India Ink: Can Doordarshan’s New Look Attract Profits?

A Doordarshan newscast from the late 1990s.

After it became the first TV channel in India in 1959, the public broadcaster Doordarshan enjoyed a monopoly on viewership for decades. Even after the government opened the airwaves to private players in 1992, Doordarshan enjoyed a 90 percent share of the audience in the 1990s and had no reason to take the threat of competition seriously.

Twenty years later, its rivals have not only caught up, but they have surpassed Doordarshan in terms of revenue. In the late 1990s, advertisers began to see Doordarshan, which dominates coverage in rural areas, as catering to only the lowest socioeconomic classes, and the public broadcaster slipped even further after an accounting scandal. Since then, Doordarshan has never turned a profit, and some media industry observers have even declared Doordarshan dead.

But Jawhar Sircar, chief executive of Prasar Bharati, the autonomous organization that includes Doordarshan and All India Radio, is betting that a complete overhaul of its TV programs, in both format and content, will draw the viewers that Doordarshan has lost to private satellite channels.

There is only one formula for success, said Mr. Sircar: “You bring out a good product, spend money, put in taste, autonomy and the right professionals, you will get the right product. You have the right product, you will get the right revenues,” he said.

Revenues are sorely needed at the government-financed broadcaster. According to the last five-year Broadcast Plan, which ended in March 2012, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting spent 122 billion rupees ($2.2 billion) of taxpayers’ money to run Prasar Bharti, which generated only 60 billion rupees in revenue over the same period. That means a loss of 62 billion rupees, or more than $1 billion, over the five years.

Prasar Bharti accounts for about 60 percent of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting’s budget, and Doordarshan takes about half that amount, raising the rest of the money it needs through advertising.

Reliable data on Doordarshan’s viewership is difficult to find because the company that reports ratings, Television Audience Measurement, covers only satellite channels, and Doordarshan’s network, which now has 37 channels and four affiliated channels, is largely terrestrial. Doordarshan has sued Television Audience Measurement, accusing it of under-reporting its audience and costing the broadcaster advertising revenue.

The biggest move for Mr. Sircar, who took over in March 2012, was to push aside the appointed bureaucrats who ran operations even though they had no media experience. For the first time in its history, Doordarshan’s news channel, known as DD News, has hired several news professionals who have worked with CNN, Bloomberg and BBC for its board. DD News also poached top anchors at major Indian channels like NDTV and Times Now.

“This new team is one of the best DD has ever seen,” said Rajiv Mehrotra, managing trustee of the nonprofit Public Service Broadcasting Trust, referring to Doordarshan. “They have ensured that Prasar Bharati, especially DD, is breathing again.”

The main focus of the makeover is Doordarshan’s prime-time news program, “News Night,” which now tackles controversial topics – a marked change at a network that has been criticized for allowing the government to shape its media coverage in the past. The last time Doordarshan went through an overhaul was in 2003, a year before the national elections, and the Bharatiya Janata Party-controlled central government ordered Doordarshan to downplay certain events, like the deadly 2002 riots in Gujarat, a B.J.P. stronghold.

“DD News has always been known for dry reporting on government affairs,” said Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, an independent journalist who has worked with the public broadcaster.

On Wednesday night, DD News officially introduced its retooled show with a discussion on the state of the Indian TV news media and the role a public broadcaster should play, led by anchors already well known for their work at other channels, which lent the program a gravitas that had been missing when newsreaders used to present the news.

Given that this latest revamp also comes a year before national elections, many in the media industry are closely watching Doordarshan for any evidence of government meddling. Manish Tiwari, the information and broadcasting minister, promised at a news conference earlier this month that “this time, the government would keep an arm’s length from content and presentation of DD.”

But Rajiv Mehrotra, a longtime TV producer for Doordarshan, said Prasar Bharati’s “identity crisis” may limit the scope of the new changes.

“Prasar Bharati has to stay on the right side of the government as it gets a substantial monetary help from them, and it cannot go whole hog like the privately owned channels do,” he added.

Next in line for a makeover is the early morning show, with sharper reporting and market analysis planned, and then DD National, the entertainment channel, and DD Urdu.

