Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (42433)	4/20/2002 9:39:12 AM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Respond to of 50167

<To quote the first Daily Times editorial, it hopes to “effect a rupture with the illiberal past and voice the hopes and demands of a rising new middle class of Pakistanis that wishes to be integrated with the rest of the modern world.” > The making of a newspaper Jonathan Boone thefridaytimes.com An aggressively different and refreshing new paper is hitting the stands across the country To quote the first Daily Times editorial, it hopes to “effect a rupture with the illiberal past and voice the hopes and demands of a rising new middle class of Pakistanis that wishes to be integrated with the rest of the modern world.” I’m not a Pakistani, but even my pulse quickened when I read the conclusion: “One idea binds us together. It is the commitment to mould and build a new liberal order in the Pakistan of our founding fathers’ dreams. It is in this sense that we claim to be a new voice for a new Pakistan” It will have escaped no one’s attention that something strange is going on in Lahore, and if reports from Karachi, Islamabad and Peshawar are anything to go by, in the rest of the country as well. Like a barely discernable breath of fresh air, the normal patterns of life have been ever so slightly disturbed. And hard though it is to put one’s finger on it, the event is significant in that it marks a departure from the past. Is it the thrill of referendum-induced political activity? Has the camouflage suit so ironically-donned at the Lahore rally by General Musharraf in his efforts to garner maximum attention and visibility sent an electric charge through the nation? I think not. Nice though the multicoloured caterpillar was, hilarious though the ballot papers are, it’s the exciting new arrival of a bright new star in the firmament of Pakistani journalism that is currently setting pulses racing. The established daily newspapers have a new contender to deal with. Much to the delight of the newsagents who are reporting brisk business, an aggressively different and refreshing paper is hitting the streets across the country. This would be exciting at the best of times but rather more so for me as I was there to watch it happen and see the first ever edition of Daily Times roll off the presses. Because I am fundamentally a bit sad and find heavy machinery rather exciting, a printing press would always be a turn on for me (the noise, the clatter and the throngs of inky printers snatching copies off the press and rapidly scrutinizing pages for colour and plate alignment). But the experience of being in the furiously noisy printing hall last week was altogether different - it was exhilaratingly historic stuff: seeing the first ‘live’ edition of Daily Times steam off the printing machines, being rapidly collated, bundled and loaded onto waiting trucks ready to be whisked off to a waiting TCS plane and on to Karachi increased the spine-tingle factor considerably. But if a slacking-undergraduate skiving off studies in England for a few months (ie moi, in Girl Friday lingo) was on the brink of creaming his trousers, I can’t imagine what the editor was feeling. Standing in the middle of all the activity Najam Sethi certainly looked pretty pleased, his fearsome no-nonsense editor façade momentarily put aside to enjoy the moment of all his hard work coming together (it was to return not half an hour later when we were all ordered to stop looking so pleased with ourselves and get on with producing the local edition of the paper). The effort that goes into putting together the package of news, features, sports reports, business news, crosswords, diversions and all the other elements that are known as a ‘newspaper’ is quite phenomenal and the Daily Times staff had been practicing for months so that come D-Day all would go off without hitch. Full blown dummy-editions with full news coverage, photographs and print runs have been produced every day for the three months preceding April 9. Reporters have been following their different beats and filing copy. Correspondents from around the country have been sending in reports, the business team in Karachi has been reporting and compiling market information and the incorrigible Ejaz Haider has been badgering some of the biggest names in Pakistan to write for the paper’s simply excellent opinion section. And, give or take the occasional glitch which all new newspapers suffer, the results have been spectacular. The dry, text-heavy, remorselessly boring style of other papers has been turned on its head with a product that actually seeks to achieve what all good journalism should do: engage the reader. Reading a newspaper should never be a chore and, whilst no paper worth its salt is ever just simply about entertainment, it should try and tickle the reader with a lively tone and energizing style. Moreover, the news section, where I spend my nights, not only has a crack team of reporters, some of whom have been judiciously poached from other papers, but a battery of sub-editors who go through all stories to ensure that they are in correct English and that extraneous facts and irrelevant stories are weeded out. But will all this sexy innovation and wanton breaking of the Pakistani-journalism mould be a bit too much too swallow? Will readers put their hands up in horror at the alien design, the desire to include beautiful and eye-catching photographs in something other than postage-stamp size and the punchy editorial tone? In one sense, yes – at least to begin with. In the late eighties when The Guardian revamped itself with a bold new redesign that married the best of highbrow broadsheet journalism with fonts and design elements that were more common to tabloids, establishment figures were shocked, and hardened readers chocked on their breakfast cornflakes. The rest of ‘Fleet Street’ was also pretty nonplussed and I think I’m right in saying that it was the Daily Express –still a half-way decent paper at that stage - that reacted with an editorial saying “The Guardian was not published yesterday” and proceeded to pour scorn on the paper’s new incarnation. But the fresh style remains in tact to this very day and the paper has gone from strength-to-strength with all sorts of elements being gradually pilfered by other papers (The Times is yet to match the excellence of the Guardian’s ‘G2’ features section with its execrable ‘T2’). Time, I think, will eventually show the same is true of Daily Times. But I daresay there are some nay-sayers out there keen to pooh-pooh the chances of a paper launched in the already substantially catered for English-medium daily market. Perhaps it is all a bit of a risk for the changes are indeed substantial and there is a lot for the reader – that famously conservative being – to get used to. However, it will be the fresh new voice of a paper that lives by the maxim of upholding “Your right to know” that will attract readers. To quote the first ever editorial, it hopes to “effect a rupture with the illiberal past and voice the hopes and demands of a rising new middle class of Pakistanis that wishes to be integrated economically and politically with the rest of the modern world.” I’m not a Pakistani, but even my pulse quickened when I read that first editorial with its conclusion: “One idea binds us together. It is the commitment to mould and build a new liberal order in the Pakistan of our founding fathers’ dreams. It is in this sense that we claim to be a new voice for a new Pakistan. We hope you will share our ideals.”