The Times of India Group has a new social media policy, as per which it is allowing the creation of social media accounts for journalists, in their professional capacity, where both the journalist and the company can post content. At the time of filing this story, three versions of this contract have been shared with employees, with modifications after some of them declined to sign them, and asked for changes. The latest version of the contract was circulated yesterday, and Quartz India, which first broke the story, has written about the two latest versions of the contract (Version 2, Version 3) and NewsLaundry has written about an employment contract from the company and its social media policy. MediaNama has reviewed copies of V2 of the policy (received from multiple sources), and from what we understand, V3 of the policy isn't significantly different (if you have a copy: nikhil@medianama.com). Note: This analysis is on the basis of a contract released in July 2014 and has been corroborated by multiple journalists in the Times Of India group. However there may be multiple policies circulated to multiple divisions within the group. To that extent, this analysis is limited to one such version of which we have multiple copies. We had contacted Satyan Gajwani of the Times Of India group for permission to publish the contract as is but that has been denied. He shared the following response to Medianama: "What is being represented is an old version, shared a month ago, which has changed meaningfully in the latest version". Here's what it basically says: 1. The…
