Newspapers and magazines of wide varieties of appearance,
quality, and purpose: this is the picture of the press in India today.
They are an amalgam of British and U.S.A. publications, largely the
former, with little that is indigenous. What may seem strange is merely the
languages used in the majority, for they are many and have little or nothing in
common and are entirely unreadable to persons who can command only the
alphabets of Europe and the Americas .
Essentially, however, even these papers and periodicals in Urdu, Hindi,
Kanarese, and other languages, look like newspapers and magazines in their
superficial physical nature. Obviously this westernization is the result of
political domination from the west, British for the most part but to a small
degree French and Portuguese, for the latter had enclaves until a few years
ago.
Despite its avowal of a moderate socialism and a desire to
become a welfare state in a fuller sense than it is today, through its press
entrepreneurs India has imitated many of the policies and practices of Western
publishing. These include groups or chains of publications, acceptance of
advertising as a significant source of income, maintenance of feature
syndicates and news agencies, instruction in journalism in universities, and
the encouragement of professional organizations.
Not a Western practice, but a hangover from its earlier
days, is the Indian system of publication registration. More common in certain
other nations is the formation of a press commission and of cabinet rank for a
minister of information and broadcasting, a post which in India was held
by the prime minister just before she succeeded Lal Bahadur Shastri.
The Western influence on the physical appearance of the
press is evident as soon as a newspaper kiosk or shop is spotted and the
English language papers, in particular, are glimpsed. The banner or streamer
line on the first page is common. Make-up is conventional, being much like
those used on the continent, in the U.K. ,
and the Americas .
Tabloids vie with full-size dailies; boys and men call out the news in the
afternoon tabs and roam the streets selling them. Even Madras’ famous
daily, The Hindu, after holding out almost as long as The Times, took
advertising and like that of The Times it was classified - off the front page,
and now prints the news and consequently looks like other Indian English
language dailies.
Inside, one finds comics, often imported from the U.S.A.,
display and classified advertisements much like those in London or New York
papers, editorials (dressed up to be the British leaders, however), the
writings of favorite columnists, interpretive articles on the general news,
sporting news covering several pages, promotion of the cinema, and other
standard ingredients, including elaborate coverage of political speeches and
considerable foreign news. It is considerable by comparison, say, with a
typical American daily of the same circulation. Pictures appear in papers of
all languages including Hindi news dailies, but not in all papers. Blocks are more numerous in the English
press and are used there more professionally if also conventionally.
Streamlined make-up has not yet touched the Indian press.
Newsprint quality is distinctly better in the large city
papers, and press work often is inferior in the smaller publications,
especially the language press. Columnists and other special writers generally
contribute to their own publications only, the larger papers and magazines
preferring exclusive material. Even many small publications are wary of
purchasing syndicated news and feature stories. Fewer than twenty syndicates of
importance exist; some originate abroad, and only moderate use is made of their
offerings. Payment is so low to writers that free lancers must depend on other
sources.
An important outlet for these features, however, is the
Sunday magazine section of a newspaper. These supplements are not the
glamorous color magazines such as that of the Sunday Times or the Observer of
London or like This Week of the U.S.A.
They consist, usually, of two to six pages added to the regular sections. Human
interest stories, serious scientific and other interpretive or educational
articles, entertainment copy, comic strips, puzzles, and fiction: these
ingredients make them somewhat like the week-end papers of the European
continent.
