We missed this earlier: Essel group company Diligent Media Corporation that publishes the English daily newspaper ‘DNA‘ seems to have abruptly shut down its Bangalore edition earlier this month.
This shutdown was announced by DNA Bangalore on its official Twitter account on August 12 and the last edition was apparently published on the Independence day (August 15).
DNA Bangalore has shut down. So you might as well unfollow this account. This account will be deactivated in a day. Ciao.
— DNA of Bangalore (@dnaofblr) August 11, 2014
Thank you all for the tweets. Tomorrow’s the last print edition. That’s the last you will see of us, us hapless jobless employees. Xoxo — DNA of Bangalore (@dnaofblr) August 14, 2014
Pune edition also reportedly shut
A Newslaundry report suggests that the Pune edition was also shut down and cites undisclosed DNA employees to state that all 52 employees were asked to leave without notice on August 8. Another employee told the publication that they were asked to stop coming to the office from August 14. One of the employees told the publication that they were offered a severance package of three months basic pay and seven days salary of August.
The Pune edition is apparently still being published but with reports from DNA’s Mumbai-based reporters. The resident Pune editor Deepak Lokhande was also reportedly moved to DNA Mumbai’s online news division. NewsLaundry notes that Lokhande declined to answer any of their queries while Yasmeen Shaikh, Head – Talent Acquisition & On-Boarding at Diligent Media Corporation Limited told the publication that she was not in a position to comment on this development.
Readers have no clue on shutdown
What’s really strange is that readers had no information about this shutdown. My colleague Riddhi didn’t receive the newspaper between 14th August to 18th August and the newspaper distributor apparently told him that the overall supplies were low and there was no supply of DNA in his area. He switched to a different paper following this.
Have not received @dna for over a week. Now newspaper supplier says they have shut down! What?! Really?! #Bangalore
— Nakul Shenoy (@nakulshenoy) August 12, 2014
#DNA shut down in Bangalore on Aug 15th. seems readers and staff were clueless about it. Media is most gullible profession in our country. — QueenBee ♕ (@vaidehisachin) August 22, 2014
With this shutdown, DNA now publishes four editions – Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Indore. It also has an online property at DNAIndia.com. It also previously offered mobile apps for iOS and Android but the apps seems have been pulled from the App Store and Google Play Store at the time of writing this article.
Merger of Zee News and DNA
Launched on July 2005 in Mumbai, Diligent Media Corporation is a 50:50 joint venture between the Zee group and the Dainik Bhaskar Group, although it is owned and operated by the Zee group.
In May last year, Zee Group had informed that it had received an in-principle approval from the company’s board to merge its news broadcasting business with Diligent Media Corporation Limited’s news publication business. This merger was apparently decided considering the growth plans of the company and to leverage the existing business synergies between the print and electronic news media.
