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We conducted a small exercise by looking at the content of fourteen morning dailies (eight in Hindi and six in English) that were available in Noida on 19 June and 5 July 2008. The Hindi dailies were Aaj Samaj, Amar Ujala, Dainik Bhaskar, Dainik Jagran, Hindustan, Mahamedha, Navbharat Times, and Punjab Kesri. The English dailies were Hindustan Times, Mail Today, Metro Now, The Hindu, The Indian Express, and The Times of India.
Subject-wise distribution of stories in Hindi and English dailies on 19 June and 5 July 2008
NBT- Nava Bharat Times; PK - Punjab Kesari; MA - Mahamedha; AS - Aaj Samaj; DB - Dainik Bhaskar; DJ - Dainik Jagran; AU - Amar Ujala; HIN - Hindustan; MT - Mail Today; TH - The Hindu; MN - Metro Now; TIE - The Indian Express; HT - Hindustan Times; TOI - Times of India
We divided the content into eleven main categories and a twelfth category for miscellaneous type of information and news. The eleven main categories were politics, business, development, society and culture, education, environment, sports, health, crime, entertainment, labour and human resources. In the miscellaneous category we included accidents, appointments, births, deaths, natural calamities, and religion. Our study only enumerates the content of news pages and has not evaluated the editorial, opinion, or features pages.
Hindi dailies
All the Hindi dailies led on both days with a political story as lead. In our examination of the Hindi dailies on the two days, we found that on average politics is the number one category with an average of almost 16 per cent of the total news columns. Crime is next with over 14 per cent. Sport is number three with just over 11 per cent. Business coverage is 11 per cent. Entertainment is more than 6 per cent. News concerning society and culture is also 6 per cent. This is followed by development news just above 5 per cent. Education news makes up more than 3 per cent. Health is 2 per cent. Environment is almost 2 per cent. News about labour is just 1 per cent.
Subject-wise distribution of stories in Hindi and English dailies on 19 June and 5 July 2008
English dailies
Just over half the English dailies led with a political story on both days. The top category for the English dailies is sports with almost 22 per cent. Number two is business at almost 17 per cent. Politics surprisingly comes in at number three with just below 16 per cent.
Entertainment is in fourth place with almost 11 per cent. Crime is fifth at almost 9 per cent. Education news is in sixth place at over 4 per cent. Society and culture news is just about 4 per cent. Development is also just about 4 per cent. Health news is just over 2 per cent. Environment news is over 2 per cent and there is no news about labour at all.
Conclusions
Surprisingly, although the paper quality and printing is better of the English dailies and they also have more pages and colour supplements, their news stand prices are lower! The higher number of advertisements in the English dailies may explain this and also that more of these advertisements are in colour.
We were surprised first of all that crime was not the number one news category in either Hindi or English dailies. We were also surprised that sport was the number one news category in the English dailies with the exception of one paper. Even in Hindi it occupies a lot of space at number three. We did not anticipate that entertainment coverage would be more extensive in the English dailies than in the Hindi dailies. In both languages the coverage of health, education, development, and environment is very meagre with labour coverage even more dismal or totally absent.
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