Going the way of other market leaders?

Hammer and Tongs

ALOKE THAKORE

The Telegraph turned 25 last month. It is selling more copies than any other English newspaper in Kolkata. Its ads still carry the tagline: Unputdownable. It can still be relied upon to give its readers photographs of the least clothed models, actresses, or sportswomen. It still continues with Calcutta, when the rest of the newspapers have agreed, or acquiesced, to Kolkata. But now only occasionally, if at all, does it display the chutzpah and character that separated it from the other newspapers.

On its birthday this year, for example, the lead story was: "Monsoon humbles Mammon." In a remarkable essay that connected the sensex and the rains in the city, the newspaper moved from the met office to the managing director of the city¿s power utility company to a water-tank manufacturer to the finance minister¿s constituency before ending with: "One more reminder why the monsoon is more dependable than the most powerful in India came today from Pune. A cheque of Rs 10,000 issued under the Prime Minister¿s relief fund by a collector to a farmer¿s widow has bounced."

One is not sure about how, where, when, and why the monsoon humbled mammon. But surely the readers were. Such alliterative juxtaposition in the headline, such effortless moving between rains and the sensex, and then that kicker of an end; essays are now the preferred genre in the paper. With adjectives and adverbs liberally sprinkled, it is at times difficult to differentiate between the edit page and the news page.

That is a bit unfair, though, to The Telelgraph edit page editors. Keeping within predictably respectable boundaries, they give the reader meat and potatoes one day, and potatoes and meat the other. (Mr Ashok Mitra is the only one who adds a bit of sauce.) But at least they do so, and well cooked at that. When one considers the fare that the other successful national dailies serve, the pages read informed and learned, and certainly not television advertorials. Not that the edit page was traditionally a strong suite of The Telegraph. It went for news; packaged and served well. And that seems to have gone down the pipes at Prafulla Sarkar Street.

Even grammatical errors are left uncorrected and appear in print. That for an owner-editor who believes in the primacy of the desk and once compared reporters to starlets swirling in other people¿s clothes, ought to be galling. The reporting is sketchy. National reporting, which was something to look forward to, lacks design and coherence. The city reporting has been given short shrift with the metro section of the newspaper effectively reduced to two pages. Instead what the reader has been given is a slightly glorified school magazine called t2. Or possibly, it is a women¿s college wall magazine in print. The fact that it has been successful says more about the changing tastes of a city.

And that explains the success of the newspaper better than any other variable. Save one. The Statesman. In The Telegraph roll of honour, the top honours should go to the late Mr Cushrow Irani under whose leadership the market leader wasted away. While this is not the right place for a dirge, no mention of Telegraph¿s success can be complete without the help that it got from across the road. Mr M J Akbar should be next on that list for leading the newspaper and giving it a character that allowed for a favourable reception in the city. Since the success of a newspaper is finally a success of the publishers, the support of the Sarkar brothers can never be downplayed. They own and run it. They did create a newspaper success on the back of an already established Bangla newspaper. 

But quo vadis? It might be difficult to imagine 1982 in Calcutta. The Left Front government had dug its heels. The main city arteries were disembowelled to make the metro rail. Bandhs and protests were the norm. Rajiv Gandhi would call the city a dead city to everyone¿s howl. The only new thing for years in the city was this newspaper. The paper remained young for quite sometime. It was irreverent. It was bold. And it was oppositional. 

All that has now changed. The newspaper is an apologist of the state government. The edge in reporting has disappeared. The editor needs to work overtime to ensure that his starlets are curvy enough to draw admiration in any clothing or even without. The way in which the main newspaper has started reading of late suggests that there is no editorial leadership on a daily basis. The presence of Times of India, which is a marketing success, has meant that the race is not for editorial excellence, but to reach the lowest common denominator and ensure that the leadership position is maintained. In the search for tie-ups, it might now rank as the biggest pub and dance party sponsor/supporter in town. All this may well get the young eye-balls (it is about time that newspapers gave up the nomenclature of "readership" in favour of "eye-balls" or "views"), but one is not sure how long one can continue to get their attention as they grow older.

As it readies for the next 25, it might be a good idea to segment the reader clearly and make sure that the reader of the newspaper, as distinguished from the supplements, is also given due attention. Some work on the main paper can ensure that the sprightliness and boldness, not in terms of some silly notions of social or cultural mores being challenged but something more substantive, is brought back. Or else the newspaper may well go the way of the other market leaders. Successful. Good pedigree. Bottomline in 10 or 11 numbers. Vapid and frivolous. Largely spineless. Ideal for jhalmuri. Eminently putdownable.

And that would be a sad day for all who bought that first copy.