The Indian Readership Survey (IRS) is the largest continuous readership research study in the world with an annual sample size exceeding 2.56 lakh (256,000) respondents. IRS collects a comprehensive range of demographic information and does extensive coverage and provides information based on study. This survey is conducted by MRUC (Media Research Users Council) and RSCI (Readership Studies Council of India). Recent survey on 2017 proved that domestic newspaper market continued to defy global trends i.e. while globally readership for print media is on declining trend, India has different trend, recording healthy growth numbers and have added as many as 11.2 crore new readers during the past four years.

Another important revelation is – contrary to popular belief that English dailies have more readership, it is actually Hindi and regional language papers that rule the roost. In fact, there is not a single English daily in the top 10 list. Among top 10 dailies are the regional language papers- Daily Thanthi (5th, Tamil), Lokmat (6th, Marathi ), Malayala Manorama(8th) and the Eenadu (9th). Hindi paper Dainik Jagran has been the number one daily since sevral years. It now tops the list with 7,03,77,000 readers. Times of India comes at a distant 11th slot with a total readership of 1,30,47,000.

Among Telugu dailies Eenadu retains its numer uno position.

1. Dainik Jagran leads the readership with 7,03,77,000
2. Hindustan at 2nd place with 5,23,97000.
3. The Amar Ujala at 3rd place with 4,60,94,000
4. Dainik Bhaskar at 4th place with 4,51,05,000
5. Tamil paper Daily Thanthi 5th slot with 2,31,49,000.
6. Marathi daily Lokmat at 6th place with 1,80,66,000
7. Rajasthan Patrika at 7th with a total readership of 1,63,26,000
8. Malayala Manorama at 8th with a total readership of 1,59,99,000.
9. Telugu daily Eenadu is at the 9th spot with 1,58,48,000
10. Prabhat Khabar occupies the 10th position with a total readership of 1,34,92,000.
11. English genre market leader Times of India comes at a distant 11th spot with a total readership of 1,30,47,000.

However, around a decade back, if one remembers, Eenadu used to be at 3rd place most of the times and Dainik Jagaran and Dainik Bhaskar used to occupy 1st and 2nd place. It is surprising to see Tamil, Marathi, Malayalam and Rajasthan dailies surpassing Eenadu. Probably arrival of Sakshi and revival of Andhrajyothy impacted Eenadu’s readership. But among Telugu papers, no other daily is even closer to Eenadu. While Eenadu is at 1.58 crore readership, Sakshi has 94 lakhs, Andhrajyothy has 63 lakhs, Namasthe Telangana has 32 lakhs. If we consider only Telangana state, Eenadu has 70 lakhs readership, Sakshi has 35 lakhs, AJ has 23.5 and Namaste Telangana has 31.5 lakhs. This survey is about readership of printed papers only. Online readership is separate and not considered for this study. In that arena too, it seems Eenadu is lagging .(https://www.telugu360.com/te/andhra-jyothi-crossed-to-eenadu-in-alexa-rankings/).

Eenadu is the largest circulated Telugu newspaper in Telugu states. Its maintaining its numero uno position for past couple of decades. Even though it faced stiff competetion from Andhra Prabha, Udayam, Sakshi and Andhra Jyothy at various points of times, it was successful to retain its preeminent position.

But of late, Andhra Jyothy and Sakshi are giving tough competition as they are coming up “special pages” in addition to the general edition. Especially Sakshi’s family page is so popular and some readers buy this paper only for that family edition. Even Namaste Telangana paper has an attractive special page edition. So Eenadu also planned to have special editions. It hired some freelancers as well as ex-employees of Eenadu paying very high salaries.

However, it seems Eenadu stepped back on this proposal of Special pages. Bigwigs at Eenadu suggested, cost benefit ratio of bringing this special pages is not conducive because of skyrocketing price of news print. Moreover, circulation of magazines of Eenadu – Chatura, Vipula and Sithara is very low and have been white elephants for so long. So, if reports are to be believed, Eenadu will soon close down these magazines. Probably official announcement may come by the end of this year.

Today, Eenadu published a banner story that  reports India got 100th rank worldwide in “ease of doing business”. The report also claimed that, among Indian states, Telangana got first rank.

But the Indian government website http://eodb.dipp.gov.in/ , that declares these ranks amongst the indian states , has clearly put a banner disclaimer like this – ” Please note that the last date to upload evidence of reforms implemented has been extended to 7th November,2017. Please note that the ranking displayed on the website is dynamic and will continuously undergo changes, until the freezing of rankings. Please note that the scores are based on implementation only and scores on feedback evaluation have not been considered in the rankings displayed.”.

So, that means, still there is time for submitting evidence documents and so whatever ranks shown as of today are not final and they may change as others submit documents. So, why is Eenadu so hasty in publishing this story today, instead of waiting till deadline is done and ranks are frozen. We are not debating here whether Telangana , Andhra Pradesh deserve their current ranks or not. But  many readers who follow these reports are wondering why Eenadu has to publish this article before the ranks are frozen. That too, they conveniently ignored the details on deadline and nowhere mentioned about ranks are subject to change until the deadline. Moreover, this is not first time Eenadu doing this and last year also it was the same story.

Eenadu published this as banner story and dedicated full business page for this today. As Eenadu has lots of reputation in Telugu states, whatever published in eenadu daily is treated as perfect and final by Telugu people. So eenadu has a moral obligation to tell the readers about the disclaimer.

Now, there are questions among media circles whether eenadu did this mistakenly or did they do it intentionally. If it is a mistake, eenadu team has to do more research before publishing such stories. Also, need to check why same mistake is repeating year after year. If it is intentional, it’s clear that eenadu has done this ONLY to project KCR and Modi governments in positive way. In that case, one thing they need to understand is people are slowly changing and they are not buying any story as is and readers are verifying the facts and debating on those in Social media.