Prepared by: Somya Sharma Pulakit Singh

Submitted to: Dr. J.K.Panda (Assi. Prof. Mass Comm)

The Hindu Overview

TYPE Daily

FORMAT Broadsheet

OWNER Kasturi And Sons Limited(KSL)

PUBLISHER The Hindu Group

EDITOR Siddharth Varadarajan

FOUNDED 20th September 1878

POLITICAL ALLIGNMENT Left learning, Independent

LANGUAGE English, Tamil

HEADQUARTER Kasturi Buildings, 859 & 860,anna Salai, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600002

CIRCULATION 14,66,304

OFFICIAL WEBSITE www.thehindu.com

History of the Hindu:

•The Hindu was founded in Madras on 20th September 1878 as a weekly.

•It was led by :G. Subramania Iyer, a school teacher from Tanjore district and M. Veeraraghavachariar, a lecturer at Pachaiyappa's College and contribution of 4 law students: T. T. Rangachariar, P. V. Rangachariar, D. Kesava Rao Pantulu and N. Subba Rao Pantulu.

G.Subramania Iyer M.Veeraraghavachariar

•Started as a weekly newspaper, the paper became a tri-weekly in 1883 and an evening daily in 1889.

•Soon after its founding, most of the Triplicane Six parted ways to practice as lawyers. Chief-editor Subramania Iyer and Managing Director Veeraraghavachariar were the only ones who remained.

•Subramania Iyer took a bold stand and questioned the British masters as well as the Hindu orthodoxy. Veeraraghavachariar, on the contrary, was a moderate and opposed Subramania Iyer's militant views. 

• The difference in ideologies caused a rift between the two. This rift was further compounded more as time passed.

•In 1898, G. Subramania Iyer left The Hindu and took over the management of the Swadesamitran (was a Tamil language newspaper that was published from the then Madras city from 1882 to 1985).

•Left alone, Veeraraghavachariar employed C. Karunakara Menon as the Chief-Editor and tried to convert the newspaper into a joint-stock(A joint-stock company is a business entity which is owned by shareholders. Each shareholder owns the portion of the company in proportion to his or her ownership of the company's shares)company in 1901.

•The plan failed landing the newspaper in heavy debit. Faced with a crisis, Veeraraghachariar sold the newspaper in 1904-05. The paper was purchased by S. Kasturi Ranga Iyengar in April 1905.

•The Hindu was started to support the campaign of Sir T. Muthuswamy Iyer for a judgeship at the Madras High Court and to counterbalance the propaganda against him carried out by the Anglo-Indian press.

•The Hindu was one of the many newspapers of the period established to protest against the discriminatory policies of the British government in India.

Modern History of the Hindu

•N. Ram was appointed on 27 June 2003 as its editor-in-chief with a mandate to "improve the structures and other mechanisms of the newspaper.”

•On April 2, 2013 The Hindu started "The Hindu in School" with S.Shivakumar as its editor.

•The Hindu in school an all-new edition for young readers which will be distributed through schools as part of The Hindu's Newspaper in Education programme.

•The eight-page broadsheet will have a good mix of the day's important news developments, features, sports, and regional news,The Hindu school edition will strength students to improve their knowledge in various fields, including sports and world affairs, science and technology.

•Subscription and advertisement are major sources of income. The Hindu became, in 1995, the first Indian newspaper to offer an online edition.

•Subramania Iyer became the first editor and Veeraraghavachariar, the first managing director of the newspaper.

•On 16 september, 2013 The Hindu group launches its Tamil edition with K. Ashokan as its editior. The daily engaged readers of all age groups with extensive regional, national and international news coverage in tamil language.

•The newspaper has also established foreign bureaus in eleven locations – Islamabad, Colombo, Dhaka, Kathmandu, Beijing, Moscow, Paris, Dubai,  Washington D.C., London and most recently Addis Ababa.

•The Hindu was published weekly when it was launched in 1878, and started publishing daily in 1889.

•The Hindu was the first newspaper in India to have a website, launched in 1995.

•According to the Indian Readership Survey in 2012, it was the third most widely read English newspaper in India (after the Times of India and Hindustan Times), with a readership of 2.2 million people.

