The book provides valuable information about the way journalism has evolved in India since Independence, the idealism and missionary zeal of the early pioneers and ‘foot-soldiers,’ the changing technology and mores of reportage, the joint resistance by owners and journalists to the government’s moves to tame the media, and the shift from the primacy of the editor to that of the owner, and eventually into the inexorable logic of the market paradigm of the news media… The thumbnail sketches of the editors, owners and journalists, and the insights into the pulls and pressures at work in newsrooms are truly invaluable. – SASHI KUMAR, Chairman, Asian College of Journalism, and author Other journalists have written memoirs chronicling change over the post-Independence decades, but they have not offeredas many wry observations on their own profession’s conduct and values, or that of their editors andproprietors, as Mr Raman has. “All successful editors should know the mind of the proprietors,” he writes.Mr Raman’s clear-eyed take on the evolution of Indian journalism cites the “universal permanent list of pariahs”for corporate-owned publications — “trade unions, Left parties, BSP, and rural issues, in that order”.And similarly, post-liberlisation “anti-reform remarks”. -SEVANTI NINAN, media critic, author and founder editor of The Hoot P. Raman’s memoirs is a wonderful history of Indian print journalism over the past six decades. I found it a fascinating read and his description of newspapers and magazines of the sixties and seventies will be valuable source material to scholars as well. I used to follow Raman’s stories in the different dailies he worked for and always found them well-informed and reliable. This book distils his varied experiences in the course of a long and noted career. They don’t make them like him anymore. – JAIRAM RAMESH, author and former minister of Environment & Forests and Rural Development