[Reader-list] Tehelka is now a magazine.

[Shivam Vij]

Tehelka is now a magazine.

See www.tehelka.com. Do pick it up this weekend.
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o o o o o


New Ship, Same Course

By Tarun J Tejpal
Editor-in-Chief
http://www.tehelka.com/magazine/

There is a rumour doing the rounds that the magazine is dying. Some
say it is being spread by those who've killed a few in their time.
Others say it is the handiwork of those whose attention spans do not
extend beyond quicksilver television images and glossies of listings.
The wise would say there may well be some truth in it. After all, many
good things are reported to be dying: animals, plants, newspapers,
decency, poetry, liberalism, classical music, romantic love, frugal
ways. The question then to ask may be: are they, like the tiger, dying
because of external pressures, or is it because they are second-rate
and deserve to perish? In other words, is it worth fighting to keep
them alive?

TEHELKA was born under the sign of Mars, and working the mercantile
till has never been its forte. For some years now, it has fought to
create and expand the space for aggressive public interest journalism
in India, and has won many crucial battles even as it has taken some
crippling blows. Despite a continual resource crunch, the TEHELKA
weekly paper has stayed the course on its mandate of a journalism that
marries a high quality of analysis and writing, a strong sense of
social agency, and hard-nosed investigations into the abuse of public
money, public power and human rights. A dissonance had appeared.
Tehelka's journalism demanded shelf value and multiple readers; the
tabloid format offered neither

Some of the most important exposés of the last few years have been the
work of TEHELKA reporters, and many of these stories have been broken
on national networks such as Aaj Tak and Star News. These include
pathbreaking investigations into the Jessica Lall murder case, the
buying of key  Best Bakery massacre witness Zaheera Sheikh, foreign
paedophiles in Goa, the ambushing of witnesses of the 1984 anti-Sikh
riots, the child murders in Nithari, the scandal of Dera Sacha Sauda,
the hand of Uttar Pradesh's politicians in the opium trade, the fixing
of the Sanjay Dutt trial, the medical racket at the Agra asylum and in
the nursing homes of Delhi, the siphoning off by officials of
foodgrains meant for the poor, and many others. Apart from the pride
of doing these stories, there has been the satisfaction of having been
a catalyst in the revival of hard, questioning, adversarial reporting,
including some excellent sting exposés.

In the area of social agency, TEHELKA has taken up several key
crusades, including the cases of Bant Singh, a revolutionary Dalit
singer whose limbs were butchered by upper-caste Sikh landlords; Irom
Sharmila, the redoubtable young woman on a protest fast for the last
seven years demanding the repealing of the draconian Armed Forces
Special Powers Act in the Northeast; and the gang rape and killing of
a Dalit family in Kherlanji. Every week, without exception, the paper
has made prominent space for Dalit issues, farmer struggles, and other
voices emanating from the grassroots — in an attempt to take the
concerns of those who will never read our paper to those who ought to
read about them.

As for opening its pages up to opinions and ideas of all shades, that
has always been TEHELKA's credo: a completely liberal ethos,
resolutely opposed to bigotry and sectarianism. Free, fair and
fearless is what we tagged ourselves — we hope this has been in
evidence over the weeks and years.

When we set out to create the TEHELKA weekly — against all odds, amid
the debris of a bruising battle — we chose the format of a tabloid. We
felt TEHELKA's brand of proactive journalism would not fit well into
the affectations of a magazine. The paper's success appeared to
suggest we were right, but this was only partly true. An avalanche of
reader feedback was also telling us that a kind of dissonance had
appeared between the material and its vehicle. TEHELKA's long
journalism demanded both shelf value and multiple readers; the tabloid
format offered neither. Even so it took us a long time to convince
ourselves that we needed to find the shape of a magazine, and that
only happened when we discovered a look that was not only different
from all other weeklies but also capable of retaining our DNA
unchanged.

Like everything else in the world, the newsmagazine has its
limitations, but we'll work hard to push its possibilities just the
way we have endeavoured with our other avatars. Despite the obit
writers, the magazine deserves to survive — it is the crucial pause
between the impressionism of the daily paper and news channel, and the
long vista of the book. It is the first major sieving of the trash of
the world and, if done with imagination and courage, can have immense
value.

The credit for steering this latest transition, as always, goes to
TEHELKA's outstanding editors and designers — Anand Naorem and Uzma
Mohsin first among them. We hope the new format will showcase fresh
virtues while amplifying the old. We hope, consistent with our
marketing promise, our readers will find us tighter, brighter,
tougher.