When you hark back to an event that happened thirty-five years ago, where do you place it in the present context? In a linear sense, thirty-five years is not such a long time even in living memory, though it is longer than a generation. At the same time, an entire era has swept by during this period. The world has changed in some crucial ways.
And the media is the dominant measure of epochal changes that have transformed our lives since the launching of this newspaper thirty-five years ago. But the story to tell is how the launching of this newspaper was a revolutionary step in the history of Pakistan’s media.
Yes, this is a point that may have been lost in the great upheaval that has overtaken the entire universe of media and communication. The very existence of print media has become problematic. The birth of this newspaper now seems to have happened in another age but the irony here is that The News had appeared as the harbinger of the future of Pakistan’s media.
Essentially, this newspaper is the embodiment of the progressive vision of Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman, who presides over the largest and the most enterprising media group of the country. He looked ahead at that time and ushered the print media of Pakistan from technological into digital age. A surprising manifestation of this leap into the future was the fact that this newspaper became a sensation well before it was launched.
It was months before the deadline for publication that preparations were set into motion and, eventually, we were ready for the dry run. There was a certain reputation that our offices in Karachi had acquired. An array of desktop computers in the newsroom was literally a spectacle to watch. This could not have been imagined in a newspaper office at that time.
Consequently, distinguished visitors would visit our offices and meet the senior staff. We hosted diplomats and high officials. And one guest whose presence caused a great stir was Benazir Bhutto. She was visibly pleased to take a tour of the premises and interact with our senior journalists. It so happened that when the then chief minister of Sindh, Jam Sadiq Ali, who had an adversarial relationship with the PPP, learnt about Benazir’s visit, he called me to invite him to tour the offices of The News. Naturally, this happened.
Now, I should resist this temptation to continue to delve into memories. There is so much else to talk about and reflect upon at this time. But I still think that this commemoration of thirty-five years of this newspaper would justify at least a brief recollection of the launching of this newspaper.
In a personal sense, I confess that I was overwhelmed by that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of being the launch editor of The News in Karachi, a project that deserves a luminous headline in the history of media in Pakistan. It was not just a professional but an emotional involvement. I would say that I had my dreams and it was this feeling that I sought to inject into the first editorial of this newspaper. I was so excited about it that I had written it a few months before The News was launched.
And, of course, it was titled: “Journey of a thousand dreams”.
It is very relevant now to highlight the vision and the initiative to catch up with global technological standards. We had state-of-the-art equipment. But one can imagine how strenuous this enterprise must have been for our journalists and technical staff. We were entering into a territory we were not familiar with.
It took us some time to deal with teething troubles. I am talking about it because that initial period had become a very exciting time. We had great fun while learning the ropes. When I think about the launching of The News, it is that period that kindles my imagination. It may seem to be an exaggeration but it had the feeling of being in a wonderland.
There is a reason why I am mentioning that early phase of enthusiasm among our editorial staff. I began with emphasising the significance of how this newspaper led Pakistan’s print media into the digital age. As I have stated, it was a kind of revolution. But The News had another distinction that also set it apart from other newspapers. I am referring to what I fondly remember as our ‘dream team’. This was our editorial staff. Putting it together was an achievement that I was really proud of.
And what made it different? Well, we had a core group of senior and experienced journalists. But the ‘dream team’ consisted of bright young journalists, with a large presence of young women. For almost all of them, it was their first journalistic assignment. They had all come with the baggage of their own dreams.
There was a process through which those aspiring, young professional were chosen. There was an initial test in English and general knowledge. Then they were interviewed by a panel of seniors. After that, they were assigned to different desks or departments. Finally, the heads of the respective desks had the veto power.
The idea—and I was personally very concerned about it—was to create an environment that was lively and cooperative. I like to believe that it worked. There was a kind of camaraderie in evidence during that time that I have not encountered in any other group of working journalists during my very long experience in this profession.
I can say this with pride and with confidence that many members of that ‘dream team’ later rose to high positions in the media, including the electronic media. I would desist from naming names but this is a simple exercise for any investigative journalist to conduct. We had an exceptional reserve of talent that consequently flourished in the journalistic profession across a number of media groups.
I am not naming names because that would be a difficult task and, besides, I am only playing with my memories and my thoughts in this brief write-up. But I need to make one exception. I want to remember Imran Aslam, a gifted individual who was our news editor when The New was launched and later, he became its editor.
He was more than a journalist and this enabled him to make a creative contribution to the great splash that this newspaper made thirty-five years ago. He was good at grooming talent and the human touch he imparted to his professional conduct was truly an asset and helped maintain a convivial atmosphere in the office. His death in December 2022 was a big loss for our fraternity.
A number of our colleagues from the original team are also no longer alive. This is what happens when time goes by. This is how things change. But time also brings about major changes in living things. What has happened within the short life of this newspaper–given the age of some other publications–in the domain of media communications is phenomenal. Presently, the print media is struggling for its survival and this struggle imposes a different set of challenges.
In fact, this occasion of celebrating thirty-five years of The News has allowed me the excuse of reminiscing about those happier times when new beginnings inspired hope and some form of festivity. Otherwise, now is not the time to be cheerful about any aspect of the print media or the entire media as such.
Thankfully, it is not my mandate to reflect on the present state of the media with reference to the journey this newspaper has made during the last thirty-five years. That would be, to be honest, a tough and dreary undertaking. On the one hand, there are increasingly bothersome issues of freedom. On the other, the turmoil that exists in the digital world has so adversely affected the media that it is very difficult for the mainstream media to perform its prescribed role. Add to this the formidable financial constraints of almost all media houses.
We are living in a post-truth world where it is becoming very difficult to distinguish the real from the fake and the truth from falsehood. And the future’s not ours to see. Still, there is every reason to hope that the print media, with its digital reincarnations, will survive and will continue to strive to tell truth to power.
Ah, but let me not lapse into a mood of despair. After all, we are celebrating the thirty-fifth anniversary of an enterprise that was, at its moment of birth, a symbol of revolutionary change in the sphere of print. The News is very much here. That journey of a thousand dreams is still alive.
—The writer is a senior journalist and was the first Editor of The News Karachi