•The Hindu has its largest base of circulation in southern India, especially in the states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and it is also the most widely read English daily in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

•It is printed at 20 locations across eight states—Chennai, Coimbatore,  Bangalore,  Hyderabad,  Madurai,  Noida,  Visakhapatnam,  Thiruvananthapuram,  Kochi,  Vijayawada,  Mangaluru,  Tiruchirapalli,  Kolkata,Hubli, Mohali,  Allahabad,  Kozhikode,  Lucknow,   Anantpur and  Nellore.

•According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations,(it is a non-profit circulation-auditing organization, which certifies and audits the circulations of major publications, including newspapers and magazines in India) The Hindu had a circulation of 1.46 million copies as of December 2009.

•The enterprise employed over 1,600 workers and annual turnover reached almost $200 million in 2010.

Logo and its Significance

• The Kamadhenu (a divine bovine-goddess described in Hindu mythology as the mother of all cows) suggests auspiciousness (marked by success).• The sun is the source of knowledge and vitality, a living force.• India the mother country.• The elephant represents strength and power.• The ‘shankh’ represents the voice of people.• The lotus stands for purity and independence.• The ‘Blades of Grass’ stand for multiplicity & fertility (the growing popularity of the paper).

An Important News Coverage

•In 1987–88 The Hindu's coverage of the Bofors arms deal scandal, a series of document-backed exclusives set the terms of the national political discourse on this subject.

•The Bofors (a swedish company) scandal broke in April 1987 initiated by Congress politicians and implicating the prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi and several others who were accused of receiving kickbacks from Bofors AB for winning a bid to supply India's 155 mm field howitzer.

•During a six-month period the newspaper published scores of copies of original papers that documented the secret payments, amounting to $50 million, into Swiss bank accounts, the agreements behind the payments, communications relating to the payments and the crisis response, and other material.

•The investigation was led by part-time correspondent of The Hindu, Chitra Subramaniam reporting from Geneva, and was supported by Ram in Chennai.

•The scandal was a major embarrassment to the party in power at the centre, the Indian National Congress, and its leader Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. The paper's editorial accused the Prime Minister of being party to massive fraud and cover up.

Haubits FH77

Key Milestones:

Sept 20, 1878 : Six young men start The Hindu as a weekly edition.

April 1, 1889 : The Hindu becomes an evening daily.

Nov 11, 1940 : The Hindu becomes a morning daily.

July 15, 1978 : KSL starts The Sportstar a weekly magazine for Sports.

Dec 1, 1984 : KSL starts Frontline a fortnightly magazine on current affairs.

Jan 28, 1994 : KSL starts The Hindu Business Line, a business daily.

April 18, 1996 : The Hindu Internet Edition launched.

Sept 13, 2003 : The Hindu celebrates 125 years.

Sept 20, 2012 : KSL launches The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy.

The Hindu Group Publications( Sister publications)•The Hindu (1878): India’s National Daily.

•Buisness Line: Financial daily. It is priced at Indian Rupees 4 ($0.07) on weekdays and Saturdays and Indian Rupees 5 ($0.09) on Sundays. While other newspapers like The Economic Times and The Financial Express price their Saturday and Sunday editions at Rs.7 to Rs.10, Business Line has traditionally priced the paper same throughout the week. Other Business newspapers like Mint and Business Standard don't Publish on Sundays..

•Frontline: Fortnightly Features Magazine. As a current affairs magazine, it covers domestic and International news. Frontline gives a prominent place to various issues of development and hindrances in the Indian states. Apart from topics of politics and political economy, it also covers a wide range of topics including Arts, books, cinema, Science and English language..

•Sportstar: Weekly sports magazine .The magazine covers sports in India. It also has an extended and lengthy coverage of cricket, the unofficial national sport of India. A sports 'Quiz Corner' is published every alternate week..

•On April 2, 2013 The Hindu started "The Hindu in School" with S.Shivakumar as its editior. It was an eight-page broadsheet.

•On 16 september, 2013 The Hindu group launches its Tamil edition with K. Ashokan as its editior. 

•‘The Hindu Young World Quiz’ hosted by noted quizmaster V.V. Ramanan, that has now completed 12 years and is arguably the largest live, middle-school quiz competition.

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