The Hindu

Name	The Hindu
Logo
Caption	The March 16, 2005 front page of The Hindu
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Foundation	20 September 1878
Owners	Kasturi & Sons Ltd.
Publisher	The Hindu Group
Political	Left-wing
Chiefeditor	N. Ram
Language	English
Headquarters	859-860 Anna Salai Rd, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600002
Circulation	1,466,304 daily
Website	TheHindu.com
Issn	0971-751X
Oclc	13119119

The Hindu is an Indian English-language daily newspaper published since 1878. With a circulation of 1.46 million, It has its largest base of circulation in South India, especially Tamil Nadu. Headquartered at Chennai (formerly called Madras), The Hindu was published weekly when it was launched in 1878, and started publishing daily in 1889.

The Hindu became, in 1995, the first Indian newspaper to offer an online edition.

The Hindu is published from 14 locations—Bangalore, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Hubli, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, Madurai, Mangalore, Thiruvananthapuram, Tiruchirapalli, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam.

History

The first issue of The Hindu was published on September 20, 1878, by a group of six young men, led by G. Subramania Aiyer, a radical social reformer and school teacher from Thiruvaiyyar near Thanjavur. Aiyer, then 23, along with his 21-year-old fellow-tutor and friend at Pachaiyappa's College, M. Veeraraghavachariar of Chingleput, and four law students, T.T. Rangachariar, P.V. Rangachariar, D. Kesava Rao Pantulu and N. Subba Rao Pantulu were members of the Triplicane Literary Society. The British-controlled English language local newspapers had been campaigning against the appointment of the first Indian, T. Muthuswami Iyer, to the Bench of the Madras High Court in 1878. "The Triplicane Six," in an attempt to counter the dominant attitudes in the English language press started The Hindu on one British rupee and twelve annas of borrowed money. Aiyer was the editor and Veeraraghavachariar the Managing Director. The first editorial declared, "[the] Press does not only give expression to public opinion, but also modifies and moulds it."

Three of the students soon left the paper and took up careers in law, while Pantulu continued to write for The Hindu. The founders of the newspaper maintained a neutral stance regarding British rule, and occasionally, as in an editorial of 1894, held that British rule had been beneficial to Indian people. "However, it was equally convinced that the Anglo-Indian Press should be challenged, despotic bureaucrats condemned, and the abuse of power exposed," writes historian S. Muthiah.

Initially printing 80 copies a week at the Srinidhi Press in Mint Street, Black Town, The Hindu was published every Wednesday evening as an eight-page paper, each a quarter of today's page size and sold for four annas (1/4 Rupee). After a month of printing from the Srinidhi Press, the newspaper switched to the Scottish Press, also in Black Town. The earliest available issue of the paper is dated June 21, 1881. In 1881, it moved to Ragoonada Row's "The Hindu Press" of Mylapore, with the intention of making it tri-weekly. This plan did not materialize until it moved to the Empress of India Press, where, starting on October 1, 1883, is was published on every Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening; it continued maintaining the same size as before.

The offices moved to rented premises at 100 Mount Road on December 3, 1883. The newspaper started printing at its own press there, christened "The National Press," which was established on borrowed capital as public subscriptions were not forthcoming. The building itself became The Hindu's in 1892, after the Maharaja of Vizianagaram, Pusapati Ananda Gajapati Raju, gave The National Press a loan both for the building and to carry out needed expansion.

Its assertive editorials earned The Hindu the nickname, the Maha Vishnu of Mount Road. "From the new address, 100 Mount Road, which to remain The Hindu's home till 1939, there issued a quarto-size paper with a front-page full of advertisements—a practice that came to an end only in 1958 when it followed the lead of its idol, the pre-Thomson Times—and three back pages also at the service of the advertiser. In between, there were more views than news." Joint Managing Director N. Murali said in July 2003, "It is true that our readers have been complaining that some of our reports are partial and lack objectivity. But it also depends on reader beliefs." N. Ram was appointed on June 27, 2003 as its editor-in-chief with a mandate to "improve the structures and other mechanisms to uphold and strengthen quality and objectivity in news reports and opinion pieces", authorised to "restructure the editorial framework and functions in line with the competitive environment". On September 3 and 23 , 2003, the reader's letters column carried responses from readers saying the editorial was biased. An editorial in August 2003 observed that the newspaper was affected by the 'editorialising as news reporting' virus, and expressed a determination to buck the trend, restore the professionally sound lines of demarcation, and strengthen objectivity and factuality in its coverage.

In 1987–88 The Hindu's coverage of the Bofors arms deal scandal, a series of document-backed exclusives set the terms of the national political discourse on this subject. The Bofors scandal broke in April 1987 with Swedish Radio alleging that bribes had been paid to top Indian political leaders, officials and Army officers in return for the Swedish arms manufacturing company winning a hefty contract with the Government of India for the purchase of 155 mm howitzers. During a six-month period the newspaper published scores of copies of original papers that documented the secret payments, amounting to $50 million, into Swiss bank accounts, the agreements behind the payments, communications relating to the payments and the crisis response, and other material. The investigation was led by part-time correspondent of The Hindu, Chitra Subramaniam reporting from Geneva, and was supported by Ram in Chennai. The scandal was a major embarrassment to the party in power at the centre, the Indian National Congress, and its leader Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. The paper's editorial accused the Prime Minister of being party to massive fraud and cover up.

In 1991, Deputy Editor N. Ravi, Ram's younger brother replaced G. Kasturi as Editor. Nirmala Lakshman, Kasturi Srinivasan's granddaughter, became Joint Editor of The Hindu and her sister, Malini Parthasarathy, Executive Editor.

