Mumbai Mirror

Mumbai Mirror was an English-language newspaper that was initially launched in 2005 by the Times Group as part of a ringfencing tactic to fight emerging competition in the city, mainly from Zee–Bhaskar's then joint newspaper, Daily News and Analysis. Mumbai Mirror was downsized and digitised by its owners at The Times Group on 5 December 2020 during the Covid-19 lockdown. Mumbai Mirror was bundled into a weekly digital edition, along with its other sister Mirror local editions including Bangalore Mirror, Pune Mirror and Ahmedabad Mirror, and its staff drastically downsized and the residual employees provided a new contract modelled around their previous job roles. The head office of the paper was moved out from Mumbai into Bangalore, and the Bangalore Mirror editor took over the Mumbai edition along with control over the other digital editions. Mumbai Mirror used to have the largest readership among tabloid format newspapers in the city before its downsizing. Between 2005 and 2020, the paper was run as a compact daily newspaper whose coverage focused on city-specific local news and civic issues concerning education, healthcare and municipal administration. The digitised weekly version of the paper is now run by a Times Group subsidiary called The Metropolitan Media Company. The downsizing of Mirror started on 5 December 2020, when the Times Group first released a statement that the economic crisis induced by the pandemic had made the newspaper commercially unviable. The group announced that it would be converted into a weekly newspaper and would continue to be published online. Baghel broke the news in a virtual meeting with the employees of the paper. The management and the human resources department were both largely unaware and could not brief the employees on the developments, which caused confusion and uncertainty. The development also invoked negative reactions from readers and commentators, who perceived it to be a closure of the newspaper.