Who runs a newspaper ?

Not the editor,  it appears.  I can’t  see  any  newspaper editor  accepting the idea of a no-news , all-ad.  front page.  Going by the  incidence of   ad. alone  front page  in  newspapers nowadays  I would suggest  re-designation of  editor  as  ad-itor.  Gone are the days when the front page was reserved for news .  In print media those days  we dealt with news of three types -  news that is fit to print,  the one that made headlines,  and the Page One copy  (a news report is called copy in media parlance).  At the night news desk  we had a copy-taster  whose job was to sort out Page One copy from rest of the day’s  news reports.  And a night editor put together the front-page with selected news reports.

At New Delhi Times House  (Bahadurshah Zafar Marg)  the news desk  (in late 1970s)  the night chief-subeditor  (Bhutalia,  Chagothra,  Khandhury or Sahaney) decided which news reports went on Page One,  their position on the page,  the size of heading,  and length of the text.  I have seen ad. managers  chasing the night chief-sub  for placing  an ad. they  received late for the edition.  If the chief-sub  okayed it ,  a news item or two were taken out  to accommodate the ad.  The decision was clearly the  editor’s  prerogative.  I don’t know how they sort out such issue nowadays.   There have been instances where I have witnessed the  editor jettisoning  a display advertisement from an edition   to make space for late  news development.

Till some years  back newspapers cared about reader preference ; and  readers  generally believed the front page was an exclusive preserve of news.  When Wall Street Journal first published a Page One Ad in  ‘the lower right hand corner of the front page ‘in July, 2006 the  publishers found it necessary to explain the development with a 10-paragrah statement , while assuring readers, the front page of the Journal will continue to include the same number of page-one  stories as it does currently.

Today’s newspapers print nothing but ad.  on front page.  With no word of  explanation to loyal readers.   But then  The Hindu edition  (in the photo)  had  a  second  ‘ front-page’  ,  presumably,  to please traditional readers.  It wouldn’t be long before,  I guess,   newspaper publishers  give up  the formality   of  printing  two  ‘ front-pages’  in a given  edition -  one for the advertiser and the other, to retain their loyal   readers.

But then  publishers or ad. executives  didn’t invent it.  It was an editor,  Herold Evans of  The Sunday Times ,  who set the precedent, of printing  a double front-page edition.  It happened in 1981 on the night when US President Ronald Reagan was shot at outside the Washington Hilton Hotel.   The Sunday Times, London,  of which Harry Evans was then editor,  received three photos – 1) of President Reagan looking at the gunman; 2) a photo of him being hit;  3) the one showing the injured President being bundled into a car.
Such dramatic pictures,  in action sequence,  called for bold and proper display. Editor Evans chose to  run all the three photos, running six columns wide down the page.  He also  decided to  run an entire  page on Reagan story.

“I ruled that the whole front page would be given to all the Reagan elements,  and I created a second  ‘front page’ in the normal Times style for other news,”  wrote the then editor of the Sunday Times,  London.
Referring to the Reagan story  in his book,  My Paper Chase ,  editor  Evans wrote it was a departure from the traditional Times  style,  ‘as dramatic as the event,  and I’m still proud of it today’.  The Sunday Times developed the same approach for other late-breaking news:  the Challenger shuttle explosion;  Israel’s bombing raid on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor;  the assassination of Anwar Sadat ;  riots in London and Liverpool.

It  was a precedent the Sunday Times editor set for reporting dramatic news developments.  A precedent, he wrote, he was proud of.   I am not sure if Harry Evans would be all that pleased to learn that the precedent he set  is being adopted by our newspaper publishers  as ploy for  making money on big-ticket advertisements.

Finding Irshad: A Google-yuga saga

My search for Irshad Panchatan started a couple of years back,  with a blog-post – Irshad Mia, where are you ? -  about a long-lost coffee-house comrade.  We were regulars at New Delhi Janpath coffee house in early 1960s.  It has been so long ago that  Irshad  had remained in my fading memory cells  a forgotten folder , waiting to be retrieved.

This was till a couple of years ago when I happened by on TV a familiar face  in the telecast of  this German movie - Reclaim Your Brain.  The face was that of  Irshad Panchatan,  my coffee-house  friend.  I couldn’t contain my excitement. Of course,  Irshad wasn’t a close pal,  but  sharing a coffee-house table tied us into a biradari (brotherhood).   And then,  it has been over 50 years – time lapse of a yuga,  after which a re-connect triggers excitement of its own. During our lost decades  we   drifted away from New Delhi,  into our separate work life,  and into marriage,  family,  retirement, and now,  ageing .  He must be 80 ;  I am 73.

We now have the Internet,  Facebook,  Linked-in and other social networking tools.  They weren’t of any help in finding Irshad.  Wikipedia entry on him is in German.    I blogged about him – Irshad Mia, where are you ? – in the hope that if Irshad or someone who knew of his current whereabouts were to read my piece in DadiNani ,  he or she would know where to find me.  This was my way of sending a message-in-the-bottle,  tossed out  into cyberspace.

After doing the blog-post I sent the link to  another coffee-house friend S P Dutt  (NDTV Barkha’s dad),  and  he forwarded it to his friends.  Speedy’s (is how friends call S P Dutt) networking  produced a Berlin phone number.  As part of the Janpath coffee-house brotherhood  Speedy got involved in the search for Irshad.  For the next few days the three of us -  Speedy (in New Delhi), Sushil Nangia (in London),  and I (from Mysore) called Berlin. No response.

Stonewalled by unanswering ringtone from the Berlin phone line, we gave up our search.  My wife and I moved base from Mysore to Chennai – this was an  year back.  Irshad lapsed out of mind, till the other day when DadiNani  editor Subodh Mathur    e-mailed, saying,  your message in the bottle made it to Irshad Mia’s daughter.  Rita Sonal Panjatan had left a  comment in my blog post – The message in the bottle has reached, I will forward this to my father.

And within the next two days I get a mail from the man himself –   ‘Your bottle must have touched so many shores of different planets before it was fished by Rita in a German space shore’.  Irshad quoted Firaq to convey his feelings at  hearing from someone he didn’t ever think  he could -   Urdu poets  have a couplet for  every thing,  don’t they.

And then,  added Irshad: I was stunned…your message took me back into the 60s, to beautiful days of our meetings at Delhi Coffee House …. Those meetings played a very important role in my life,….am thankful to my Coffee House friends. Their critique helped me become a Pantomime. You,  RG Anand and Balraj Komal were my main critical guides.  M S Mudder who put me on stage on and on (with whom I’m still in contact) and O P Kohli  (died decades ago) who used to do the lights for me…Two years back,  moderator of German TV show  ‘Weltspiegel’ (World mirror)  Navina Sudarum,  niece of painter Amrita Sher-Gil, sent me the newspaper cutting relating to Dr.Charles Fabri (The Statesman dance critic), who loved and encouraged me as you also know.  It was a lovely and very important time for us all,  that we can never forget.

I left India again in 1971….for Europe, where I stayed, as you know, with Ingrid in Berlin, and later, opened a Pantomime School also. But that I closed in 1995 and after some time also stopped performing. Now from time to time I get offers to act in small roles in German TV and Films.

I am eighty and Ingrid is still beautiful and active. Rita, who did her MA from London School of Economics,lives close to us.