On the technical side, Doordarshan will change from analog to digital transmitters, which will allow for enhanced picture quality, spectrum efficiency and multichannel transmission from a single transmitter. Other technological changes will allow Doordarshan to split screens so that more than one person can be shown on air, something private news channels have long been able to do.

Mr. Sircar also put the network’s outside broadcasting vans to use so that reporters could do live reports outside the studio. “We never used our O.B. vans. It was such a waste of our resources,” he said.

DD News is also getting a new, more polished look. At his office in New Delhi, Mr. Sircar pointed at two large TV screens, which displayed the new DD News format on one screen and an NDTV 24×7 format on the other. Both screens had four boxes with an expert in each one discussing swine flu in Delhi.

“See the similarity?” he asked. “There used to be a miserable green board behind a sleepy anchor on DD News before. We have changed the color scheme to make it in tune with the younger generation.”

While there may be a similarity in form and presentation between the private channels and DD News, there will never be a similarity in content, pledged Mr. Sircar. “We will stick to the ideals of public service broadcasting and never sensationalize news,” he said.

In the current five-year Broadcast Plan, which ends in March 2017, the government has agreed to raise the amount it gives Prasar Bharati to 132 billion rupees. Whether its faith in Mr. Sircar is rewarded, however, is uncertain.

“Now is the time,” said Mr. Thakurta, the independent journalist. “DD can become the Indian version of the BBC or Al Jazeera or just a mouthpiece of those in authority. Only time will tell.”

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DealBook: Office Supply Rivals' Merger Leaked by a Wayward Report

8:56 p.m. | Updated

It was a paragraph buried on Page 4 of an earnings release, under the heading of “other matters.” Yet what those four sentences revealed sent bankers and lawyers who had been working all night on a deal scrambling early Wednesday morning.

The earnings release, from the office supplies chain Office Depot, appeared shortly after 7 a.m. and inadvertently disclosed the terms of a long-awaited merger between the company and OfficeMax. The announcement disappeared from the company’s Web site quickly, but not before a gaggle of news outlets began running full-fledged reports about the deal.

At that time, bankers and lawyers for the two companies were still negotiating the final language of the merger agreement. The mistaken early publication of the release — since blamed on the data provider Thomson Reuters — prompted Office Depot’s chief executive, Neil R. Austrian, to call up his counterpart at OfficeMax, Ravi K. Saligram, and apologize.

More than two hours later, the companies formally announced their combination.

The episode recalls other times that major company news was published prematurely. Last fall, Google’s third-quarter earnings were published three hours early; the technology giant blamed R. R. Donnelley & Sons, its filings agent, for the mistake.

The chief executives played down the inadvertent disclosure as a harmless mistake, since the announcement was scheduled before the markets opened anyway.

“When two big Fortune 500 companies merge, occasionally mishaps happen,” Mr. Saligram said in an interview.

And Thomson Reuters apologized in a statement, saying it regretted the error and would take steps to prevent such a mistake from happening again.

But people involved in the deal privately bemoaned the unexpectedly bumpy ride, which knocked off kilter a carefully choreographed announcement meant to emphasize what they called a transformative merger of equals.

The union will combine two of the big retailers of staples and notepads, a major effort to combat years of losing sales to bigger, nimbler rivals. Both chief executives said that combining their companies could yield $400 million to $600 million in cost savings. It will probably lead to significant job cuts, as the companies seek to shrink their combined footprint of over 2,500 stores.

Both companies disclosed big drops in their sales for the fourth quarter on Wednesday: Office Depot’s revenue slipped 12 percent from the year-ago period, to $2.6 billion, while OfficeMax’s fell 7.4 percent, to $1.7 billion.

And both have also been under pressure from investors. Office Depot is fending off Starboard Value, an activist hedge fund that holds a 14.8 percent stake and has called for a major change in strategy. And OfficeMax has contended with Neuberger Berman, an investor with a 5 percent stake that has called for bigger payouts to shareholders.

“The whole industry and every analyst thought this made sense,” Mr. Austrian said in an interview. “The timing was right at this point in time.”

Shares of Office Depot fell 16.7 percent on Wednesday, to $4.18, while those of OfficeMax slid 7 percent, to $12.09. The decline wiped out some of the gains both stocks enjoyed after word of the deal talks emerged on Monday.

