The launching of the HT
The launch of Hindustan Times was preceded by almost a
decade- long rumours about this or that national English daily coming to the MP’s
capital soon. The rumours kept the hopefuls for change hopeful.
Finally, the HT started in March 2000. It lived up to the
euphoria among the small band of young English journalists of Bhopal to a great extent. They were hired on
almost double the salary they were getting in the previous papers. The HT, Bhopal, at the time of launching turned out to be the
biggest paymaster in all Bhopal
newspapers. Even the best of Hindi newspapers were not offering better than the
HT.
It started off on promising note. Askari Zaidi, the resident
editor, had pucca credentials as someone with proven track record and
cosmopolitan outlook.
Abhilash Khandekar’s elevation in the HT as bureau chief was
only to be expected. The paper hired a good number of reporters and deskmen and
women not only from Bhopal but across India.
Some of them were good, some lethargic and still some utter mediocre.
But, none of them could be described as bad apples, as far as my assessment went.
The HT brought dynamism in reporting events targeted at the
so-called English readership. Circulation began to shoot up. Other English
newspapers faced existential crisis. It looked as though the HT would swallow
all other small English dailies and might come up to compete with big
mainstream Hindi newspapers of Bhopal.
It was the time when HT had grand plans to expand across India under leadership of India’s one of
the best editors Vir Sanghvi. Vir had the carte blanche of his proprietor Shobhna
Bhartiya. Bhopal had the desk for HT’s Raipur and Nagpur
editions too.
Bhopal was envisioned as the
hub of Central India. But this dream was too grand
to last.
I’m no media pundit and you didn’t need to be one to see
that HT’s downfall began primarily due to poverty of English language. The
reader, who lapped up the paper, by and by, realized that the reporters did not
have much of journalistic tricks up their sleeves to impress him any more. They
had run out of good story ideas soon enough. More importantly, they had lost
the zeal to take initiative. Three- year contractual system spawned a killing complacency.
Job security made them both insolent and slothful to a great extent. Money, of
course, was a big factor.
The reader also sensed that the desk lacked requisite
professional acumen to pad up, forget polish and embellish stories. The paper
as a product did not seem attractive any more. Its circulation stagnated.
Since enough advertisers couldn’t be wooed to keep the
economics of rising circulation on the positive side, the Bhopal edition started fading in the HT’s
grand scheme of things in the headquarters.
Raipur
edition became the first casualty. It was wound up and whatever team stayed
back was shifted to Bhopal.
Nagpur edition
followed suit.
It became more than apparent that the Bhopal
is a neglected child for the Delhi
management. Those at the helm of affairs in Bhopal
did not do much to dispel this disillusion in Delhi
and despondency in Bhopal.
I am deliberately not naming the individuals whose active or
passive contributions brought the paper to a sorry pass. Two developments in
quick succession dealt a severe blow to the paper. First HT’s general manager
Mr Fahmi resigned , paving way for downgrading the unit head’s post to that of
DGM. Not too long after that Askari Zaidi quit.
Zaidi with all his laidback attitude had the ability to get
things going at Delhi
end. Fahmi’s successor was an unmitigated disaster.
He had cut his marketing teeth in Nav Bharat as a junior
errand boy of the owner and never grew up. His mentality didn’t grow out of a Mufassil
paper’s salesman.
In order to show profit in the edition, he drastically cut
overhead expenditures and also strived hard to ensure that the staff are
underpaid. He succeeded in the plan. In fact, he brazenly boasted about the plan,
much to the discomfiture of the staffers.
The HT did come in profit on papers at the expense of the
staffers. This has had disastrous impact on the morale of the team though.
Zaidi’s exit paved the way for an upstart racketeer’s entry
as successor three months later in 2007. Mercifully, the successor did not last
for more than three months, thanks largely to vocal protests by the staffers. (Will
write a separate blog on this interesting episode) .Then another editor came. His
arrival raised high hopes. But before too long, the HT men and women came to realise
that they had shouted out a tweedledum to be replaced by tweedledee.
The paper started nose-diving fast both in terms of
credibility and quality. By the time the tweedledee exited, vast damage had
been done to not only the paper but also to English journalism as a whole, for
the HT had held high hopes.
When the paper got off, it was the highest paymaster in Bhopal. Ten years down
the line, it lagged far behind other newspapers on this count.
This is a general outline of the paper’s rise and
fall. If I give insider account of what went wrong, picture will be more
realistic and clearer. But this will be unethical. I have had good and bad
times in the HT. And I have grown well past the time. Good luck and good wishes
to all my former colleagues
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