BY OUR MEDIA EDITOR
PREVIOUS PAGE: THE BIRTH OF MEDIAAH
When it was started,
Maheshwari's blog was ahead of its time. Blogs had
not yet captured popular imagination as much as
they have now. By 2003, it was going on full
steam. Many journalists regularly looked up
Mediaah.com to find if there was some insider news
they had missed. Mediaah kept feeding them mostly
empty calories, so that they came back for more.
The near-absence of any alternative to satiate
journalist's thirst for gossip kept Mediaah going.
Journalists, being the morons they are, always
went back thinking they got some 'dope' when
actually they got nothing!
Mediaah's 'reports' on
Hindustan Times coming to Mumbai kept a lot of
Mumbai journalists on their toes. This never
happened during the entire duration that Mediaah
was live. (Recently, Hindustan Times board member
Vir Sanghvi said HT never had a concrete plan to
come to Mumbai earlier. He said HT had set
mid-2005 for its Mumbai edition launch, which is
happening now.) Again, there was the Mediaah hype
about the impending stake sale in Mid-day.
Maheshwari speculated that HT is on the verge of
buying a major stake in Mid-day, but this too did
not happen. Much later, Times of India picked up a
stake in Mid-Day. But this was not the strategic
stake sale that Pradyuman Maheshwari had
prophesied. Journalists started telling each other
that there was more foam than susbtance to Mediaah.
Anyway, Mediaah's brand of
journalism turned a little less innocent when it
turned its ire on Anusha Subrahmanian of Business
Standard and Pummy Kaul of Financial Express.
Mediaah charged Anusha with "lifting" a story
word-by-word from story which had already appeared
in Economictimes.com. Business Standard tendered a
front-page apology for the error. We heard that BS
shifted Anusha to a different department, though
this could not be verified. Anusha was previously
a team-member of Mid-Day's long-dead Suburbia,
where she reported to Pradyuman Maheshwari.
Pradyuman Maheswhari even
despatched a lengthy list of questions to Business
Standard on the story "lift". He also put them up
on Mediaah. We do not know if Business Standard
editor TN Ninan bothered to reply. If at all there
was a reply, it was not put up on Mediaah.
The Anusha expose was
followed by "the Pummy expose." Mediaah screamed
in its title article that Financial Express
reporter Pummy Kaul had "lifted" an article from a
previosuly-published Business Line report, an
annual round-up copy. Pradyuman Maheshwari
reproduced both copies on his site and pinpointed
the similarities. The similarities were too close.
Pradyuman Maheshwari's article expressed shock at
such things happening even under the mighty
Shekhar Gupta's nose. (Mr Shekhar Gupta is
editor-in-chief and group CEO of The Indian
Express group).
As Mediaah soaked in the
limelight of publicity at the expense of Anusha
and Pummy, the "lift" controversy became murkier.
Reputations were at stake. A week later, the
Business Line editors called Financial Express to
inform them that both BL and FE reporters had
reproduced, separately, from freely-available
content. BL assured FE that there was no case of
FE stealing from a BL report. Pummy continued to
work in FE despite the Mediaah attack.
But the harm was already
done in another way. Since Pradyuman Maheswhari's
baseless allegation was never publicly countered
by either BL or FE, truth got buried. Meanwhile,
Maheswhari preened himself as the defender of
media's chastity.
The inherent business
potential of these two "exposes" must have
prompted Pradyuman Maheswhari to think of the
Mediaah Blue Pencil Company. He intended to start
this as a kind of consultancy and media auditing
firm rolled into one. For a fee, the service would
be made available to media companies. However,
like Suburbia, Chalomumbai and Tring Tring, the
blue pencils lay in Maheshwari's drawer with no
takers.
By now, Mediaah was
ending its first avatar. The time had come for
Maheshwari to move on. Pradyuman Maheshwari was
selected to head the ambitious Maharashtra Herald
newspaper coming up in Pune. MH drew a lot of
talent from Times and Express in Pune. For the
Pune journalist, Maharashtra Herald suddenly
became the place to be. Maheshwari bacame editor,
Maharashtra Herald. In January 2003, Mediaah was
ready to wind up.
We do not know if
Pradyuman Maheshwari shut Mediaah on his own
volition or if he was asked to by his new bosses,
but Mediaah put out a story that shutters are
coming down. He said he is moving to a new job.
Over an year of mediaah masala was drawing to a
close. Maheshwari tried to sell the site domain
name and make fast buck, but this does not seem
to have worked out. After its last day on the web,
Mediaah displayed the board dukan band! (Shop
shut) when you tried to access it. Mediaah
breathed its last -- or so we thought.
Hardly. After a year in
hibernation, Mediaah is back on the web. Today,
January 17th, Mediaah.com goes live again.
Pradyuman Maheshwari has coincided the Mediaah
relaunch with the unveiling of NDTV Profit, the
business channel from NDTV. This time, Mediaah is
open to advertisements, unlike its previous
avatar. Money, Maheshwari has now realised, is not
such a bad thing to be seen looking for. But he
says he won't accept advertisements from media
establishments. One wonders: who, other than media
firms will be interested in advertising in a
website supposedly for media personnel? Underwear
companies?
True to Pradyuman
Maheshwari style, the site, in the new avatar, is
managed by Shivani Maheshwari. In earlier blog
posts, he would sign as POSTED BY PM (PM for
Pradyuman Maheshwari). From now on, look for
POSTED BY MEDIAAH.
After a year, we welcome
Pradyuman Maheshwari and Mediaah back to the web.
Let's see how you fare this time.
BY OUR MEDIA EDITOR
PREVIOUS PAGE: THE BIRTH OF MEDIAAH
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