In the UK, major rock stars including Bono and Bob Geldoff (their concern for Africa not withstanding) are asking the government now to raise the copyright limit from 50 to 95 years. They are ensuring their legacy and the right of their grandchildren to live in ostentatious luxury.

So here I am in back in familiar territory, the Barrista at Andheri. The same set of worked out bodies, familiar from television faces and young models. I think of George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss and that beautiful passage where the protagonist talks about her hills and valleys and things she knows and loves precisely because of its familiarity.

India is playing a test match with South Africa and winning. I walk into the shop. The television has a news channel, NDTV on. I am surprised. I ask for a switch to cricket and am refused. They are not allowed to do that. My friend, a marketing hot shot in the television industry explains: this comes under PBA (Public Broadcasting Area) and you need special permission to telecast. You are liable for damages and your cable television operator can sue you. Sweet certainties, my foot; everywhere I go, restaurants, coffee bars, it’s the same story. The crowds that gathered outside shops to watch the matches on their way home are gone. I am pissed off, really pissed off.

Newspapers, especially, the tabloid variety are having a field day in Britain with the possibility of a present day Jack the Ripper haunting the streets of Ipswich in the District of Suffolk. The legendary serial killer had killed and mutilated at least five victims in the then grimy east district of London in 1888. The present avatar seems to have reached the magic number too and the victims again are prostitutes. The comparisions are easy enough and its manna for the scribes. A more sombre view is available here.

Jack the Ripper was by no means the first serial killer. His fame has quite a bit to do with the social forces and highlights perhaps, for the first time, the power of the press. His killings coincide with a time when most of the population was getting literate and the press for the first time was becoming active as a force of social change and also taking the responsible position of informing the readers.

Not much has changed, then. The media still relies on the personality cult and the chief reporter still scream to the crime reporter “get me a murder.” Or Sansani.

Laters.

For those of you who were sceptical of my last blog (read below), read this. Another article on India in the IHT today. I am off to re read my Chomsky. Write later, its a busy start to the week.

Folks, sorry for the sudden absence. But the end of term pressures are killing. On one hand there are the students who suddenly discover that they do actually need a tutor as essay deadlines loom and on the other are my own writing obligations for the PhD. But I am increasingly finding that the two jobs compliment and speak to each other.

This week we were discussing about the internet and its associated practices and what it means for journalism and journalists. One of the thing which is worth thinking about is the imagining of the audience which I feel is drastically changing. Let me give you an example. The conflict in Iraq resulted in a very high number of readers from the United States hitting The Guardian newspaper’s website looking for a different approach which was not the patriotic jingoism that most of America’s free press indulged in.

The readership of The Guardian suddenly takes a completely different hue. Till now, its the liberal white middle class in England, almost always on the left of the Centre. Now, it could be anybody anywhere in the world. The comfort of writing to a known reader profile is gone. The world is the audience.

It has been around three weeks now that we have started this website and I was wondering why have we done so? Yes, of course we want a forum for debate on Indian media, blah blah. But what is the immediate objective behind writing these blogs, taking time to sketch out arguments? At its simplest level, at least for me, because I want to be read. My co-conspirator Meenu Gaur called in the morning to let me know that there were four comments on her blog, mine registers zero. I was upset, unfoundedly so. Where is the pure realm of writing for writing’s sake, art for the sake of art?

Most media critics who sit on the left of the fence are alarmed at the propensity of today’s creators’ enthusiasm for mass appreciation. It takes away the subversive edge, the “news” because it is news, the hard story of a politburo meeting gets superceded by Rakhi Sawant’s breasts.