India Today goes for gold

Imagine this: a run-of-the-mill press conference at New Delhi’s Police Headquarters. The walls are yellow, the lighting is dull neon, the expressions are either bored or jaded. On a podium is an anthill of microphones, all of them them pointing their black, bulbous heads — some collared by logos of their agencies — at the speaker.

And then, there it is: a flash of gold.

Right there, in the pile of black microphones, there’s one that’s a wee bit more special. How do we know this? Because it’s golden, from windscreen to housing, with a red square around its neck that announces it’s the India Today/ Aaj Tak mic.

Photo credit: Kaushik Chatterji

Spare a thought for the reporter who has to carry that mic around. Imagine having to whip it out while interviewing someone on the streets of Delhi, like they are the Robin Thicke of journalism. (We’ll diplomatically cast aside the detail that the only song he’s known for is “Blurred Lines.”) Imagine having to hold it and speak into it as a news anchor as you walk around India Today‘s studio.

Let’s take a moment to appreciate the fact that none of India Today‘s big guns have succumbed to the urge to rap breaking news, instead of just reading it out.

We’ve been since informed that the channel’s microphones turned golden a year ago, but we must confess, its bedazzling effect only caught our eye recently. The mics perplexed us because it didn’t seem like the news channel was celebrating a golden anniversary and we checked the latest Broadcast Audience Research Council of India statistics, which didn’t suggest any reason to bring out golden microphones. Silver, sure. Gold? Not really.

Which leaves us to conclude India Today figured news deserved a little bling. There’s one variety of mics that are all gold and one in which the windscreen is black while the rest of the microphone is golden. This just leaves us with one question: have the channel’s journos tried the Which Rapper Are You? Did Gaurav Sawant get Drake (come on, you know you can imagine him singing “Hotline Bling”)? Could Shiv Aroor be India Today‘s Mos Def? Is there a L’il Wayne lurking deep inside Rahul Kanwal?

We may not have answers to those questions, but we’re pretty certain we know who’d get Jay Z in that quiz.