Army chief's age-row dominates newspapers today

The story on the issue of the age of the chief of the army, VK Singh, predictably dominates all the newspapers as General Singh filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court. Was he born in 1950 or 1951? The Supreme Court will now consider the issue, and, depending on the judgment, Singh will retire this year or next year.

The second story on the front pages that is common to a few refers to the imbroglio in Pakistan, with prime minister Gilani being summoned to court on charges of contempt. Fall in inflation, too, interests a few editors.

It’s beyond these two stories that the differentiation between newspapers begins:

Hindustan Times has a story on BCCI stating its inability to decide on the fate of the ‘underperforming senior players’, a story on the fall in inflation, the defection of Gopinath Munde’s brother from the BJP to the NCP, a supreme court view on the ‘value of a homemaker and a feature story on a Mumbaikar who has been granted a patent from the Indian Patent Office for a 22-note harmonium.

The Times of India has Rushdie’s dropping from the Jaipur Literary Festival on the top half of the page, as also the surrender of Alistair Pereira. The ToI has a 100 word piece on the National Advisory Councils plan to provide shelters for 3 lakh homeless citizens, another on a study which finds that children in India are struggling with mathematics and reading, a bizaree story on how an Alliance Air pilot mistook Kochi for Kozhikode (he landed at Kochi!), and a 13/7 story about how the terrorists were in hiding in Mumbai till December 2011 (a follow up to DNA’s story yesterday).

Indian Express devotes much of the front page to the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in journalism Awards. Other stories which make the front page are one on the defence of Google and Facebook in the Delhi High Court and another on the same study on schoolchildren and their math and reading prowess that Times of India had also front-paged.

It’s DNA that is the only newspaper in Mumbai to have the story of a Vasai resident, Russel Rebello still missing after the Costa Concordia capsized and the shocking story of the state of affairs in Asia’s largest TB hospital in Sewri, which, according to DNA, is all but shut down. DNA, too, carries the study on schoolchildren – but applies a filter, choosing to highlight the situation in rural Maharashtra.

Newspapers do have differentiation, it seems, once one goes beyond the BIG stories. But, as we said yesterday, as far as the newspaper for the Mumbaikar is concerned, DNA seems to be doing something demonstrably different.