Chill out Tom, I was just making a guess. That’s why I said, “I can’t really see it.” Maybe it’s possible, I just don’t see it happening. I wasn’t particularly disagreeing with you, just making a more narrow case for the same phenomena.

Doing it from scratch will be quixotic. IMHO the mutiny market can be cultivated by contributing to Rediff-India Abroad. Mutnineers can prop that rag up with intellectual content.

Abhi fixes the editorials Mahish gets the Op-Eds Anna does the “page six” Vinod business. [...]

…Personally I’m much happier with the speed and interactiveness of a blog…

And the perception of anonymity for commentators . If “they” ever found out what I have been doing while I have been “billable”.

Tom, let’s create such a mutiny market.

More disturbing than any of that, every now and then, I look at the paper and find several stories that sound suspiciously like they must be derivative of things I read on Sepia Mutiny the week before, but without attribution.

You think? I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you!

1. I remember one post post that got into a Desi publication almost verbatim (don’t remember which one).

2. So, is there a market for a publication that is directed at super-thin vertical of second-genners.

I’m willing to believe that this is probably true. I like to pick on their political coverage which is most important to me.

When India Abroad published interviews in 2004 with George Bush and John Kerry, the paper made itself a bigger story than many of the substantive things that either candidate had to say — there were separate articles on “how we got the interview” and at least with the Bush interview, a nice, big photograph of the interviewer with George Bush himself, just like the photos that get taken at campaign fundraisers.

Exactly! This is what really bugs me. They are so shocked that they actually got an interview, that being a journalist and reporting a story becomes of secondary importance. Even the begining of this article seems to suggest this shock. Rediff-India Abroad’s political coverage during the 2004 election (or the lack of it) is partly why we created SM in the first place. If all goes well then we will have bloggers on the convention floor right next to Rediff’s journalists in 2008.

You think? I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you!

I actually do read the print version of India Abroad from time to time and think that it has improved a great deal in some ways — some of its stories are quite interesting. Not all the time, mind you, but the magazine section, in particular, does have interesting features on arts, new books, social issues facing the community, and the like. Much better than it used to be.

All of that having been said, however, the week-to-week political coverage remains breathtakingly amateurish. Some of their stories certainly fill a niche by reporting on things that other publications may not cover, but without a whole lot of journalistic sophistication or professionalism. And given how bad the coverage can be, they are embarassingly self-congratulatory at times. When India Abroad published interviews in 2004 with George Bush and John Kerry, the paper made itself a bigger story than many of the substantive things that either candidate had to say — there were separate articles on “how we got the interview” and at least with the Bush interview, a nice, big photograph of the interviewer with George Bush himself, just like the photos that get taken at campaign fundraisers. In the article accompanying the Bush interview, as I recall, they even suggested that whether Kerry would agree to a similar interview was a serious issue that Indian American voters should consider when deciding who to vote for.

Just last week, India Abroad suggested that Samuel Alito was the first Supreme Court justice with an “Indian connection” because one of the paper’s editors met with Alito in 1988, when he was US Attorney, in connection with some extradition proceeding that his office was prosecuting involving two suspects in a political assassination who the government of India wanted extradited to face criminal charges in India. Complete with a scanned image of Alito’s US Attorney business card. I wish I were making this up, but I promise you, it’s right there on page A5 of the February 10, 2006 issue. Does it get any more embarassing than this?

(The wacky Alito comment is particularly narcissistic and ridiculous. Supreme Court justices have had “Indian connections” at least since 1923, when nine of them unanimously held that natives of the Indian subcontinent were not “white” and therefore were ineligible to naturalize as U.S. citizens. Not to mention their judicial clerks, Abhi’s post being only the most recent reminder, and the meetings and dialogues that Justices Breyer and O’Connor have had from time to time with judges from India and other countries. And on and on and on….)

More disturbing than any of that, every now and then, I look at the paper and find several stories that sound suspiciously like they must be derivative of things I read on Sepia Mutiny the week before, but without attribution. Hmmmm….

Yep. In my observation many of these “community” leaders are handicapped by the baggage that they bring from India like caste, religion and region ( the “Which part of India are you from ?” uncle ). They are deeply skeptical and chary of anything having to do with politics (Indian politics can do that to you) and generally not that concerned about the “issues” that a candidate is addressing. In general the involvement is superficial like photo-ops and that too because thatÂ’s what their amrikkan colleagues do.