Negotiations have been held in earnest since at least last summer, people briefed on the matter said.

One important negotiating point that was resolved early on was ensuring that the deal could be presented as a “merger of equals.” Though Office Depot is paying a premium for OfficeMax — it is issuing 2.69 new shares for each share of the target, valuing the smaller retailer at about $1.2 billion as of Tuesday’s closing prices — neither company’s chief has a lock as the leader of the combined company.

Indeed, both Mr. Austrian and Mr. Saligram will remain in place while board members from each company run a search for a new chief executive, which could be either man. Also undecided: the new company’s name and whether it will have its headquarters in Office Depot’s home of Boca Raton, Fla., or OfficeMax’s base in Naperville, Ill.

People involved in the deal said that the compromise, which took about two months to complete, was important in bringing both companies to the negotiating table.

“We both put our egos aside,” Mr. Austrian of Office Depot said. “It’s not a win for one side and a loss for another.”

Both Office Depot and OfficeMax also wanted to emphasize that they would remain competitors until the deal was approved by shareholders and antitrust regulators. That is a nod to the collapse of a proposed merger of Office Depot and Staples more than a decade ago, which was blocked on anticompetitive grounds and left Office Depot reeling for years.

Mr. Saligram of OfficeMax argued on a call with analysts that the regulatory environment has shifted since. Both companies have lost ground not only to Staples, but also to online outlets like Amazon.com and bulk retailers like Target and Wal-Mart Stores.

“This industry has completely changed,” he said.

Should the deal fall apart because of antitrust concerns, neither company will be liable for a termination fee, executives said on the analyst call.

Company executives and advisers also spent significant amounts of time negotiating with BC Partners, an investment firm that owns the equivalent of 22 percent of Office Depot’s stock. Under the terms of Wednesday’s deal, BC Partners will own no more than 5 percent of the combined company’s voting shares and will have no representatives on its board.

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In Reversal, Florida to Take Health Law’s Medicaid Expansion

MIAMI — Gov. Rick Scott of Florida reversed himself on Wednesday and announced that he would expand his state’s Medicaid program to cover the poor, becoming the latest — and, perhaps, most prominent — Republican critic of President Obama’s health care law to decide to put it into effect.

It was an about-face for Mr. Scott, a former businessman who entered politics as a critic of Mr. Obama’s health care proposals. Florida was one of the states that sued to try to block the law. After the Supreme Court ruled last year that though the law was constitutional, states could choose not to expand their Medicaid programs to cover the poor, Mr. Scott said that Florida would not expand its programs.

Mr. Scott said Wednesday that he now supported a three-year expansion of Medicaid, through the period that the federal government has agreed to pay the full cost of the expansion, and before some of the costs are shifted to the states.

“While the federal government is committed to paying 100 percent of the cost, I cannot in good conscience deny Floridians that needed access to health care,” Mr. Scott said at a news conference. “We will support a three-year expansion of the Medicaid program under the new health care law as long as the federal government meets their commitment to pay 100 percent of the cost during that time.”

He said there were “no perfect options” when it came to the Medicaid expansion. “To be clear: our options are either having Floridians pay to fund this program in other states while denying health care to our citizens,” he said, “or using federal funding to help some of the poorest in our state with the Medicaid program as we explore other health care reforms.”

Mr. Scott said the state would not create its own insurance exchange to comply with another provision of the law.

His reversal sent ripples through the nation, especially given the change in tone and substance since the summer, when he said he would not create an exchange or expand Medicaid.

“Floridians are interested in jobs and economic growth, a quality education for their children, and keeping the cost of living low,” Mr. Scott said in a statement at the time. “Neither of these major provisions in Obamacare will achieve those goals, and since Florida is legally allowed to opt out, that’s the right decision for our citizens.”

Mr. Scott now joins the Republican governors of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota and Ohio, who have decided to join the Medicaid expansion. Some, like Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, were also staunch opponents of Mr. Obama’s overall health care law.

Shortly before his announcement, the governor received word from the federal government that it planned to grant Florida the final waiver needed to privatize Medicaid, a process the state initially undertook as a pilot project. Mr. Scott, who is running for re-election next year, has heavily lobbied for the waiver, arguing that Florida could not expand Medicaid without it.

