Post-liberalisation India has witnessed a dramatic growth of the television industry as well as on-screen images of the glitz and glamour of a vibrant, ‘shining’ India. Through a detailed ethnographic study of Star News and Star Ananda involving interviews, observations and content analysis, this book explores the milieu of 24-hour private news channels in India today. It offers insightful glimpses into the workings of one of the mightiest news corporations in the world and its ability to manufacture everyday reality for its audiences. Based on fieldwork in Mumbai and Kolkata, this study not only provides a detailed description of the television newsroom, its rituals and rhythms, but ventures beyond it to investigate how editorial and corporate strategies converge increasingly in an industry driven by profit. Through analysing how TRPs work to produce a non-inclusive idea of the ‘audience’ and examining hundreds of hours of news content, the book explores how news channels construct a vision of nationhood and of a successful and vibrant economy that caters primarily to the needs of the resurgent Indian middle class. While it will be of particular interest to media and cultural studies scholars and students, and to journalists and media professionals in general, this lively, engaging book also aims to give the general reader the wherewithal to analyse and critique the continuous barrage of 24-hour news television today.

Shortlisted for the 2022 George A. and Jeanne S. DeLong Book History Book Prize presented by the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing Winner of the 2021 Robert and Vineta Colby Scholarly Book Prize presented by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals In Empire News, Priti Joshi examines the neglected archive of English-language newspapers from India to unpack the maintenance and tensions of empire. Focusing on the period between 1845 and 1860, she analyzes circulation—of newspapers and news, of peoples and ideas—and newspapers' coverage and management of crises. The book explores three moments of colonial crisis. The sensational trial of East India Company vs. Jyoti Prasad in Agra in 1851 as the Kohinoor diamond is exhibited in London's Hyde Park is a case lost but for colonial newspapers. In these accounts, the trial raises the specter of Warren Hastings and the costs of empire. The Uprising of 1857 was a geopolitical crisis, but for the Indian news media it was a story simultaneously of circulation and blockage, of contraction and expansion, of colonial media confronting its limits and innovating. Finally, Joshi traces circuits of exchange between Britain and India and across media platforms, including Dickens's Household Words, where the empire's mofussil (margin) appears in an unrecognized guise during and after the Uprising. By attending to these fascinating accounts in the Anglo-Indian press, Joshi illuminates the circulation and reproduction of colonial narratives and informs our understanding of the functioning of empire.

In the decades following India's opening to foreign capital, the city of Bangalore emerged, quite unexpectedly, as the outsourcing hub for the global technology industry and the aspirational global city of liberalizing India. Through an ethnography of English and Kannada print news media in Bangalore, this ambitious and innovative new study reveals how the expanding private news culture played a critical role in shaping urban transformation in India, when the allegedly public profession of journalism became both an object and agent of global urbanization. Building on extensive fieldwork carried out with the Times of India group, the largest media house in India, between 2008 and 2012, Sahana Udupa argues that the class project of the 'global city' news discourse came into striking conflict with the cultural logics of regional language and caste practices. Advancing new theoretical concepts, Making News in Global India takes arguments in media scholarship beyond the dichotomy of public good and private accumulation.

In the year 2000, when the World Wide Web was only ten years old and words like 'Google' or 'blog' were still unknown, India's print media was the dominant source of news. Its unending stream of depressing news made many feel India was a country without a future. That scenario troubled a man as he kept pondering. If India was as terrible as the media made it out to be, how has it endured these thousands of years? Surely there are a great many who are doing the good work despite all obstacles that we merely complain about? Who are they and what good work are they doing? What or who made them dedicate themselves to their work? Driven by these questions, that man, D.V, Sridharan, then fifty-eight years old, decided to go out, discover their stories and highlight good news from India, for India and the world. After building a basic website-goodnewsindia.com-and armed with an early model of a digital camera, he drove around the country to meet and write about their work. It turned out there were numerous little-known heroes who, despite adverse circumstances, braved on with the good work they believed in. In the process, he discovered what was worth working on for the furtherance of India as a civilisation. Good News India showcases some of those ordinary Indians and their extraordinary work. These are stories of positive action, steely endeavour and quiet triumphs.

Television news in India in the 1980s meant Doordarshan till NDTV came along and changed things forever. Beginning with a half-hour show on Doordarshan, The World This Week, in 1988, NDTV went from strength to strength. In 1995, it aired India's first-ever private news broadcast, with Prannoy Roy's announcement - 'It's eight o'clock and this is The News Tonight coming to you live' - marking a paradigm shift in news media in the country. It then went on to become an independent broadcaster in 2003.For over twenty-five years, the name NDTV has been synonymous with news and credible reporting in India. It is a pioneer in Indian TV journalism, breaking new ground and creating a whole industry. More News Is Good News records this phenomenal journey through the experiences of reporters, anchors, editors, camerapersons and producers, many of whom are now household names, including Prannoy Roy, Vikram Chandra, Ravish Kumar, Barkha Dutt, Sonia Singh, Sreenivasan Jain, Vishnu Som, Nidhi Razdan, Maya Mirchandani, Rajdeep Sardesai and Shekhar Gupta, among others. In the process, it provides a ringside view of the unshackling of the economy and the media, the dilemmas involved in reporting wars and natural disasters, the frontlines and the fault lines that defined the country, news coverage that morphed into nationwide public campaigns and altered the way we respond to the world around us.In the telling of these stories which reflect the countless realities of a changing nation, More News Is Good News also charts the fascinating evolution of news television in independent India over a quarter century.