A reader writes, "TV pe breaking news haaye re mera ghagra haaye," sings Madhuri Dixit (that's the latest item song). How aptly it captures the state of television news today, doesn't it?

Three staffers  of a newspaper in Tripura, Dainik Ganadoot, were killed on Sunday after armed men attacked the paper's office.  According to police, the motorcycle-borne assailants barged into the office  at the Palace Compound at about 3 pm and stabbed a proof reader and a driver on the ground floor before proceeding to the first floor where they stabbed the office manager. As it was Sunday afternoon, only a reporter was present at the office.  He fainted on seeing the assailants stabbing the two men on the ground floor and was left unharmed.  (CNN IBN, PTI)

The editor of the Mail and Guardian in South Africa Nic Dawes is joining the Hindustan Times as 'chief content and editorial officer'. Thats a new designation in the Indian print media universe and probably indicates a multimedia role. People are not going to be called editors any more?

Shortly after Times of India's Medianet initiative became known in 2004, Vir Sanghvi carried an editorial page debate in the Hindustan Times on this unfortunate trend to which several outside commentators contributed. Now HT has decided to go the same way with an initiative called brand promotions.

A story in the Times of India on Delhi University's trendy new foundation courses quotes a college teacher on how some web references do not lend themselves to citations and spells the word cite 'site'. Granted the new generation of reporters is more familiar with the latter word than the former. But what about the copy desk?

The Hindu carried this disclosure, 'This correspondent was in London at the invitation of the company' at the end of a London datelined report on Lumina 925 on May 15, 2013 in its business pages. But the following would have perhaps been more accurate:-- "The correspondent was on a trip sponsored by the company."

Hearing a writ petition challenging the arrest of PUCL leader Jaya Vindhyalaya for allegedly defamatory Facebook posts against Chirala Congress MLA Krishna Mohan and Tamil Nadu governor K Rosaiah, Justices BS Chauhan and Deepak Mishra of the vacation bench of the Supreme Court issued notice to the Andhra Pradesh government and sought compliance of guidelines that an IG, DCP or SP level officer would investigate complaints under Sec 66 (a) of the IT Act.

The Indian Express woke up today to an old story and made it a front page anchor. At least one other newspaper had the same story a year ago, and news magazines thereafter. The Express itself had much the same story back in February 2011.

This NDTV story is shocking....who decides that the parents are "monsters"?  The story mentions that the parents were poor and yet, they go ahead and call them monsters for abandoning a child whose treatment they could probably not afford.

Now scams can be understood better. Amnesty International India, Greenpeace India and Mines, and Minerals and People have set up a Coal Scam   repository which contains information related to allocation and functioning of over 200 coal blocks including company ownership, political links and environmental clearances. Affected people will be asked to directly upload their stories here.

 As they strategise to oppose TRAI's 12-minute per hour cap on advertising on TV, broadcasters are  coming up with a variety of rationales. At a Delhi meet today Jawahar Goel of Zee said that advertising is content and  since TRAI can regulate only carriage not content, it has no locus standi to propose advertising caps. (ORF roundtable)

On May 3 a division bench of the  High Court of Allahabad   upheld the invalidation of the election of Umlesh Yadav, MLA, to Bisauli for inserting  paid news in the  Dainik Jagran and Amar Ujala newspapers and not declaring this in her election expenses. The election commission had disqualified her, and she had appealed the disqualification.