ET’s Bloomer Of Today Takes The Cake!

LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE ECONOMIC TIMES

From: S Ketharaman

Sent: Friday, December 17, 2010

To: The Editor, The Economic Times

Subject: Slow News Days for ET?

Dear Editor:

I have been reading The Economic Times for over a decade now. For the past seven years that I have been reading your Pune edition, I have sometimes spotted one day’s story getting being repeated in another day’s edition. In one instance, the same item was printed twice on the same page, as I had pointed out in a blog (http://sketharaman.com/blog/2009/11/01/slow-news-days-for-economic-times/) posted at the time.

But, all that pales in comparison with your today’s bloomer: Page 10 of today’s edition is totally identical to Page 12 of yesterday’s! Not just that, a few items from other pages have also been repeated across the two editions. For example, “TOP 5 PICKS OF THE DAY” appears on page 15 yesterday and again on page 14 today.

Like all publications, ET is surely allowed to have its own share of slow news days. However, repeated gaffes of this nature will raise questions about ET’s respect for its readers’ intelligence, not to mention sully its reputation as a leading newspaper.

Thanks and Regards.

Ketharaman Swaminathan

PS: In my past blog posts, I’ve included scanned images of the guilty news items / features. However, since I don’t have access to a device that can scan something as large as a full newspaper page, I’ve to  ask you to simply take my word for it in today’s case.