Mr. Scott’s support of Medicaid expansion is significant, but is far from the last word. The program requires approval from Florida’s Republican-dominated Legislature, which has been averse to expanding Medicaid under the health care law. The Legislature’s two top Republican leaders said that before making a decision they would consider recommendations from a select committee, which has been asked to review the state’s options.

“The Florida Legislature will make the ultimate decision,” Will Weatherford, the state House speaker, said. “I am personally skeptical that this inflexible law will improve the quality of health care in our state and ensure our long-term financial stability.”

Medicaid, which covers three million people in Florida, costs the state $21 billion a year. The expansion would extend coverage to one million more people.

Mr. Scott’s reversal is sure to anger his original conservative supporters.

The governor “was elected because of his principled conservative leadership against Obamacare’s overreach,” said Slade O’Brien, state director for Americans for Prosperity, an influential conservative advocacy organization. “Hopefully our legislative leaders will not follow in Governor Scott’s footsteps, and will reject expansion.”

During his announcement on Wednesday, Mr. Scott said his mother’s recent death and her lifetime struggle to raise five children “with very little money” played a role in his decision.

“Losing someone so close to you puts everything in a new perspective, especially the big decisions,” he said.

Michael Cooper contributed reporting from New York.

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In Reversal, Florida to Take Health Law’s Medicaid Expansion

MIAMI — Gov. Rick Scott of Florida reversed himself on Wednesday and announced that he would expand his state’s Medicaid program to cover the poor, becoming the latest — and, perhaps, most prominent — Republican critic of President Obama’s health care law to decide to put it into effect.

It was an about-face for Mr. Scott, a former businessman who entered politics as a critic of Mr. Obama’s health care proposals. Florida was one of the states that sued to try to block the law. After the Supreme Court ruled last year that though the law was constitutional, states could choose not to expand their Medicaid programs to cover the poor, Mr. Scott said that Florida would not expand its programs.

Mr. Scott said Wednesday that he now supported a three-year expansion of Medicaid, through the period that the federal government has agreed to pay the full cost of the expansion, and before some of the costs are shifted to the states.

“While the federal government is committed to paying 100 percent of the cost, I cannot in good conscience deny Floridians that needed access to health care,” Mr. Scott said at a news conference. “We will support a three-year expansion of the Medicaid program under the new health care law as long as the federal government meets their commitment to pay 100 percent of the cost during that time.”

He said there were “no perfect options” when it came to the Medicaid expansion. “To be clear: our options are either having Floridians pay to fund this program in other states while denying health care to our citizens,” he said, “or using federal funding to help some of the poorest in our state with the Medicaid program as we explore other health care reforms.”

Mr. Scott said the state would not create its own insurance exchange to comply with another provision of the law.

His reversal sent ripples through the nation, especially given the change in tone and substance since the summer, when he said he would not create an exchange or expand Medicaid.

“Floridians are interested in jobs and economic growth, a quality education for their children, and keeping the cost of living low,” Mr. Scott said in a statement at the time. “Neither of these major provisions in Obamacare will achieve those goals, and since Florida is legally allowed to opt out, that’s the right decision for our citizens.”

Mr. Scott now joins the Republican governors of Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota and Ohio, who have decided to join the Medicaid expansion. Some, like Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, were also staunch opponents of Mr. Obama’s overall health care law.

Shortly before his announcement, the governor received word from the federal government that it planned to grant Florida the final waiver needed to privatize Medicaid, a process the state initially undertook as a pilot project. Mr. Scott, who is running for re-election next year, has heavily lobbied for the waiver, arguing that Florida could not expand Medicaid without it.

Mr. Scott’s support of Medicaid expansion is significant, but is far from the last word. The program requires approval from Florida’s Republican-dominated Legislature, which has been averse to expanding Medicaid under the health care law. The Legislature’s two top Republican leaders said that before making a decision they would consider recommendations from a select committee, which has been asked to review the state’s options.

“The Florida Legislature will make the ultimate decision,” Will Weatherford, the state House speaker, said. “I am personally skeptical that this inflexible law will improve the quality of health care in our state and ensure our long-term financial stability.”

