News and Media

Mass media in India, especially news media, are undergoing significant changes in the current liberalised environment. To understand these changes, it is useful to examine the road traversed so far. This requires looking at media in two phases of India's history - pre-colonial and post-colonial. Each medium has taken its own evolutionary path.

Compared with many other developing countries, the Indian press has flourished since independence and exercises a large degree of independence.

In 2001, India had 45,974 newspapers, including 5364 daily newspapers published in over 100 languages. The largest number of newspapers were published in Hindi (20,589), followed by English (7,596), Marathi (2,943), Urdu (2,906), Bengali (2,741), Gujarati (2,215), Tamil (2,119), Kannada (1,816), Malayalam(1,505) and Telugu (1,289). The Hindi daily press has a circulation of over 23 million copies, followed by English with over 8 million copies. There are several major publishing groups in India, the most prominent among them being the Times of India Group, the Indian Express Group, the Hindustan Times Group, The Hindu group, the Anandabazar Patrika Group, the MalayalaManorama Group (Malalaya Manorama is the largest circulated daily newspaper in India), the Sahara group, the Bhaskar group, and the Jagran group.

India has more than forty domestic news agencies. The Express News Service, the Press Trust of India, and the United News of India are among the major news agencies. The National and the English press;The Hindu and Indian Express ; Times of India and The Statesman; India Today and Outlook; Pothan Joseph and G Kasturi; N Ram and Vinod Mehta; The Hoot and [1] are not contrasts but a sampling of the range that needs to be covered here

Popular publications in urban India in 2005 Aikya (Leading Marathi daily from Satara) Dainik Bhaskar (Hindi daily) 22.5 million readers (NRS 2005) Malayala Manorama (Malayalam daily) Mathrubhumi ([2] daily) Dainik Jagran (Hindi daily) 19.2 million readers (IRS 2005) The Times of India (English daily) 7.05 million readers (IRS 2005) Amar Ujala (Hindi daily) Anandabazar patrika (Bengali daily) Grihshobha (Hindi) Eenadu (Telugu daily) Lokmat (Hindi daily) India Today (weekly; Hindi edition most popular) Sambhaav (Gujarati daily) Gujarat Samachar (Gujarati daily) Daily Thanthi (Tamil daily with 14 editions and a circulation of 790,900)