बुनियादी तौर पर अमेरिका के न्यूयॉर्क शहर के जीवन और संस्कृति पर केन्द्रित पत्रिका न्यूयॉर्कर निबंध लेखन, फिक्शन, व्यंग्य लेखन, कविता और खासतौर से कार्टूनों के लिए विशिष्ट है। किसी ज़माने में हिन्दी में भी ऐसी पत्रिकाएं थीं, पर आधुनिकता की दौड़ में हमने सबको खत्म होने दिया। इधर पिछले कुछ वर्षों में भारत केन्द्रित लेख भी प्रकाशित हुए हैं। पत्रिका के ताज़ा अंक (8अक्टूबर,2012) में भारत के समीर जैन, विनीत जैन और टाइम्स ऑफ इंडिया के बारे में इसके प्रसिद्ध मीडिया क्रिटिक केन ऑलेटा का नौ पेज का आलेख छपा है। ऑलेटा 1992 से एनल्स ऑव कम्युनिकेशंस कॉलम लिख रहे हैं। सिटिज़ंस जैन शीर्षक आलेख में उन्होंने टाइम्स ऑफ इंडिया के विस्तार का विवरण दिया है। आलेख के पहले सफे के सबसे नीचे इसका सार इन शब्दों में दिया गया है, "Their success is a product of an unorthodox philosophy."
ऑलेटा ने इस आलेख को लिखने के वास्ते जुलाई में कुछ दिन मुम्बई और दिल्ली में बिताए थे। उन्होंने लिखा है कि दो साल पहले समीर ने न्यूयॉर्क में उनसे मुलाकात की थी। जब समीर ने अपनी विज्ञापन रणनीति के बारे में जानकारी दी थीः-
"He told me about the unusual ad-sales strategies he had implemented and of his newspapers' vibrant growth. If I visited India, I asked, would he talk with me about his business?ऑलेटा ने समीर जैन के बारे में मीडिया से जुड़े लोगों और टाइम्स कर्मियों से बातचीत के कुछ अंश भी उद्धृत किए हैं
"He said he would.
"He didn't. Although Vineet and Times executives generously cooperated, Samir declined to meet.
# Namita Gokhale recounts sitting next to Samir Jain at a dinner. Jain tells Gokhale, 'I think history doesn't exist and if I were Prime Minister I would ban the study of history.' When Gokhale responds that she would give him two tight slaps and a kick and if he didn't remember, she would agree there was no history, Samir slips away and ignores her the rest of the evening.
# Shekhar Gupta, the editor-in-chief of the Indian Express, says that whenever he meet Samir Jain, he usually hands him underlined copies of Hindu scriptures and "affectionately" admonishes him that his publication is too dark.
# The inspiration for Samir Jain's innovative pricing strategies was the zoo in Calcutta, his hometown. As he walked by on a Monday, normally a slow day after a busy weekened, he was surprised to see a long line. To boost attendance, the zoo had lowered its admission price day, he learned, which gave him an idea: one day a week, on Wednesdays, he would have the price of the paper.
# Times CEO Ravi Dhariwal says the first filter Samir Jain uses in any decision is, 'Will this be spiritually OK? Will I be able to go to my guru? He discusses a lot with his guru. And if his guru doesn't bless it, I think he just drops it.'
ऑलेटा से समीर जैन से मुलाकात नहीं हुई, पर उनके भाई जैन से हुई। विनीत काफी खुलकर बात करते हैं और विनीत की बातों से ही लगता है कि टाइम्स ऑफ इंडिया अब पब्लिक इश्यू लाएगा और नास्देक की लिस्टिंग में होगा। और शायद इसीलिए उन्होंने न्यूयॉर्कर को इस काम के लिए चुना है। संयोग से यह बात याद आ रही है कि कुछ दिन पहले रूपर्ट मर्डोक के संडे टाइम्स ने टाइम्स ऑफ इंडिया के एडवर्टोरियल पर एक खोज खबर छापी थी, जिसका विवरण मेरी एक पुरानी पोस्ट में है, जिसका लिंक मैं नीचे दे रहा हूँ। बहरहाल नीचे पढ़िए विनीत जैन क्या कहते हैं-
# "Both of us think out of the box," Vineet Jain told me on a recent afternoon. "We don't go by the traditional way of doing business. We're not in the newspaper business, we are in the advertising business.... If I say I am in the news business, then you'll not do shampoo. If I say I'm in the news business, then you won't do entertainment supplements. If you are editorial minded, you will make all the wrong decisions."शेयर बाज़ार में जाने की बात विनीत जैन की इन पंक्तियों में छिपी है-
# Although the brothers insist they do not determine content, Vineed tells Auletta, 'I am the content architect.' Vineet takes credit for the idea of running small, boxed editorials, under the rubric Times View, alongside some front-page stories, as a way of proposing a solution, he said, and because 'the editorial pages is only read by five per cent of readers."
# When President Barack Obama visited India, Vineet declined an invitation for a state dinner. "What'll I do?" he said to me. "It's just meeting somebody, shaking hands. What's the point?" Besides, he added, "the closer I get to politicians, the more they'll interfere."
# "I think of one hundred small ideas, he (Samir) thinks of three big ideas," Vineet said. Sometimes Samir imparts fatherly advice: 'He would say, 'Relax. Work less. Have a good balance. What are you chasing money for?" But Vineed said, "for me, it's not work. I love creating something. It's so much fun---I hardly take holidays. For me, this is a holiday."
"In the long run, we might go public and use the funds to acquire TV stations," Vineet said. "We don't need money to grow publishing, but we do to grow television and Internet."नीचे न्यूयॉर्कर का लिंक है, पर आप पूरा लेख तभी पढ़ पाएंगे जब आप उसके नियमित ग्राहक हैं। बहरहाल वैबसाइट पर दिया गया लेख का सार इस प्रकार है-
ANNALS OF COMMUNICATIONS about Samir and Vineet Jain, the two brothers who run the Times of India, which has the largest circulation of any English-language newspaper in the world. While profits have been declining at newspapers in the West, India is one of the few places on earth where newspapers still thrive; in fact, circulation and advertising are rising. In part, this is because many Indian newspapers, following an approach pioneered by the Jain brothers, have been dismantling the wall between the newsroom and the sales department. At the Times of India, for example, celebrities and advertisers pay the paper to have its reporters write advertorials about their brands in its supplementary sections; the newspaper enters into private-treaty agreements with some advertisers, accepting equity in the advertisers’ firms as partial payment. These innovations have boosted the paper’s profits, and are slowly permeating the Indian newspaper industry. Critics point to a decline in journalistic quality, especially amongst high-circulation newspapers (one critic, a former editor at the Times of India named Darryl D’Monte, says the paper is “the most serious threat to journalism not only in this country but in the entire developing world”). Author discusses the disparate personalities, the business approach and close working relationship of the Jain brothers.
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