Medicaid, which covers three million people in Florida, costs the state $21 billion a year. The expansion would extend coverage to one million more people.

Mr. Scott’s reversal is sure to anger his original conservative supporters.

The governor “was elected because of his principled conservative leadership against Obamacare’s overreach,” said Slade O’Brien, state director for Americans for Prosperity, an influential conservative advocacy organization. “Hopefully our legislative leaders will not follow in Governor Scott’s footsteps, and will reject expansion.”

During his announcement on Wednesday, Mr. Scott said his mother’s recent death and her lifetime struggle to raise five children “with very little money” played a role in his decision.

“Losing someone so close to you puts everything in a new perspective, especially the big decisions,” he said.

Michael Cooper contributed reporting from New York.

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Some Victims of Online Hacking Edge Into the Light

Steve Ruark for The New York Times

Alan Paller of the SANS Institute said recently hacked companies were seeking safety in numbers.

SAN FRANCISCO — Hackers have hit thousands of American corporations in the last few years, but few companies ever publicly admit it. Most treat online attacks as a dirty secret best kept from customers, shareholders and competitors, lest the disclosure sink their stock price and tarnish them as hapless.

Rarely have companies broken that silence, usually when the attack is reported by someone else. But in the last few weeks more companies have stepped forward. Twitter, Facebook and Apple have all announced that they were attacked by sophisticated cybercriminals. The New York Times revealed its experience with hackers in a front-page article last month.

The admissions reflect the new way some companies are calculating the risks and benefits of going public. While companies once feared shareholder lawsuits and the ire of the Chinese government, some can’t help noticing that those that make the disclosures are lauded, as Google was, for their bravery. Some fear the embarrassment of being unable to fend off hackers who may still be in high school.

But as hacking revelations become more common, the threat of looking foolish fades and more companies are seizing the opportunity to take the leap in a crowd.

“There is a ‘hide in the noise’ effect right now,” said Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS Institute, a nonprofit security research and education organization. “This is a particularly good time to get out the fact that you got hacked, because if you are one of many, it discounts the starkness of the announcement.”

In 2010, when Google alerted some users of Gmail — political activists, mostly — that it appeared Chinese hackers were trying to read their mail, such disclosures were a rarity. In its announcement, Google said that it was one of many — two dozen — companies that had been targeted by the same group. Google said it was making the announcement, in part, to encourage other companies to open up about the problem.

But of that group, only Intel and Adobe Systems reluctantly stepped forward, and neither provided much detail.

Twitter admitted that it had been hacked this month. Facebook and Apple followed suit two weeks later. Within hours after The Times published its account, The Wall Street Journal chimed in with a report that it, too, had been attacked by what it believed to be Chinese hackers. The Washington Post followed.

Not everyone took advantage of the cover. Bloomberg, for example, has repeatedly denied that its systems were also breached by Chinese hackers, despite several sources that confirmed that its computers were infected with malware.

Computer security experts estimate that more than a thousand companies have been attacked recently. In 2011, security researchers at McAfee unearthed a vast online espionage campaign, called Operation Shady Rat, that found more than 70 organizations had been hit over a five-year period, many in the United States.

“I am convinced that every company in every conceivable industry with significant size and valuable intellectual property and trade secrets has been compromised (or will be shortly) with the great majority of the victims rarely discovering the intrusion or its impact,” Dmitri Alperovitch, then McAfee’s vice president for threat research, wrote in his findings.

“In fact,” said Mr. Alperovitch, now the chief technology officer at Crowdstrike, a security start-up, “I divide the entire set of Fortune Global 2000 firms into two categories: those that know they’ve been compromised and those that don’t yet know.”

Of that group, there are still few admissions. A majority of companies that have at one time or another been the subject of news reports of online attacks refuse to confirm them. The list includes the International Olympic Committee, Exxon Mobil, Baker Hughes, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Chesapeake Energy, the British energy giant BG Group, the steel maker ArcelorMittal and Coca-Cola.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting from Washington.

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DealBook: Court Gives Investor an Edge in a Lawsuit Against Apple

7:47 p.m. | Updated

In the battle between Apple and the hedge fund manager David Einhorn, score a point for the billionaire who is taking up the mantle of shareholder advocate.

