The politics of media metrics override its robustness as a measure

What will it take to rid media metrics from the politics of the industry they cater to?

“HT rubbishes TOI’s claims” says the mailer sent out last week. It claims that on the metric that matters, Average Issue Readership (AIR), Hindustan Times is the most read paper in Mumbai plus Delhi NCR (National Capital Region) going by the Indian Readership Survey 2017 (IRS) released earlier this month. Going by the advert HT’s AIR for its main paper is 1.67 million while TOI’s is 1.19 million in Delhi. On Mumbai plus Delhi combined HT is at 2.43 million while TOI is 2.24 million. However, the ad doesn’t give HT’s Mumbai readership figure separately. A quick calculation makes it