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?
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