A federal judge said on Tuesday that he was leaning toward Mr. Einhorn’s contention that Apple had violated securities regulations by bundling several shareholder proposals into one matter.

A lawsuit by Mr. Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital, filed this month in Federal District Court in Manhattan, argues that Apple improperly grouped a vote to eliminate the company’s ability to issue preferred stock at will with other initiatives that Mr. Einhorn supports.

While the judge overseeing the case, Richard J. Sullivan, did not immediately grant Mr. Einhorn’s request for a halt to the vote, he said that the facts of the case favored the investor’s interpretation.

“I think success on the merits lies with Greenlight,” Judge Sullivan said at the end of a nearly two-hour hearing. Earlier in the hearing, he implied that he believed Securities and Exchange Commission rules prohibited the bundling of disparate shareholder initiatives.

Spokesmen for Greenlight and Apple declined to comment after the hearing.

Though a small point in the skirmish between Apple and Mr. Einhorn, the judge’s comments may provide some ballast to the hedge fund manager’s call to other investors. Mr. Einhorn’s bigger goal is to persuade Apple to return some of its $137 billion cash trove to shareholders.

He has asked Apple to issue preferred shares, which would pay out billions of dollars in dividends over time. His lawsuit revolves around the technology giant’s proposal to eliminate “blank check” preferred shares that the company can issue without a shareholder vote. He argues that the company improperly bundled the plan with two other corporate governance changes that he supports.

Apple has said that it will consider Mr. Einhorn’s request, but that it has no plans to amend the shareholder proposal.

Judge Sullivan is expected to decide within days whether to grant a preliminary injunction, given the Feb. 27 cutoff for voting on Apple’s shareholder proposals.

A lawyer for Mr. Einhorn, Mitchell P. Hurley of the firm Akin Gump, argued during Tuesday’s hearing that his client would suffer “irreparable harm” if the vote were allowed to proceed, because he would be forced to vote against two matters he would ordinarily support.

During questioning, however, Judge Sullivan expressed skepticism about the need to take immediate action.

A lawyer for Apple, George Riley of O’Melveny & Myers, said in court that if shareholders approved the disputed initiative, the company would wait for the judge to rule before adopting the new measures in its corporate charter.

Judge Sullivan also questioned why Mr. Einhorn had waited so long to act. He filed suit on Feb. 6, over a month after Apple first disclosed its shareholder proxy.

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The New Old Age Blog: The Reluctant Caregiver

Now and then, I refer to the people that caregivers tend to as “loved ones.” And whenever I do, a woman in Southern California tells me, I set her teeth on edge.

She visits her mother-in-law, runs errands, helps with the paperwork — all tasks she has shouldered with a grim sense of duty.  She doesn’t have much affection for this increasingly frail 90something or enjoy her company; her efforts bring no emotional reward. Her husband, an only child, feels nearly as detached. His mother wasn’t abusive, a completely different scenario, but they were never very close.

Ms. A., as I’ll call her because her mother-in-law reads The Times on her computer, feels miserable about this. “She says she appreciates us, she’s counting on us. She thanks us,” Ms. A. said of her non-loved one. “It makes me feel worse, because I feel guilty.”

She has performed many services for her mother-in-law, who lives in a retirement community, “but I really didn’t want to. I know how grudging it was.”

Call her the Reluctant Caregiver. She and her husband didn’t invite his parents to follow them to the small city where they settled to take jobs. The elders did anyway, and as long as they stayed healthy and active, both couples maintained their own lives. Now that her mother-in-law is widowed and needy, Ms. A feels trapped.

Ashamed, too. She knows lots of adult children work much harder at caregiving yet see it as a privilege. For her, it is mere drudgery. “I don’t feel there’s anybody I can say that to,” she told me — except a friend in Phoenix and, anonymously, to us.

The friend, therapist Randy Weiss, has served as both a reluctant caregiver to her mother, who died very recently at 86, and a willing caregiver to her childless aunt, living in an assisted living dementia unit at 82. Spending time with each of them made Ms. Weiss conscious of the distinction.

