague pointers.Pretty cool!i don't read much news.just a few blogs. and rediff.com, cricinfo.com
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