The Editor-in-Chief of the Indian Express talks to Nitin Panday about newspapers in the age of Wikileaks, branding of bylines and his desire to write 25,000-word articles for a long format product.
Journalism of Courage’, the tagline of The Indian Express group, does not just reflect the newspaper’s ideology, but is perhaps a suitable introduction for its Group Editor-in-Chief, Shekhar Gupta. Gupta, known as a reporter’s editor, has some significant newsbreaks in contemporary Indian journalism to his credit. He began his career as a cub reporter with the Chandigarh edition of The Indian Express in 1977. Just a few years later, he exposed a massacre due to ethnic conflict at Nellie in Assam. His work won him several awards and formed the basis of his first book, Assam: A Valley Divided, published in 1984. His other book is India Redefines Its Role, published by the Oxford University Press. In the course of his career – including a stint with India Today - Gupta has covered significant events ranging from Operation Bluestar to the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, the student uprising in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to the fall of the Berlin Wall as well as the conflict and insurgency in Sri Lanka’s Tamil North. While at India Today, he uncovered LTTE training camps in India, and exposed official intelligence agencies in a spy scandal that falsely implicated scientists of the Indian Space Research Organisation. Seven years before 9/11, he travelled across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Germany, the US and the UK, to report extensively on the threat from Islamic fundamentalism, including its links with Osama bin Laden.
For these and other achievements, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2009. Taking forward Ramnath Goenka’s vision of uncompromising commitment to independence and integrity of news, Gupta has led Express to occupy the mind space of readers in the midst of cut-throat competition. His love for sports is quite discernible in his column National Interest in The Indian Express. He also hosts an interview-based programme, Walk the Talk, on NDTV 24x7. Using a cricket metaphor, Gupta style, he has batted extraordinary well in the first innings of the match, and, being a “handsoff” editor now, he is leading his team smartly from behind. In the second innings of the match, where Gupta wants to “edit long-format magazines like The New Yorker or The Atlantic”, he is bound to surpass the expectations of his admirers.
Here are excerpts from a conversation with Shekhar Gupta:
Earlier this year, you had collaborated with Financial Times for content. How has the partnership helped so far?
As we all know, the financial newspaper market has quite a few players already in India. There are many products that look similar in various ways. The important thing for this domain is the presentation and to catch the mind-space of readers. And there are many ways to do that. There are newspapers whose circulation is larger than us. So one way was to work diligently and increase circulation to that level – which is a great idea in the long term and we are working towards that. But you can also lead by making a product which remains in the readers’ minds and which the reader will not get anywhere else. This can be achieved by distinctive content generated by yourself or by drawing it from various players, the world’s finest minds. At The Express, we have an arrangement with FT and The Economist. Many other publications also have these kinds of arrangements. FT and The Economist are two very distinctive publications – and we too are a publication with a difference – hence, they find we have harmony with them.
FT also had a stake in Business Standard once…
…Yes, they had a stake in BS until a few years back. But there is no stake in our case. It is a straightforward content deal. We just derive relevant content from FT and The Economist.
Wall Street Journal also has a similar relationship with Mint, though of course WSJ also has a facsimile edition in India…
Yes, they have a similar relationship with Mint. But you may want to know that the facsimile edition of Wall Street Journal is printed and distributed in India by us.
If you have to measure the success of these collaborations, would that reflect in readership or in ad revenue? How do you measure the success of these partnerships?
First of all, I am concerned about mind?space. Serious readers of financial newspapers buy more than one newspaper. In the metros, they would buy more than two newspapers. So for them to allocate time to each of them is a key decision. Readers want to see what is distinctive in the newspaper. If you look at FE (Financial Express), it has distinctive and strong opinion pages. It also has many news breaks or policy stories. If we have exclusive content from FT, which no other newspaper has, the reader would be compelled to pick it up for the exclusivity of content.
The Economist already sells in India. Please tell us about your tie-up with The Economist?
The Express gives The Economist a wide readership and this relationship is a mutually beneficial one. There is great demand for foreign news in the country. Even though we get foreign news from TV, the web and agencies, The Economist gives a different dimension to foreign news. When we went to journalism school, we were taught that there are five ‘Ws’ and one ‘H’ that made news. Today, ‘What’, ‘Where’, ‘When’ and ‘Who’ are already known by the time a newspaper reporter files a story, as it is already there on TV, web or mobile. So all you are left with are ‘Why’ and ‘How’, and a new question has emerged - ‘What Next’? While we follow this kind of journalism, The Economist has perfected it, hence they are a very good partner for us. When people are curious to know what is happening in international news, The Economist gives them the best insight, which is particularly helpful for those young readers who are preparing for competitive exams. It also harmonises well with our own content. Thus, if you look at The Express’s opinion pages, the Op-Ed pages, our special foreign pages, local political pages – one can say that we are moving into longformat writing. People read newspapers these days to get more domain knowledge from journalists.
But why don’t you have these pages for weekend editions, when readers want to read more?
Because we have other exclusive content for those days. The paper on Saturdays and Sundays carries reviews, which are very popular. Soon, we will have a review section on films, theatre, music, exhibitions and restaurants. But we have strict instructions for reviewing. Hence, there are no freebies, no free tickets, nor you-scratch-my-back–Iscratch- yours book reviews in our group – our code of conduct clearly mentions that. Our Sunday paper is very rich in content, besides we have a magazine called ‘Eye’ on Sundays.
Apart from FT and The Economist, there is also this relationship with NDTV for ‘Walk the Talk’. How has that relationship helped Indian Express as a group?