In 2003, the Jayalalitha Government of the state of Tamil Nadu, of which Chennai is the capital, filed cases against the paper for "breach of privilege" of the state legislative body. The move was widely perceived as a government's assault on freedom of the press. However, The Hindu emerged unscathed from the ordeal, scoring both political and legal victories, as it instantly commanded the support of the journalistic community throughout the country.

The younger generation of The Hindu's editors have also contributed much to its commercial success. They built a modern infrastructure for news-gathering, printing and distribution. On the look of the newspaper, editor-in-chief Ram writes, "The Hindu has been through many evolutionary changes in layout and design, for instance, moving news to the front page that used to be an ad kingdom; adopting modular layout and make-up; using large photographs; introducing colour; transforming the format of the editorial page to make it a purely 'views' page; avoiding carry-over of news stories from one page to another; and introducing boxes, panels, highlights, and briefs." Major layout changes appeared starting

The Hindu is family-run. It was headed by G. Kasturi from 1965 to 1991, N. Ravi from 1991 to 2003, and by his brother, N. Ram, since June 27, 2003. Other family members, including Nirmala Lakshman, Malini Parthasarathy, Nalini Krishnan, N Murali, K Balaji, K Venugopal and Ramesh Rangarajan are directors of The Hindu and its parent company, Kasturi and Sons. S Rangarajan, former managing director and chairman since April 2006, died on 8 February 2007. Ananth Krishnan, who is the first member of the youngest generation of the family to join the business has been working as a special correspondent in Chennai and Mumbai since 2007.

Partial list of directors

G. Subramania Iyer (1878–1898)

M. Veeraraghavachariar (1898–1904)

Kasturi Ranga Iyengar (1904–1923)

S. Rangaswami (1923–1926)

K. Srinivasan (1926–1959)

G. Narasimhan (1959–1977)

N. Ram (1977–), Editor-in-Chief

Board of Directors

The Hindu Group is managed by the descendants of Kasturi Ranga Iyengar. As of 2010, there are 12 directors in the board of Kasturi & Sons—N. Ram, N. Ravi and N. Murali (sons of G. Narasimhan); Malini Parthasarathy, Nirmala Lakshman and Nalini Krishnan (children of S. Parthasarathy); Ramesh Rangarajan, Vijaya Arun and Akila Iyengar (children of S. Rangarajan); K. Balaji, K. Venugopal and Lakshmi Srinath (children of G. Kasturi).

Reviews

The Times, London listed The Hindu as one of the world's ten best newspapers in 1965. Discussing each of its choices in separate articles, The Times wrote:

In 1968, the American Newspaper Publishers' Association awarded The Hindu its World Press Achievement Award. An extract from the citation reads:

Achievements

The Hindu has many firsts in India to its credit, which include the following

1940: First to introduce colour

1963: First to own fleet of aircraft for distribution

1969: First to adopt facsimile system of page transmission

1980: First to use computer aided photo composing

1986: First to use satellite for facsimile transmission

1994: First to adopt wholly computerized integration of text and graphics in page make-up and remote imaging

1995: First newspaper to go on Internet

1999: Becomes India national news paper

Supplements and features

Mondays: Metro Plus, Business Review, Education Plus

Tuesday: Metro Plus, Young World, Book Review

Wednesdays: Metro Plus, Job Opportunities

Thursdays: Metro Plus, Science, Engineering, Technology & Agriculture, NXg

Friday: Friday Features, Cinema Plus

Saturday: Metro plus, Property Plus,

Sunday: Weekly Magazine,Metro Plus Weekend, Downtown, Retail Plus, Classifieds, Open Page, Literary Review , every first Sunday

Daily features: This day that age, Religion, The Hindu Crossword, Sudoku

Online presence

The Hindu was the first newspaper in India to have a website, launched in 1995.

On 15 August 2009, the 130-year-old newspaper, launched the beta version of its redesigned website at beta.thehindu.com. This was the first redesign of its website since its launch. On June 24, 2010 the beta version of the website went fully live at www.hindu.com.

The new website retains its core values of independence, authenticity, and credibility while adopting contemporary web design principles, tools, and features.

The design is by Mario Garcia Jr., of Garcia Media, Tampa, Florida, USA. The workflow solution is by CCI Europe A/S, Denmark. The web publishing system is from Escenic A/S, Norway. The implementation was done in-house.

Controversy

The Hindu has been accused of an anti-Tamil slant in its writing by many advocates for the rights of Sri Lankan Tamils. Prominent Sri Lankan political commentator David Jeyaraj claimed he was fired from The Hindu for exposing IPKF atrocities against the Sri Lankan Tamils. N.Ram was awarded the "Sri Lanka Rathna", the highest civilian award that can be conferred on a foreigner in Sri Lanka in November 2005.

In light of opinion pieces published by the head of The Hindu, N. Ram, extolling China's governance of Tibet and other perceived slights, many commentators, have claimed a Sinophilic bias in the writings of the paper. B. Raman director of the South Asia Analysis Group stated "Its sympathy for China and its policy in recent years of keeping out of its columns any report or article of a negative nature on China is well known." and went on to further claim that "its policy of placing its columns at the disposal of the Xinhua news agency of China" make it a mouthpiece of the Chinese government.

The Hoot, an Indian media watchdog group claimed that "of late there had been too much editorialising in the news columns of The Hindu".

See also

The Hindu Business Line

Citations

References

125 years of The Hindu

Looking Back: The history of The Hindu as told by historian S. Muthiah.

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External links

Official Website of The Hindu

Online edition (ePaper)

Category:English-language newspapers published in India Category:Media in Chennai Category:Newspapers published in Chennai Category:Newspapers published in India Category:Newspapers published in Kolkata Category:Publications established in 1878