I am hoping that The Daily will create a new type of newspaper in the country: Rusi Karanjia

A boarding for The Daily and (inset) Karanjia: Creating a new styleJudging by the pre-publication publicity, Rusi Karanjia was going to give Bombay a crusading daily newspaper in the best traditions of his older weekly,Blitz. Banner hoardings at over 50 locations, including the Chowpatty pedestrian walkway, screamed that the city would get what it needs, "A bulldog of a newspaper".Rupees 2 lakh were spent preceding the release, on cloth banners and hoardings, stretching from the airport terminals in north Bombay to Churchgate in the south."The Daily," screamed the publicity blurbs, "is on your side" On a more personal level, Karanjia has spoken of little else in the past few months, alternately declaring that his latest offering would be a credible newspaper "of the people" or that it would, like its weekly sister, follow a publish-and-be-damned policy. By the time it was finally released, Karanjia made sure that the paper did not lack buyers at least for its first day on the stands.But the 35,000 copies of the daily which hit Bombay's pavements on March 23 belied most people's expectations about it. Set in the tabloid format which Karanjia claims to have introduced to the country 40 years ago, the paper seemed more like a hotch-potch mixture of an evening newspaper, a morning and Blitz, than anything really new.Additionally the tabloid was self-consciously sprinkled with the crusade on city issues which was the focal point of its advertising campaign. Diverging from the hard news style of other morning papers, The Daily carries only a little in the way of national and international news, filling in with a four-page daily magazine section and lots of political conjecture instead.Said Karanjia in defence of the concept he has spent over a year in developing, "morning newspaper readers feel starved of magazine stuff, every paper just gives them the daily news and that's it. The Daily is a paper which every member of the family can read and enjoy."Credibility: Many readers, however, argue that the thrust at the family market will prevent The Daily from developing an identity as a newspaper. Said Ashok Ajwani, who runs a cinema theatre in the city: "There is nothing to choose between this paper and the evening papers like Midday. I could never subscribe to it as a substitute for the Times or Express." Blitz's "yellow journalistic" image too, is likely to be a stumbling-block for the newspaper. Alyque Padamsee, the chief executive of Lintas advertising, states that advertisers are reluctant to patronise a daily which lacks in credibility.Retorts Karanjia angrily: "This is all nonsense about credibility. I've been called yellow, black, white and every other colour, but the important thing is that I'm read." Adding that he is competing with neither the morning nor evening papers.Karanjia states that he is creating an entirely new market by offering the reader something new and different. "Blitz has had so many copies and imitations," he said, "similarly I am hoping that The Daily will create a new type of newspaper in the country," at the end of the fortnight, however. The Daily's future was not as rosy as Karanjia seemed to believe. News-vendors in the city claimed that sales dropped as soon as the initial curiosity wore off, although railway station hawkers reported brisk sales to commuters.The trade circles were sceptical about the paper's reception. And editors of rival papers were almost universally scornful of The Daily. Said Behram Contractor, chief reporter of Midday: "The Daily cannot compete with any paper in the city except Blitz. It looks like Blitz, the attitude is like Blitz, and the market is that of Blitz."Most observers seemed to agree that, without a substantial facelift, it is unlikely that The Daily can make a splash, certainly not if it sticks with the turgid style that marked its first editorial.In a signed comment, Karanjia treated readers to such deadening sentences as, "We hope to make The Daily a microcosm of national life in all the multidimensionality of its political. cultural, ethnic variety, a complex interaction of scientific, economic and ideological factors." The bulldog has a long way to go before it begins to bite.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Nov 23, 2013 10:46 IST--- ENDS ---

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I am hoping that The Daily will create a new type of newspaper in the country: Rusi Karanjia

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