Her visits involved many of the same activities, “but it feels very different,” she said. “I feel the appreciation from my aunt, even if she’s much less able to verbalize it.” A cherished confidante since adolescence, her aunt breaks into smiles when Ms. Weiss arrives and exclaims over every small gift, even a doughnut. She worked in the music industry for decades and, despite her memory loss, happily sings along with the jazz CDs Ms. Weiss brings.

Because she had no such connection with her mother, whom Ms. Weiss described as distant and critical, “it’s harder to do what I have to do,” she said. (We spoke before her mother’s death.) “One is an obligation I fulfill out of duty. One is done with love.”

Unlike her friend Ms. A, “I don’t feel guilty that I don’t feel warmly towards my mother,” Ms. Weiss said. “I’ve made my peace.”

Let’s acknowledge that at times almost every caregiver knows exhaustion, anger and resentment.  But to me, reluctant caregivers probably deserve more credit than most. They are not getting any of the good stuff back, no warmth or laughter, little tenderness, sometimes not even gratitude.

Yet they are doing this tough work anyway, usually because no one else can or will. Maybe an early death or a divorce means that the person who would ordinarily have provided care can’t. Or maybe the reluctant caregiver is simply the one who can’t walk away.

“It’s important to acknowledge that every relationship doesn’t come from ‘The Cosby Show,’” said Barbara Moscowitz when I called to ask her about reluctance. Ms. Moscowitz, a senior geriatric social worker at Massachusetts General Hospital, has heard many such tales from caregivers in her clinical practice and support groups.

“We need to allow people to be reluctant,” she said. “It means they’re dutiful; they’re responsible. Those are admirable qualities.”

Yet, she recognizes, “they feel oppressed by the platitudes. ‘Your mother is so lucky to have you!’” Such praise just makes people like Ms. A. squirm.

Ms. Moscowitz also worries about reluctant caregivers, and urges them to find support groups where they can say the supposedly unsay-able, and to sign up early for community services — hotlines, senior centers, day programs, meals on wheels — that can help lighten the load.

“Caregiving only goes one way – it gets harder, more complex,” she said. “Support groups and community resources are like having a first aid kit. It’s going to feel like even more of a burden, and you need to be armed.”

I wonder, too, if reluctant caregivers have a romanticized view of what the task is like for everyone else. Elder care can be a wonderful experience, satisfying and meaningful, but guilt and resentment are also standard parts of the job description, at least occasionally.

For a reluctant caregiver, “the satisfaction is, you haven’t turned your back,” Ms. Moscowitz said. “You can take pride in that.”

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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The New Old Age Blog: The Reluctant Caregiver

Now and then, I refer to the people that caregivers tend to as “loved ones.” And whenever I do, a woman in Southern California tells me, I set her teeth on edge.

She visits her mother-in-law, runs errands, helps with the paperwork — all tasks she has shouldered with a grim sense of duty.  She doesn’t have much affection for this increasingly frail 90something or enjoy her company; her efforts bring no emotional reward. Her husband, an only child, feels nearly as detached. His mother wasn’t abusive, a completely different scenario, but they were never very close.

Ms. A., as I’ll call her because her mother-in-law reads The Times on her computer, feels miserable about this. “She says she appreciates us, she’s counting on us. She thanks us,” Ms. A. said of her non-loved one. “It makes me feel worse, because I feel guilty.”

She has performed many services for her mother-in-law, who lives in a retirement community, “but I really didn’t want to. I know how grudging it was.”

Call her the Reluctant Caregiver. She and her husband didn’t invite his parents to follow them to the small city where they settled to take jobs. The elders did anyway, and as long as they stayed healthy and active, both couples maintained their own lives. Now that her mother-in-law is widowed and needy, Ms. A feels trapped.

Ashamed, too. She knows lots of adult children work much harder at caregiving yet see it as a privilege. For her, it is mere drudgery. “I don’t feel there’s anybody I can say that to,” she told me — except a friend in Phoenix and, anonymously, to us.

The friend, therapist Randy Weiss, has served as both a reluctant caregiver to her mother, who died very recently at 86, and a willing caregiver to her childless aunt, living in an assisted living dementia unit at 82. Spending time with each of them made Ms. Weiss conscious of the distinction.

