Forbes , Flipcart , Failures and Frugal journalism

farhanak.manage

New member
There's a lot of hulla gulla about the recent cover story of forbes magazine - "whats wrong with flipkart"

Flipkart CEO was quick to respond to the story by email to the editor asking the magazine to carry his email. Now if you know anything about journos, they don't tell a story how it is, they have to, have to, just have to add their own spice to it and thats what the editor did. He published Flipkart CEO's mail along with his reply as justification. You can read it here : Flipkart CEO responds to our cover story | Forbes India Blog

Since the article was getting wide publicity and the website was raking in moolah from increased traffic and pageviews, the editor of forbes decided to add some more fuel to fire at Forbes India Magazine - Letter From The Editor: Surviving the Perfect Storm

FlipKart has been a very respected startup for the kind of delight it strives to deliver to its customers and since it is the startup ecosystem, our good ol' pluggedin had to write a piece on it. Funnily plugged wrote on what is wrong with forbes at What’s wrong with Forbes (not Flipkart)?

All this hulla gulla leaves me thinking if journalism is frugal and sensational. The days of reporting a story as it is with facts and figures seems to have ended.

Do you read forbes? Have you purchased from flipkart? What do you think about this whole journalism blasphemy ? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
 

koolin

New member
Hi Farhana,

Its a very interesting read....i agree with your statement about the dead journalism. However here i would like to highlight an interesting observation about the column writer whom i would not like to name but was a crucial member of Flipkart's article. My argument with the column writer is that he has written on such varied topics which makes me wonder that he is a master of all as well as jack of all....which reasonably is not at all possible in any life for any human or non-human...let me throw some light on the subjects on which he has written...
1) Letter From The Editor: Why We Need To Celebrate Exits - HR
2) Letter From The Editor: Chasing the BRIC Dream - Finance
3) Letter From the Editor: A Whole New Foundation For Business - Business
4) When the Stock Markets Tank, Stay On Course - Stock Markets
5) Letter From The Editor : The Coming Revolution on Indian Roads - Politics
and so on....i do agree many people would have opinions for everything they do or see but having an opinion which impacts the participants personally or professionaly is disrespectful and hence in this respect i would like to opine that "FORBES" as a magzine is at less fault as compared to the column writer himself who at most times in his articles seems to write negatively and gives us a sense about how pessimistic is bias is towards many fields of subjects.

Would love to hear differences.

Cheers!!!
 

kartik

Kartik Raichura
Staff member
I think the whole issue is blown out of proportion. Journalism is about uncovering the unheard but it should be restricted to business models and companies.

When it starts becoming more about people behind the business and less about the business, journalism fails !
 

matrixmayhem

New member
The problem with Flipkart is that it is NOT the online retailer we had all come to love and believe in. When they maintained their own inventory, it was easy to trust them, but now with a marketplace model, that simply can't be the case.
 
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