Those heady days at the Age

M J Akbar’s exit from The Asian Age, the newspaper he founded in 1994, has once again brought into sharp focus the nexus between corporates, media and politicians.

By Seema Mustafa

It is not often that one gets to participate in the starting of a newspaper. I was particularly lucky to have experienced this twice, once with The Telegraph in 1982 and again in The Asian Age in 1997. Both were started by M.J.Akbar, and while I stayed in The Telegraph for just over four years, my tenure with the Asian Age stretched across a decade. Both were heady experiences.

Akbar had already established his reputation as an editor with the Sunday, the cover stories of which are still talked about. Jagannath Mishra drooling over a large morsel of food, a portrait of Raj Narain strung upside down on the cover brought in a new journalism of courage and irreverence. No one was too big, no one was too small to be written about and Sunday was a must reading for all of us aspiring to make a mark in one of the greatest professions in the world: journalism.

The Asian Age was nearly three years old when I joined to help with the edit and op-ed pages, and then went on to manage the bureau and the news reporting. Akbar was managing everything, from news, to marketing, to circulation, to finances, and at times we thought he would collapse from sheer exhaustion, made that much worse by the tension and strain of bringing out a daily newspaper. The office was two tiny rooms in a building near Connaught Place. There were just about four to five reporters, mostly raw hands, there was no city edition of the newspaper and frankly a lesser man would have on any given day at the time thrown up his hands and said: enough, no more, I am opting out.

To make matters worse, the rumours circulating about the newspaper were even worse. It will collapse any day, they said, it has strange financing, they insisted, all of them, journalists, politicians and others nodding their heads wisely as they demonstrated their complete ignorance. In what I think was a very clever move, Akbar had borrowed from the west a model of franchising the newspaper to different business houses. Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata - where the circulation at the time had soared to over two lakhs because of Akbar’s old association with the city - were all in the hands of different businessmen who bore the losses and of course would get the profits. Needless to say they only bore losses in the initial years and slowly backed out, leaving the newspaper to Akbar and at that time his very trusted friend, Rama Reddy, to run. In fact Reddy, the little known proprietor of the Deccan Chronicle, Hyderabad, had found his golden goose in Akbar who brought him into what can be called the media mainstream.

The Bangalore editon was started, Gujarat was started, London was doing well and the newspaper gradually acquired a profile. A small newspaper, The Asian Age set itself apart by reviving traditional journalism, the news story that was written without fear or favour, the absence of holy cows, the insistence that it would be independent and true to the profession. The salaries were abysmal but the space and the freedom was tremendous. We told reporters wishing to join in those days, come here if you want to be a journalist, do not bother if all that you are looking for is money. And they came eventually, many taking pay cuts because they wanted to work under MJ Akbar, and learn from the experience. It was a tough experience, as he was a hands-on editor and
was particularly focused on the desk where he brought in young novices and trained them from scratch.

The paper grew, a Delhi editon started, a tabloid started, the Sunday magazine started looking even better, and the newspaper became a must read for diplomatic and defence circles in Delhi. Instead of not even being looked at, it became the first newspaper for many in senior positions, as it was the only newspaper in the national capital questioning the establishment through its reports. Akbar gave the space, and rarely questioned our judgement. He kept a hawks eye on the newspaper, however, but once assured that the news item was factual, honest, and not planted he did not intervene.

The Asian Age became a journalists dream, a tiny oasis in a media world driven by advertisements and TRP ratings. It seemed too good to last. But then Akbar and Reddy decided to open the Chennai edition. Reddy insisted that it be called the Deccan Chronicle, maintaining that this would help tie up advertisement and other revenues in the south. Made sense, and DC it was, but set up entirely by Akbar. He virtually camped in Chennai for days, visiting Delhi occasionally, and fine-tuned the newspaper to a point where it broke the Hindu monopoly and in less than two years crossed the three lakh mark. It was phenomenal. And with this turn around came the ABC figures, and the Asian Age/DC stabilized to finally, after 15 long years of toil and trouble, become a stable newspaper that was ready to take on the world. The editor, with Reddy in tow, starting talking of revamping our Bangalore and Mumbai editions and it was clear that the newspaper could now only grow.

The newspaper started taking up issues. We wrote extensively on the Kargil war, and while the reporting made the government furious, it earned us new respect and admiration. I still remember that moment which journalism is all about when we were told that the soldiers posted in Jammu and Kashmir had asked for the Asian Age to be flown to them. That was worth all the criticism and the attacks we were facing. I must add here that the attack often took a personal form and was cheap and absolutely unethical. But we had all decided to ignore this, and let the truth speak for itself. Akbar tells us he felt the pressure, when the NDA was in power, and now of course even more when the Congress is in power as its leaders find it even more difficult to accept criticism than the BJP.

The India-US civilian nuclear energy deal: The Asian Age was the only newspaper that stayed the course in opposing the deal and pointing out that it was totally against the interests of India. The newspaper did its job and gave the space to all those who were being blacked out by the other media. The strategic experts, the nuclear scientists, commentators, politicians all drifted to The Asian Age where they found that they had a voice. To cut a long, long story short, the pressure on the newspaper was immense. It cannot be imagined. They tried to get us, but could not. The days and nights were tense, but the people got a voice. The political parties took it up, and the rest is history. One little newspaper showed that by just staying the course, reporting the truth, and giving the people a voice you can change history. Parliament rejected the nuclear deal, and the government today stands completely isolated.

It is not easy for editors today to take this position. It is not easy, as the big media is controlled by the big industry and the nexus between the corporates and the politicians and the media is deep and sinister. There are also not many editors of any caliber left, and it is difficult to even count them on the fingers of one hand. Business persons are editors today, while true journalists of the status of Akbar are being eased out. The Congress leaders smarting over the government’s defeat on the nuclear deal managed to kill a newspaper, but they have failed to still the voice.