How a media blog is giving English news television channels sleepless nights.

Around the third week of last month, the one question that coursed through Indian news television's vilely efficient, big-bandwidth grapevine was: Is it curtains for ASS and his blog? ASS is the All Seeing Spy and, along with his/her associates, Artemis Zoop and the Watchful Acolyte, run a widely read blog on Indian television news called warfornews. (warfornews. blogspot.com). The blog dishes out gossip, confidential memos, advise and opinion on the internal goings-on in the three biggest Indian television channels - NDTV, CNN-IBN and Times Now - on a daily basis. That there were no new posts for about three days gave further credence to the rumour that it was going under.
The talk was that ASS worked in a newspaper and that his girlfriend, an employee of one of the news channels, who had been his main source of information, had been caught in the act, which in turn had led to curtains for WFN. But on the fourth day, ASS bounced back with this post:

We're dead? We think not. The trio is back tomorrow. We just had some systems rejigged… And oh, Rajdeep (Sardesai), if you're going to spend your money and time taking us on, at least T-A-K-E U-S O-N, brother! You might make a start by looking in the right direction - right under your nose. A mail to you follows shortly. Ha Ha Ha! We'll be sure to drop all the right easter eggs this time.
The sheer draw of this story, besides illustrating WFN's popularity among journalists, is also indicative of the situation media blogs are increasingly putting publications and news channels in.
Started in January this year as new news channels were getting ready to take on reigning champ NDTV, WFN, according to its founders, wanted to get its readers "level on the grandest war to ever be fought between two television news channels" (CNN-IBN, NDTV and later, Times Now).
The two things that set it apart from other Indian media blogs - and there are quite a few around - was its stinging prose and its almost daily posts that ranged from salacious chit-chats to wickedly incisive commentary and at times, entire copies of official letters and confidential emails.
In the six months it has been around, the blog has ruffled the sensitive feathers of both the television and the print media's high and mighty and punctured many a journalist's bloated ego. All of which is not to say it didn't have its weaknesses. At its best, WFN was opinionated; at its worst, it was highly judgmental, got its facts wrong often, and its Comments section was lurid, juvenile stuff - though the last is a reflection of the kind of people journalists are. But to its credit, WFN, whose efforts are bolstered by a wide network of informants in major media houses, did everything in an entertaining manner. And who doesn't like to be entertained?
Dig into their posts on CNN-IBN, NDTV and Times Now

What happened to your f*cking "spirit", Rajdeep?
Rajdeep Sardesai is one of those idealistic but barbarically hypocritical journalists who lives building castles in the air and then trampling through them. If that's not true, then there's no accounting for the breezy, condescending way in which CNN-IBN just rushed through the Navin Chawla story broken yesterday by Times NOW. On the 9PM bulletin, the Chawla issue got a cursory mention… Even Anubha Bhonsle (who is just getting fatter every day) was SMILING when she was talking about the Maharashtra malnutrition story, the cad. Knowing full well that Times NOW's break yesterday of the missing file on Chawla was a truly significant development, what happened to Sardesai's so-called collective spirit of journalism. He believes in the war for news more than we do! Times NOW, we notice, continues to trumpet its exclusives as loudly as the other two channels though we wish they wouldn't - the channel has already become extremely watchable. Even NDTV made it a point to do a proper story on Chawla, but for CNN-IBN, it was obviously too small an issue. Or maybe his army of utterly incompetent Parliament etc reporters just didn't make the mark. Shame on you, Rajdeep...

NDTV's beat shuffle
An e-mail from Barkha Dutt to the NDTV bureau etc. A nice meaty bit of stuff on beat realignments, new shadow reporters, etc. With so little coming out of NDTV (I tell you, it's a pain cultivating the disgruntled), we're grateful for this e-mail reproduced by a benefactor in our comments section, and reproduced here for everyone's benefit! Barkha really is boss now!…
Subject: Beats list
Hi all... this is a list of beats... for the next three months... all beats will be up for review.. in three months.. remember your beats means.. you are accountabel.. on days off... middle of the night.. whenever have fun! thanks
President and Vice President's office: Sandeep Bhushan, Manu Sharma;
PMO and cabinet secretariat, Primary: Rahul Shrivastav and Sunil Prabhu; Political beats, Congress: Primary Rahul Shrivastav, Sunil Prabhu; Secondary: Nidhi Razdan; BJP and RSS, Primary: Divya Malik-Lahiri, Secondary: Randeep Singh Nandal…

Mortified Arnab Pulls Up Sanjay/Mandar For "TV History" Fiasco!
Hoo boy, if this didn't happen, we'd be really concerned about Arnab Goswami's mental health. Here's a quick update from our man at Times, TelGhee: Sanjay Singh and Mandar Parab's knuckles were rapped by Arnab for misleading him and everyone else on the Abu Salem tapes. Get this: TIMES has received a clarification from the Police that the Abu Salem tapes purported to have been acquired by TIMES NOW from Portugal were infact videotaped confessional statements of the ANTI TERRORIST SQUAD which are part of investigations and evidence in trial court. The tapes were leaked by police inspector Dinesh Kadam to Mandar Parab in March but the fact was not disclosed to Arnab (no surprises there). Sanjay and Mandar had requested permission to travel to Dubai, London and Portugal (which is why they were smiling all through their P2Cs) for following some promising leads on the trial of Abu Salem abroad. HR and Finance had objected to the foreign trip and pointed out to use the resources of Times Now partner Reuters in Europe…

In an e-mail interview, ASS, one of the founders of this blog says, "When we started out we did believe that any content we decided to throw at our readers would necessarily be elevated by well-formed writing, not that we're saying we write well, but that by experience, reading cynical yet light prose is one of those things that's getting away from the world. We're no crusaders, but sometimes it's fun to think we're holding onto something."
That "cynical yet light prose" got seriously noticed not just by the number of visitors to the blog, but also from channel heads, who were getting acquainted with the disagreeable sensation of being fodder for news and of seeing their inadequacies and the indiscretions of their employees given the boldface treatment. Most channels have now blocked the blogspot from their computer network. "It doesn't make too much of a difference to us, there are always other ways to access it," says a journalist with a major TV channel.
"When channel heads block us," says ASS, "they're giving us way more importance than we feel we deserve. Us printing internal emails proved that nothing is sacred." He also adds that journalists love to sit in judgement, "but there's very little anyone really knows about their lives. And you'd be amazed at how many people in this country have a direct interest in the infamy that abounds in journalism."
WFN has indeed demonstrated that nothing is sacred anymore as far as organisations and their employees go. Confidential company information, internal gossip, attack on fellow employees -- everything can be laid out in public on a blog. It is the media companies that are at the receiving end of it right now, but there is no doubt that as more and more working people take to the internet on a regular basis, it would spread to every other industry. So you will see telecom industry blogs, oil sector blogs…all talking about mad bosses, messy situations, job opportunities and essentially, opening up hitherto insular worlds to fellow employees, industry competitors and the public in general.
While Mediaah!, that pioneering India media blog, was forced to shut down a couple of years ago following an altercation with a big media group, most bloggers today appear to be aware of the dangers of crossing that nebulous line. "Blogs are," says cyber law expert Pawan Duggal, "nothing but electronic records and are certainly liable to be sued for defamation under the Indian Information Act."
As we go to press, it's been sometime since the last warfornews update. The rumours have started to gather. It's time for the next post.

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