Abstract
Documentation of the changes and evolution of the Indian media landscape in recent times has been within the framework of the economic liberalisation of the Indian economy in the 1990s and the neoliberal agenda that has the commercial media in a stranglehold. Much of the work on the evolution of Indian media has focused on the political economy of media, both traditional and emerging; the commercial imperatives that govern their operations; and the impact of ownership and commercial pressures on media content and reach. Udupa too places her work within the framework of liberalisation; however, her work stands out for its core argument that news media and global urbanisation are deeply interconnected.
Making News adds to the small but growing literature on the ways in which Indian media are involved, perhaps unintentionally, in the making of the nation and its publics. Udupa’s sophisticated study unravels the role of news media in a landscape transformed by flows of global capital and rearrangements of regional capital. In five chapters, the book analyses the far-reaching consequences positing the thesis in a multi-disciplinary framework drawn from ‘media studies’, ‘journalism’ and ‘cultural studies’. The first of the chapters detail the rise of Times of India in Bengaluru at a time of transition, the second deals with the group’s strategies and its consequences on the city’s publics and the third delves into the ways in which audiences are constructed by the English and Kannada newspapers that are part of the Times group.
The choice of Times of India, Bengaluru, to establish the ways in which news media create urban cultures even while they are directed by commercial imperatives, is appropriate. The ways in which Bennett, Coleman and Company have revolutionised journalism in India have been well documented within the political economy framework. Udupa’s study of the newspaper’s strategies becomes significant as she focuses on the relaunched edition in Bengaluru, a city that has come to epitomise a global market place. The book offers a compelling account of the ways in which the newspaper’s journey to emerge as the market leader contributes to a distinct discourse of an aspirational ‘new India’. It is this ‘new India’ – one that is supposedly disillusioned with the political news and was keen on the achievements of the corporate sector in the liberalised economy – that has since become the toast of commercial media. The book elaborates the strategies employed to cater to the imaginary audience. The creation of ‘mediated desires’ that extended beyond commodities to conceptions of urban revival and activism, and cultural and social mobility is elaborated and evaluated. The tension between ‘desire and visibility’ is brought to the fore by teasing out the link between news practices and the wider social practices in the ‘global city’ of Bengaluru.
The last two chapters deserve special mention. In her exploration of the ‘split public’, Udupa steers away from simplistic classifications such as the English and regional media and focuses on bhasha media – a term that signifies not just the vernacular or regional media or, in this case the Kannada press, but also the section of media with sensibilities that were distinct from the ‘English-speaking bourgeoise and corporate votaries of neo-liberalism’. This is a useful and apt distinction, for it helps throw light on the tussle between the ‘liberal’ and ‘traditional’ values in the co-creation of the urban public. What ensues is a complex mapping of the mediascapes in the age of neo-liberalism in a city in transition. The academic analysis benefits from the author’s past experience as a bi-lingual journalist, for it allows nuanced evaluation of not merely the journalistic processes and procedures but also journalists’ subjectivities. The last chapter highlights the complex ways in which caste, language and politics intertwine in the construction of news publics and more importantly in journalists’ negotiation of the top-down organisational structure of the Indian news media.
A significant aspect of this book is that even as it allows for understanding the ways in which news media have been impacted by and in turn impact the global urban, it draws out the issues peculiar to Indian media landscape that render Western theories inadequate. The ways in which caste and linguistic identities impact journalism are uniquely Indian, the exploration and evaluation of which requires looking beyond popular Western theorisations. Udupa’s work offers scope for exploring new theoretical frameworks to understand the diverse and complex ways of Indian news media.