Every morning a bunch of newspapers are thrown in my balcony as accurately aimed missiles. Sometimes they break a window-pane as well, but it useless to talk to the vendors.

Increasingly I find we don’t open the missiles. If it is a day when I want to waste time, I sit with them, otherwise just a glance is enough to show me that there is nothing to read in them.

For many newspapers the only news that is fit to print is about cricket or disasters. Every abuse that our players mouth on the pitch is reported, dissected, commented upon, analyzed with utmost sincerity. The terrorist attacks are being flogged no end by Pappu journalists. Ministers’ pronouncements are also faithfully reported and analyzed. I wonder who really reads all this nonsense they print everyday.

There is also an obsession with the frivolous. Sania Mirza does not want to play in India because of controversies, so the media brings out its knives blaming her for being a spoilt brat. Even a celebrated journalist like Barkha Dutt thinks it fit to write a full article on what is a personal decision of the player.

Likewise Priyanka Gandhi meets her father’s killer, in what is again a deeply personal visit, and The Times of India makes a hoo-haa about it, devoting 70% of the front page for the news. Clearly, the journalists at Times of India do want to respect Priyanka’s feelings, and it is no wonder that readers have stopped respecting The Times of India.

Sometimes newspapers do a lot of harm as well. If anyone has been to Chandigarh, one cannot miss how the city was sought to be beautified by Le Corbusier. The wide open roads have flowering plants and traffic roundabouts resemble mini gardens. Some of these are under threat, because silly bureaucrats want to make traffic smoother than it is.

Some journalist finds that going round in circles is not good. So next day the Chandigarh Tribune headlines “Rotaries are a nuisance.” It is not said nuisance to whom or why. So the voices go up in the city that traffic rotaries should be removed and roads made instead. In the same breath, the newspapers talk of being green!

Such suggestions no doubt come from trainee, or pappu journalists. But once such reports are published the damage done is truly great. Newspapers do not realize that there are more things that are a nuisance, for instance how Chandigarh has turned into a drinker’s paradise, with drinking joints opening at every nook and corner of the city.

One girl said that she had stopped going to college because a tavern was near her bus stop and drunk men leered at her while she was waiting for a bus, and often troubled her. But the press does not bring up the issue of foolish bureaucrats of the city who have thought of this scheme and issued licenses to all and sundry to open drinking places at every corner of the city.

Chandigarh also has a unique advantage of celebrities passing through its airport. Every day newspapers faithfully print pictures of Amitabh Bachchan or Sachin Tendulkar coming out of the airport. They are greeted by journalists anxious to take their interviews, whether one wants to be interviewed after a long flight is not a concern. One report in The Hindustan Times thus calls Preeti Zinta as “haughty.” Such adjectives are thrown about as if it is nobody’s business.

Of course I am leaving out the favorite of journalists: murders and violent crimes. One day I see that there are 7 stories on the front page of The Tribune, and all the stories are negative! I wonder who would waste time to read the details of murders and crimes and accidents that had occurred that day.

Philip Meyer, in his book “The Vanishing Newspaper”, predicts that the final copy of the final newspaper will appear on somebody’s doorstep one day in 2043. My opinion is that it might be earlier. The Internet helps it end: every person has the means to read what he wants to read and every person has the power to become a publisher. So why depend on callow journalists to write for us?