One of my early morning rituals is to go through newspapers from various regions like a lot of other people, I usually start from reading up e-news from the region where I am staying currently. By the time I reach our sweet Indian newspapers I get annoyed when I find the main headlines as “Obama cancels Agra Visit”, as much as we do like Obama, we don’t really want to be bothered about his iternary, what would be interesting to read is, if he does visit India, what was the outcome? Any bilateral treaties being signed? Or any change in the Visa laws 🙂 On the other hand, if you check out UK or US e-newspapers, you will come across main headlines as something related to terrorism or of national importance.
I would not like to jump and blame Indian journalists immediately for publishing such news as main headlines, they of course would cater to news based on public demand, they have to maintain their readership stats, they are profit houses. It is sad to notice how massive Indian population just wants to read about gossips and treat newspapers as pure entertainment channel rather than using it to get more awareness about their surroundings.
Though journalists are known to drive public interest, wish they would take a little more initiative. Everyone likes entertaining and gossipy journalist pieces but they should be there in the right column or should start appearing from middle of the page, not the main headlines.
-D