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1996
LONDON LETTER
ASIAN NEWSPAPERS IN ENGLAND
BY: T.R.K
Away from India for 30 years, I still miss my daily intake of the
contents of a literate English language daily from India, where over
a cup of coffee I could imbibe the news about India. Media here gives
no more than half a column to news from the Indian sub-continent, then
buries it somewhere in its Overseas page. Often it is a thoroughly
de-natured agency copy, trimmed by an over-zealous sub editor. Any
news that transcends this treatment of marginalization, like the assassinations
of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi makes the front page for a few days.
Now there is an alternative. There are a growing number of English
papers directed to a population of some 2 million Asians living in
England. They are from diverse origins: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
Sri Lanka, East Africa, the West Indies and even Fiji. They are held
together by their undoubted allegiance to an unified image of the sub-continent.
30 years ago, there were no serious English language papers to cover
this largest single band, that would reach across the linguistic, religious
and cultural divide. INDIA WEEKLY, started in the Sixties by pioneering
journalist Dr.Tarapada Basu, who dominated the Indian Journalists'
forum for over two decades, is still in business. As a weekly journal
it is a jejune paste-up of colourless news items, with a rare import
of a feature, often without a byline. I was an
"insider-outsider" of this publication during its early days
off Fleet street, when the smell of newsprint, the printers' ink, beer,
cigarettes and the Victorian detritus inscribed itself on my memory
forever.
Three intervening decades have seen the arrival and disappearance of
several new ventures. The 1990s however have seen a boom in the establishments
of new media including cable TV, radio stations, and a multiplicity
of Indian language and English dailies and weeklies directed at the
British Asian community.
The most unusual among these is
ASIAN AGE, which is not strictly a UK paper, as it is published primarily
in India and then through the miracle of digital technology faxed
to a UK specialist printer NEWS FAX (which incidentally prints the
INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE and US TODAY) for a re-print. I spoke
to Miss Sajeda Momin, the self-assured Bureau-chief of ASIAN AGE
about its progress. Sajeda was matter of fact in her optimistic prognosis.
In six months the paper has made its mark as a family paper "that
identified simultaneously the key person in such a family unit as
an Asian professional person". The paper is printed as
a daily. It has a sizeable entertainment section on Saturdays, made
up mainly of adulatory interviews of Indian film stars: stories of
their rise and fall, their opinions and their high jinx. Fashion,
an agony column, and even the occasional short story give it the
appearance of comprehensiveness, if not relevance. Large sections
of the paper filled with Agency copy and the Herald Tribune and Washington
Post features used as page fillers make this annoyingly irrelevant
to readers' expectations.
ASIAN AGE has a circulation at present of about 10000 copies, which
Sajeda tells me is good news. The brain-child of M.J.Akbar, the
venerable eminence grise of Indian journalism, its commercial arrangements
are certainly unusual. It was confirmed to me that the UK facsimile
edition was in fact a "franchise", that gives a part ownership
in the UK side of this venture to an Asian businessman, Suresh Nanda.
The paper generally has a contractual arrangement with the INTERNATIONAL
HERALD TRIBUNE for some of its News and Features, and its distribution
facilities. HERALD TRIBUNE has a proven formulaic success, much copied
by others including an Arab paper faxed to Cairo from London for distribution
in the region. Such a pastiche cannot be anything but "neutral,
politically unbiased", inspite of its "pro-India stance",
as Sajeda claimed. The London bureau has three reporters and takes
on board occassional freelance contributions.
There is a considerable sea-change in reading EASTERN EYE, a garish
tabloid modelled after our own SUN and DAILY MIRROR, that emblazons
trivia across its front page, and packs a confection of sensational
soundbites on its inside pages: "Terror on the Big One"
"Officers Beat up a Family of Three", "Imran Sued" and
so on. I spoke to Sarwar Ahmed, its Editor, who denied that EASTERN
EYE had any cultural or religious or ideological bias. I reminded him
that the references I had seen to Salman Rushdie and the Bangladesh
writer Taslima Nasreen were expressing an ethnic outrage and were far
from unbiased. Ahmed had no difficulty in siding with the sense of
offence collectively felt by the British Asian community. "I feel
sorry for Rushdie's predicament. But he did not take the chance given
to redeem himself". Whilst being pro-active to what he calls the "British
Asian Politics", there is little campaigning zeal in its printed
word. Its columnist Thufayel Ahmed calls ASIAN AGE the worst British
News paper, in a defensive riposte, whilst getting its name wrong as
the INDIAN AGE. Ahmed gave me his circulation figure as being 25000
copies with a possible readership of 100,000. EASTERN EYE which started
life modestly in 1989 is celebrating its 5th anniversary with a re-launch
with two additional sections for women and entertainment. It has a
sister publication Surma in Bengali, a much muted, middlebrow tabloid
directed at an older age group: "more like the Daily Mail".
It is distributed through Market Force, a large network with access
to major newspapers retailers like W.H.Smith and Menzies.
By contrast, the ASIAN TIMES is an old-fashioned tabloid that calls
itself a "Campaigning Weekly". Its readership is, according
to Kashif Ali, its Editorial director, "opinion makers, teachers
and lecturers, social workers, and people involved professionally in
the UK Asian community at all levels". With a circulation
of 28,000, with the Caribbean Times a sister publication in tow, Hansib
Publishing has been active in educational and travel related publications
of books. I asked Kashif Ali what their campaigning stance implied. "We
are not content with merely reporting" he said to me, "we
upset as many people as possible, on issues that matter to our community:
like racism, job opportunity, the Police, immigration policies, women's
role". The classical medley of a left-of-centre campaigner, in
short. They have been close to Asian and black MPs like Keith Vaz,
and Bernie Grant, as well as the Labour Party's Shadow Cabinet. The
house of Hansib provides a free legal advisory service to Asian and
the Caribbean community. ASIAN TIMES subscribes to Xinhua, the Chinese
News Agency service, as being broad-based without high cost. It emerged
that Arif Ali, a grass roots activist and campaigner and the founder
of the paper was in fact Kashif's father. This modest but growing group
employs some 40 people. They are distributed through Sun Distribution,
although plans are afoot to do their own distribution.
The Asian newspaper and the magazine market seems to me to be ready
for new comers, with substantial journalistic pedigrees and proven
skills, certainly from India. They would have to be prepared to research
and study the way the UKs own media has changed and matured. There
has been a wholesale revamp of all the major papers, stylistically,
which is more than merely cosmetic. The British papers stopped
looking like a paste-up of a global sweep of Agency ticker tape, the
way Indian papers continue to look like. News is selectively imported,
with a benefit of in depth analysis by established commentators who
are not always journalists. There is always an undercurrent of
satire and an ability to laugh at oneself. The quality of writing,
at least in the broadsheets like the GUARDIAN, THE TIMES, the INDEPENDENT
and the TELEGRAPH is impressively high. ASIAN AGE has set out on this
road, using the obvious maturity of India's journalistic fathers, but
it still has that ticker tape collage look, and irrelevant features.
If any Indian Newspaper publishers are serious about reaching a part
of this two million market, they could do no better than sending their
good editors on a month-long rest and research sabbatical to England.
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