Well, I am the wrong person to ask that, because I am on my own side and I am also first of all on the paper’s side. The Express publishes the content of the conversation. People know I am an Express person and I have never distanced my TV identity from this Express identity. On TV, I am Shekhar Gupta of the Express Group. In fact, that is the rule, that no one can appear in another media or another publication even with permission without clear disclosure of the relationship one has with both publications or media groups.
As Editor-in-Chief, what is your day to day schedule like?
A typical day for me starts with reading newspapers, talking to colleagues, and discussing content -– what was right and what was wrong. I am the most hands-off Editor-in-Chief in the country in the sense that I take almost no formal meetings, barring the odd meeting in one or two months. Morning meetings and afternoon meetings are conducted by Raj Kamal Jha at The Express and by MK Venu at The Financial Express. But I do spend a few minutes while passing by and share with them some ideas. I write to them if I have to give them a story idea, discuss concepts, etc., Frankly, I don’t have to check any pages before they go to print. But I know in the morning what is there in the editorials in both the newspapers. At the Express, I review more often in terms of what editorials should say because The Express is a very opinionated paper, and I would like to keep it that waybecause we enjoy opinions.
What happens when Shekhar Gupta is not there, who is the No. 2?
Raj Kamal Jha is No. 2 at The Indian Express, and MK Venu at The Financial Express.
And what about at the group level?
I think there is no need. I am here and not going any place. By God’s grace, so far such a situation has not arisen.
Tell us something about the Marathi newspaper market. With the entry of new players in the market, do you see any content switch happening? The Express Group’s Loksatta is a very strong brand, but there are other strong newspaper brands entering the fray…
The brand that we worry about in the context of Loksatta is Maharashtra Times. Both Loksatta and Maharashtra Times have shared the stakes in the Mumbai market quite well. There are two brands that have been able to stand up in the tough markets very well – Hindustan Times in Delhi and Loksatta in Mumbai. I think Loksatta is doing very well in the Marathi market, and when you do well, you need to keep improving. But I don’t see anything happening in the Marathi market that will make us do anything radically different.
Are there plans to foray into any other language publication?
No, not yet.
You have been donning two hats – that of Editor-in-Chief and Chief Executive Officer. Is it challenging?
I agree with you, it is tough and challenging. And this is not at all an ideal situation, because your antennae have to be usually pointed in one direction. But having said that, once you learn to manage the job, it works out better. As for my experience, to begin with, it was tough. But now, I hardly face any dilemma. It is about harmonizing and one can do it easily. But at the same time, I must correct you. I gave up the title of CEO many years ago. So I have only one title now, Group Editor-in-Chief.
It seems like Shekhar Gupta the Editor is more dominant than Shekhar Gupta the CEO…
That’s because of what you see in the newspaper. But on the other hand, the whole system has been modernised at The Express Group like never before and the skill level of the marketing personnel is at par with the best in the market. I feel very happy when someone tells me that our marketing personnel are bright and competent.
The Express Group has seen some senior?level exits on the marketing side, Rajiv Jetley, for instance…
Rajiv did not last long enough. He is a very nice guy, but I don’t think he wanted to be in media, because he had an early exit from Bhaskar too.
There are people who talk about old school journalism and the new way of journalism. When you guide your editorial team, what are some of the things that you hope they will do differently from the way you have done your own journalism?
Firstly, along with the 5Ws and 1H of yore, one needs to keep in mind one more W in journalism – What Next. Journalists need to get under the stories and go beyond the obvious. Secondly, it has become a must for journalists to have domain knowledge. If you don’t have domain knowledge, why would anybody read you? Earlier, journalists could survive without domain expertise, but now journalists have no choice but to become experts.
So, you mean to say that bylines should become brand names?
Yes, absolutely… they are already becoming brand names.
Today, the web has become an open forum for discussion and criticism, and in recent days we have seen content taking a lot of flak from readers, and The Indian Express has been at the receiving end over the last few weeks. How do you view this? How do you approach a story the day after it has seen mass criticism?
We had realised very early that it was better to close our ears to noise. However, we do discuss all feedback. Anyone can disagree with you, and often enough disagreements also find a place in our paper. But we don’t have knee-jerk reactions or do things out of panic. I don’t read any vicious blogs or nasty emails, I just ignore them. It is a good policy if you can do it, and I manage to do it. That is exactly what my friend Tom Friedman advised me to do. In our business, we have to be critical with our facts and stick to them. So when facts are with you, it does not matter what people say. People ask me how so many people who attack The Express so much are friendly with us at a personal level. I tell them that once people realise you don’t have any hidden agenda, they respect intellectual disagreement. We don’t take our intellectual disagreements to our homes, social lives or to our personal relationships. In India, we are very liberal. Once people realise that if you make mistakes, you make amends, and that you stick to facts, then there is no problem. At least at The Express, we are not fazed by any of this at all.
How do you see the role of newspapers in the age of WikiLeaks?
The job of a journalist is to intermediate. You get data, somebody has to study and check it for accuracy, see the relevance and tell it by putting it in a form that is readable. WikiLeaks is one fat book of millions of words. WikiLeaks became news when The Guardian (and The Hindu in India) figured out what was important out of it. Most people did not read the entire WikiLeaks cables, but they did read stories based on these cables. That is the job of a journalist.
Would you like to edit any other media product someday?
I can always say that is a difficult question. But, someday if I have the luxury and time, and the Indian economy supports something like this, I would like to launch a long format magazine in India on the lines of The New Yorker or The Atlantic – where you could write 25,000-word articles. And I would write all of them myself (laughs).
Feedback: nitin@exchange4media.com
