Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Which of the Newspapers are supportive of Senior Citizens?

Which of the Newspapers are supportive of Senior Citizens?

Deccan Chronicle, in a full page advertisement on 2nd July 2013 mentioned that, according to Indian Readership Survey (IRS), Deccan Chronicle Hyderabad enjoys a readership of 4.93 Lakhs while The Times of India has 1.42 Lakhs and The Hindu comes third with 1.12 lakh readers.  This led me to ask the question: Fine, but, is it (Deccan Chronicle) useful to us? As far as we, senior citizens (who form 10% of the population) are concerned, which of these newspapers are sympathetic to our cause? Which newspaper publishes more stories, articles or interviews and so on, affecting the lives of the elderly?  

When I posed this question to my friends, Sri VRV Rao promptly predicted correctly:

Times of India is the only Daily Paper which gives maximum news about Senior Citizens and quite considerate as far as I know. Regarding sympathy, I am doubtful about this. Next comes THE HINDU - It is quite sympathetic towards Elders and tries to give good information about their activities, Old-age Homes, Entertainment, Hobbies etc. This is my opinion. VRV Rao





SSS-GLOBAL is a web based yahoo group for senior citizens. There are 680 members and was ranked FOURTH among all such groups by Yahoo last year. The group has survived 12 years since inception in 2000. One of the specialties of this group is that a very large number of news items of interest to the retiree population – on all relevant topics for 55plus – are meticulously culled out from leading news sources in India and abroad and circulated to all. They invite lot of discussions also. Currently there are 1,41,000 messages exchanged among members. Apart from the moderator, who is an Information Scientist himself, one member Sri VRV Rao has gained specialized expertise in contributing / posting news items. His focus is Senior Citizens. He has sent several thousands of news items all by himself. The message database of sss-global yahoo group is a good source to find answers to the question posed in first paragraph.
A quick search of this sss-global messages database yields the following data:
SN
Paper
2010
2011
2012
2013
Total
IRS rank
1
Times of India
369
975
847
402
2593
2
2
The Hindu
80
336
620
254
1290
3
3
Deccan Chronicle
17
142
135
26
320
1

Therefore you may see that Deccan Chronicle, though enjoys a larger readership than others, is not so senior friendly or senior sympathetic when compared to other newspapers.  What should we do to gain media support in equal measure from all newspapers?              



No comments:

Post a Comment