The Times Group on Saturday announced that two of its daily publications, Mumbai Mirror and Pune Mirror – will cease publication. Mumbai Mirror will be relaunched as a weekly and will continue to have a strong digital presence, the media giant said.
The official statement read, “With the long-held hope of a stimulus not materialising and the Indian economy now officially in recession, it is with a heavy heart that the group has decided to cease publication of Mirror in Pune and relaunch Mumbai Mirror as a weekly. They will, however, continue to have a strong digital presence.”
“Following months of discussions and deliberations, we have made this extremely difficult and painful decision to recalibrate our portfolio of publications. We truly value the contribution of our journalists and other staff towards building such a strong brand in a relatively short time, and thank them for their hard work and great effort,” the statement added.
Meenal Baghel, the editor of Mumbai Mirror, also shared the news on social media.
Thank you everyone for your messages. But a very special thank you to the entire team @MumbaiMirror and all the former colleagues who built the newspaper up from scratch. It has been such a privilege to head this newsroom.
— Meenal Baghel (@writemeenal) December 5, 2020
The media industry has seen massive layoffs, paycuts and entire editions being shut down ever since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in India.
Print media was worst hit with several media houses either reducing the number of pages or shutting down completely, rendering a section of reporters and newsroom employees jobless. The situation worsened after people feared that newspapers spread Covid-19, resulting in people cancelling their subscriptions, despite the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting releasing a notice in March rubbishing claims of newspapers being potential agents of the deadly virus.
The Times of India Group announced pay-cuts and layoffs in April. Other media houses that faced similar a crisis were the Indian Express Group, Hindustan Times Media Limited, Business Standard Limited and the Quintillion Media Private Limited, which runs the website The Quint, as reported by The Print.
Employees were asked to resign on short notice and some of them not allowed to serve the notice period and had to leave without clarity or a pay check.
A former employee of The Economic Times told Newslaundry, “I was the first one to be contacted and the HR team wasn’t very transparent with me about if I were the only one being asked to leave. We will be getting no salary for the month of May and will be serving our notice period in June.”
The employee added: “The company waited to announce a pay cut and within six days of getting a heavily reduced paycheck, we were thrown out.”
Apart from doing away with the entertainment supplements with the film industry coming to a halt, the Times Group also cut down on their content by reducing the number of pages of sections, like Sports that hardly had any activity going on ground. The pattern emerged in newspapers since the lockdown was declared in March.
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As per Newslaundry, while the Jaipur city edition had four pages, since the lockdown, it has been given a single page. Similarly, each of the three bureaus in Andhra Pradesh had at least six pages of city news which were then reduced to three or four pages.
Among the latest closures of news organisations is the shutting down of HuffPost India. The US-based digital media company had functioned for six years in India before being shut down after the central government’s policy of capping foreign investment on digital media in India at 26%. Any company crossing the given limit will have one year to disinvest.
However, there is no official word yet on the functioning of Bangalore Mirror and Ahmedabad Mirror.