The rebirth of the Newspaper

Why? As long as you ask this, the long-announced death of the newspaper is exaggerated. It won’t happen in India, not in my lifetime.

The newspaper will change though — and the paper you are reading is the first step on a long, exciting journey of transformation that redefines our approach to the news: From who, what, when, where and how — to why.

As we continue on this journey with you, dear reader, we will together visit the new lands and opportunities that beckon us all.

When I say newspaper, I do not mean only print. It is already available, in a pretty coarse avatar, on the Internet and on your mobile. It will continue to move to electronic devices and media that we cannot as yet comprehend. Will you be able simply ask for the news from thin air? Perhaps. Will your newspaper become a hologram that follows you around? It’s not improbable.

As a teenager, I devoured the stories of great science writer Isaac Asimov, who provided his readers with a compelling vision of a future that no longer seems distant. His stories graduated from centering around clunky, mechanical robots to omniscient, even universestraddling, networks that eventually encompassed all global knowledge.

Don’t scoff.

When I was reading the great stories of Asimov — I’m talking of the 1980s — I did not think we might one day carry phones in our pocket. So, things will change with a rapidity that will transcend our ability to be astonished. Don’t we marvel at how adept children today are at handling cellphones and computers? They can text before they can cycle.

Yet, as information becomes more widely available, someone is going to have to make sense of all that is available. Right now, there’s so much information that it appears people want less of it. Young people are actually switching off, tending to want only what they seek. There is little that surprises them. Or so we are told.

Newspapers and television news tend to bore readers because they are getting caught in a vicious cycle of readership numbers and TRPs (television rating points).

And so the cry goes out: Dumb it down! Dumb it down!

Well, of course, we do need to dumb it down. Can we possibly continue writing stories that begin like this: “Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday clarified that contrary to the general impression, he had already laid out a roadmap for reining (sic) in the fiscal deficit. Meanwhile, his officials explained why the divestment route had not been used to bridge the deficit this year—as things stand, it can’t be used for that purpose, though steps would be taken to change this situation.” And then we wonder why younger readers are fleeing newspapers. Even I couldn’t make sense of the grandsounding passage above, though I am a newspaper editor — albeit not the smartest. I must tell you that the passage I quoted is, thankfully, not from this newspaper, though we have been equally complicit in driving our readers to boredom.

This will — must — change. As I see it, the newspaper has to interpret, make meaningful, lend perspective and yes, bring back the excitement into news. This does not mean we at the Hindustan Times will dumb it down. Instead, you will see greater depth and analysis to all that we present to you, whether that concerns the transformation of India or that of your body.

But it will be presented in a fashion that in visually pleasing, with every attention-grabbing device — from headlines to photocaptions — being refined and deployed so as to attract our ever-shortening attention spans.

What we will increasingly offer to you is a layered approach to the news. If you want to scan and surf the pages, so be it. If you want to dart in and out of the news, reading no more than photocaptions and blurbs, that’s fine too. We will provide you the devices for a short and long newspaper-reading experience. If you find something that grabs your attention, great. It will be our task to pull you in further (and further, and further) so you get the greatest understanding from things that (a) interest you and (b) excite you. In the months ahead, we hope to bring the excitement back into newspapers. In a sense, what we are attempting is some old-fashioned journalism, topped off with the offerings of the new age.

When I pick up the Hindustan Times from the 1940s, I am startled by some similarities with our so-called new objectives: long headlines and kickers that give you a one-glance summaries of the story; crisp and descriptive writing; great photography.

And as the newspaper evolves into whatever form it is destined to, we will always be there to tell you why, to answer the big question: So what? We will sink more resources into news gathering, not less. Our reporters and editors will log more miles to bring you stories of hope, change and aspiration; we’ll bring you more perspectives from the outside; invite you to be involved in transformational ideas. The journey starts today.

Please hop on.

Samar Halarnkar Managing Editor