100 days: My experience in DNA

My experience in DNA

The DNA, Indore, scored the first goal by default on the launching day. The paper started off humbly: no pomp and show, no big hoardings, no tall claims and no shouting from the roof top. Just a few days of dummy-run and the paper was out on June 26.
Yet, its launch frightened an established rival enough to mess up with the fundamentals of journalism, little realizing in its fevered mind that the boys will be boys and girls, girls.
While the rival on its front page sought to portray Indore doctors out-divining the God in transforming girls into boys, the DNA gently tickled the Indore’s memories of erstwhile ruler Yashwant Rao resemblance with whose face led an Arab Sheikh to believe himself a reincarnate of the Holkar King. Well begun is half done.
Seeing the inaugural issue on the DNA website, a senior journalist friend in Bhopal congratulated me on phone. “Bade Bhaiya (it’s me), your paper is greaaaat. I think it can reach 50,000 circulation in a few months.”
Having been in this profession for three decades, I knew better than to share his optimism, but didn’t dampen his spirit.
The friend, who had worked in Indore long back, genuinely felt that proliferation of English education in the 15th fastest growing city in India will enable DNA to capture the reader’s imagination fast. His opinion rang a sense of deja vu in me.
I said you understand the status of English papers in a Hindi-speaking state like Madhya Pradesh and still saying so. He kept mum.
Since then I have heard many otherwise knowledgeable people in Indore wonder aloud why English newspapers are nowhere near their Hindi counterparts with so many public schools, professional colleges, an IIT, an IIM, not to
speak of a host of big industries being in existence in the commercial capital of MP.
The co-relation between English education and English papers does not land to an easy explanation. It is like a candidate in an election counting on all the votes of his community in his favour. That does not work. The candidate needs much more than just the caste to cast a
charm on his fellow caste people.
That is precisely one of the big challenges for the DNA, my 14th employer. It has a long way to go to become a voice of the reader.
Aspirations of Indore have yet to find adequate expression in the paper. The paper is still in infancy. A large chunk of the potential readers is still beyond us.
Of course, we can’t boast to have a most desirable team in DNA. Reporters with all their hard works are yet to come to grips with issues that fascinate (not just interest) an upward mobile populace. Desk people have a lot to work on style and content to make the paper look snazzier. Various departments have yet to evolve as a core team
to take the paper to a newer height.
But the most remarkable thing about the paper is that willingness to surmount all these obstacles is
there in the staff.
Indore was not an altogether unknown place for me. I know many journalists from this city, though I have had no opportunity to work here before. I have great respect for Indore’s journalism, not the least because the city produced two of the finest editors in India- Rajendra Mathur and Prabhash Joshi. But that’s in Hindi.
English journalism in Indore, frankly, is far behind the metros, notwithstanding the fact that one English new paper is in existence since 1982 and, another, bigger paper, had been supplying daily four-page pull out since 2000 till it started full-fledged Indore edition a year ago. Language is a big issue and, we in DNA are facing this acutely.
Lack of good deskmen has, however, become a national crisis. Even metro papers wail about acute dearth of good hands to handle the desk.
People not so well-versed with the dynamics of the English newspaper in India are amazed at this crisis. They facilely point out to amazing proliferation of public schools.
“When there are so many good English schools and English papers offer such a good salary, why is this
crisis of good deskmen?” they wonder. This same glib belief is a cause for their wonderment about poor circulation of English newspapers in cities such as Indore and Bhopal. It is hard to explain.
Even at the risk of sounding cynical, I try to temper the glee of the staffers over laudatory comments on their stories.
Yes, we have broken many outstanding stories. True, our presentation of even some seemingly ordinary stories (the suicide attempt by a convict of death sentence, for example) has made DNA look apart.
But, the DNA is still far away from the goal when it will be read as a single complete newspaper, without the reader having to feel the need for any Hindi paper for local coverage.
No English newspaper could achieve this cherished goal in MP so far. English newspapers remain a supplementary reading for those who can afford more than one newspapers.
The DNA has a task cut out for it to make itself a complete newspaper.