The Times of India says it is now the world’s largest circulated English newspaper. On the other hand, it remains too ad-cluttered and badly written to be called a quality broadsheet in the same sense as the NY Times, Wash Post, LA Times, The Statesman or even that staid old lady of Mount Road, The Hindu (the same is true of the other rag it competes against in the North).

Reading Indian newspapers these days is definitely not a happy experience — budget cuts have led to a reduction in the number of overseas correspondents and an increasing reliance on Reuters, NYTNS and the like. Sport coverage relies heavily on agencies or syndicated columnists. Writing quality (bar The Hindu) is plummeting, and ads are encroaching on more and more column-inches. The Times of India (and India Today, and to a lesser extent the Indian Express and the Hindustan Times), in particular, have become massive — and unabashed — promotion engines for their parent media companies in ways that would make an AOLTW exec wistful.

I wouldn’t gloat if I were working at the ToI — in some ways, it still has a long way to go.