Taking advantage of policy changes late last year that allows Indian editions of foreign titles, the British magazine Spectator, owned by the publishers of The Daily Telegraph, will launch an Indian edition. The magazine is being launched here by the Anandabazar Patrika Group. The 181-year-old magazine will be the second…

Nineteen months after it entered into an arrangement with Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) to launch an Indian edition of Fortune magazine, the Kolkata-based ABP Group has set the ball in motion for the launch of the fortnightly business magazine, known for its annual ranking of the world’s 500 biggest corporations.…

Reacting to the outcome of general elections that were known Saturday, India’s markets breached the upper circuit within a minute of opening trade on Monday and had to be halted for the day when they were reopened two hours later. In country-wide elections, whose results were announced on Saturday, the…

The 2009 Round One of the Indian Readership Survey is out, with mixed trends. Only nine of the top 25 most read publications (including dailies and periodicals) registered a growth in readership. The combined percentage decline in readership, for the 16 publications that registered a drop, was 51.89%. In the…

TV18 India Ltd has received the requisite license from the ministry of information and broadcasting to publish the Indian edition of Forbes magazine, according to a person familiar with the situation. The magazine will hit newsstands by the third week of May, our source said. TV18, part of Raghav Bahl-promoted…

If you are looking for signs of an economic slowdown, India’s magazine publishing industry is probably not a good place to start. Two new magazines are hitting newsstands this week. RPG Group’s general interest magazine, Open, will hit newsstands tomorrow and Careers 360, the first magazine from a new venture…

N. Ram, the editor-in-chief of the 131-year old The Hindu, is a tech-savvy editor and public intellectual. He is on Facebook and loves his gadgets. He surfs the Internet on the go from the two high-end mobile phones he carry. He excitedly showed me the high-definition handheld Flip Video camcorder…

Looks like Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) is winding up OurCity. The homepage now carries the following message, which also appears on top of every search page. Yahoo! India Our City will be going off the air on 18th Feb 2009. We have incorporated successes within Our City, into our new offering…

In a late evening announcement yesterday, the finance ministry has exempted newsprint, glazed newsprint and light weight newsprint used for printing magazines from customs duty. Business Standard reports that the government has also decided to increase the ad rates paid by various government agencies, through the department of advertising and…

A comprehensive design overhaul is underway at Hindustan Times, India’s second largest English daily. Renowned newspaper designer Mario R. Garcia, who has redesigned The Wall Street Journal and The Miami Herald, among others, is leading the efforts, according to sources at HT. Garcia designed Mint, HT Media’s business daily, which…

From long-time media watcher Sevanti Ninan’s column in The Hindu As the media industry faces recession, pink slips for journalists are becoming a grim reality. In a complete change of mood from a year ago when business was booming, people were still hiring, and journalists could hop jobs with alacrity,…

Leading North American B2B publisher Reed Business Information, a unit of Reed Elsevier (NYSE: RUK) Group Plc., may be exiting an Indian joint venture it formed in 2005 with specialty magazines publisher Infomedia18 Ltd, according to people familiar with the situation. Reed holds 51% in the JV—Reed Infomedia India Pvt.…

—A website has been launched for Covert, the fortnightly magazine from former Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle Editor-in-Chief MJ Akbar, reports PressTalk. The 72 page magazine hit the stands last Wednesday, and features columnists like former finance minister Yashwant Sinha, former Rajya Sabha MP and columnist Kuldip Nayar, adman Suhel…

Delhi based Images Multimedia group has received a clearance from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board for bringing in a foreign direct investment (FDI) of Rs. 33.37 crore, for a dilution of 26 percent stake in their publications business. The Images group primarily owns specialty publications and portals around Fashion and…

The Indian version of the Haymarket group publication Campaign went online earlier this month. Campaign India targets the advertising and marketing community, and the website competes with established players like Agencyfaqs and Exchange4Media. Anant Rangaswami, Editor of Campaign India, and deputy editor Bindu Nair Maitra lead the online team. [via…

Well, Wired as in the magazine, and (unfortunately) not a growth in fixedline/broadband penetration. Conde Nast will launch the iconic Wired Magazine in India in 2009, Alex Kuruvilla, MD of Conde Nast India has told Agencyfaqs. Wired is a monthly magazine that focuses on the impact of technology on culture,…

The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has announced the launch of its India operations, reports the Hindu. A part of the Economist Group, the EIU will focus on assisting domestic companies in their overseas expansion - interesting that this should happen a few days after Jaguar and Land Rover became India-owned.…

Expect rush of foreign publications in India, particularly in the print media space. Over the past year, we’ve seen the plans to publish Fortune magazine, the Economist, Rolling Stone, among others. Now the I&B minister PR Dasmunsi has told the Rajya Sabha that as many as 172 foreign magazines in…

[by Cerius Shah] The iconic magazine that launched Hunter S Thompson, P.J. O’Rourke and Tom Wolfe amongst others is coming to Indian stands on the 27th of Feb. According to the subscription plan here (20 - 15% discount if subscribed via the net) the mag will have a newstand price…