Her visits involved many of the same activities, “but it feels very different,” she said. “I feel the appreciation from my aunt, even if she’s much less able to verbalize it.” A cherished confidante since adolescence, her aunt breaks into smiles when Ms. Weiss arrives and exclaims over every small gift, even a doughnut. She worked in the music industry for decades and, despite her memory loss, happily sings along with the jazz CDs Ms. Weiss brings.

Because she had no such connection with her mother, whom Ms. Weiss described as distant and critical, “it’s harder to do what I have to do,” she said. (We spoke before her mother’s death.) “One is an obligation I fulfill out of duty. One is done with love.”

Unlike her friend Ms. A, “I don’t feel guilty that I don’t feel warmly towards my mother,” Ms. Weiss said. “I’ve made my peace.”

Let’s acknowledge that at times almost every caregiver knows exhaustion, anger and resentment.  But to me, reluctant caregivers probably deserve more credit than most. They are not getting any of the good stuff back, no warmth or laughter, little tenderness, sometimes not even gratitude.

Yet they are doing this tough work anyway, usually because no one else can or will. Maybe an early death or a divorce means that the person who would ordinarily have provided care can’t. Or maybe the reluctant caregiver is simply the one who can’t walk away.

“It’s important to acknowledge that every relationship doesn’t come from ‘The Cosby Show,’” said Barbara Moscowitz when I called to ask her about reluctance. Ms. Moscowitz, a senior geriatric social worker at Massachusetts General Hospital, has heard many such tales from caregivers in her clinical practice and support groups.

“We need to allow people to be reluctant,” she said. “It means they’re dutiful; they’re responsible. Those are admirable qualities.”

Yet, she recognizes, “they feel oppressed by the platitudes. ‘Your mother is so lucky to have you!’” Such praise just makes people like Ms. A. squirm.

Ms. Moscowitz also worries about reluctant caregivers, and urges them to find support groups where they can say the supposedly unsay-able, and to sign up early for community services — hotlines, senior centers, day programs, meals on wheels — that can help lighten the load.

“Caregiving only goes one way – it gets harder, more complex,” she said. “Support groups and community resources are like having a first aid kit. It’s going to feel like even more of a burden, and you need to be armed.”

I wonder, too, if reluctant caregivers have a romanticized view of what the task is like for everyone else. Elder care can be a wonderful experience, satisfying and meaningful, but guilt and resentment are also standard parts of the job description, at least occasionally.

For a reluctant caregiver, “the satisfaction is, you haven’t turned your back,” Ms. Moscowitz said. “You can take pride in that.”

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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Gadgetwise Blog: Q&A: Locking Caps on an iPhone

While I have no desire to SHOUT MY WAY through text messages, I do have to use ALL UPPERCASE sometimes and would like to have CAPS LOCK available on my iPhone. Do I have ANY HOPE?

While the phone’s software keyboard has no dedicated Caps Lock key, quickly tapping the Shift key twice turns on the Caps Lock function. The Shift key turns blue when in Caps Lock mode. To turn off the Caps Lock mode, tap the Shift key again.

The iPhone keyboard has a few other shortcuts to make typing in such a small area more efficient. For example, instead of tapping the .?123 key in the bottom-left corner to switch over to the section of the keyboard that holds the numbers and punctuation keys (and then having to tap the corner key again to switch back to the ABC keyboard), just press the .?123 key down and slide your finger to the number or punctuation mark you need. Once you slide over and select the character, you can resume typing without having to tap back and forth between the different keyboards.

Pressing and holding keys for vowels (and other letters) that use accent marks reveals a pop-up list of accented characters to choose from, like é or ü. When you tap the space bar twice at the end of a sentence, the iPhone inserts a period and capitalizes the next letter you type to begin a new sentence. Apple’s site has an illustrated page of other tips and tricks for the iPhone 5.

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IHT Rendezvous: China's Cyberwarriors

Rendezvous’s editor, Marcus Mabry, interviews David E. Sanger, chief Washington correspondent, on the efforts of Chinese hackers to infiltrate critical American infrastructure, from electrical grids to oil and gas pipelines. Is there a cyber cold war underway?

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