NEWS TODAY COMPLETE 18 YEARS
There are occasions when patting oneself on one’s back is not only pardonable but necessary. Today, which marks the completion of eighteen years of continuous publication of News Today is one such occasion. Our advent today into majorhood does not not of course mean that we have only matured now. This offspring of TRR was a consummate product the day it was born.
And we look forward to the ‘major’ hurdles that lie ahead in the true professional spirit of our mentor. While we rememberwith poignant gratefulness the toil, privation, fortitude and imagination of our founder, TRR, who brought out this eveninger and sustained it with a dedication difficult to match, we feel gratified by the fact that, we, the inheritors of his cherished legacy, have been able to steer this newspaper through the stormier, contemporary seas infested by big sharks.
For many the rudder has been either political patronage or huge wealth and resources but for us it has been nothing more than our sincerity, skill and frankness, at times too brutal as warranted by the need to be truthful to ourselves and our readers. TRR’s mantra on the several occasions when he took on the high and mighty of the land was: Our target is trouble. How could it be anything different for us?
All the same we do believe that we have maintained a sense of proportion between news and comment, which we feel would have been noticed by our readers. We have tried with a resolute degree of success, to provide to our readers the facilitation against monotony by bringing out on an unfailing schedule supplements covering various facets like education, health, social work organisations et al besides the weekly colour pull-out Midweek Medley.
It is a medley not in the meddlesome sense but is a compilation of write-ups by our young colleagues which reflect their flair for displaying what they have gathered, and presenteed not in dull prose but in an easy communicative style. There is obviously room for improvement in content, range and diction which we assure the readers we would be able to achieve in due course.
A newspaper is analogous to a complicated delivery in every hour of its preparation and release. It has to keep to an unalterable sense of time, more so, as an eveninger, which does not enjoy the luxury and leisure to think slowly and act. Here it is always a race against time, everyday.
And our eveninger labours against odds also because it keeps to a neutral stance which, in a highly politicised ethos could hurt many and please only a few. We can never have permanent friends though we do have permanent enemies. Keeping our readers informed, though, remains our permanent interest. We are therefore encouraged by the feed back by phone and letters which could grow if the readers and their friends would support us more liberally and less reservedly unlike as now.
News Today and its sister publication, Maalai Sudar, can now boast of cutting technology at their disposal with a painstakingly built infrastructure all set to propel the two dailies into new realms of excellence and efficiency.
If the interest that we are now creating among readers and advertisers is sustained and enlarged as it deserves to be, the day should not far off when our financial constraints and the resultant ‘smallness’ would be forgotten memory and our newspaper would take its place of eminence among even our distinguished contemporaries of long standing.
e-mail the writer at
[email protected]