Leading the change, again

The best thing about the new Hindustan Times design is that all of it is entirely in keeping with our traditions. For just under a century the HT has always set the trend and changed the rules. Hindustan Times has been at the forefront of innovations in newspaper design from the day it started. This one is for new India, writes Vir Sanghvi.

Those of us who have been involved with the running of the Hindustan Times over the last decade like to thinkthat we made many revolutionary changes. Well, perhaps we did. But increasingly, I get the feeling that wegive ourselves too much credit.

HT Image

Let’s take the example of the new design. We are proud to have Mario Garcia redesign the paper. Mario hasan old association with the paper. Eight years ago, he came in to redesign HT City and our supplements.

Mario’s design for the paper supplants the one created by Michael Keegan, the designer from the Washington Post who did two separate designs for the main paper over the last ten years. Though there was a phase, a couple of years ago, when we did silly things to Michael’s design (yes, I know; we are not perfect), it was strong enough to withstand any mistakes we may have made.

I remember when Michael first came to Delhi to look at the paper. And I remember banging heads with Marioas we tried to explain to him what I wanted to do with HT City. But I suspect I was wrong to act as though I was doing something new or different. Looking through the HT’s archives, I was startled to discover that the paper’s reputation for design innovation dated back to long before my birth.

These were no idle boasts. The HT was at the forefront of innovations in newspaper design almost from the dayit started. In the 1920s, all Indian papers followed the British tradition of putting advertisements on page one. The news stories were inside the paper. (In England, such papers as The Times stuck to this tradition well into the1960s).

American papers, in contrast, pioneered the style of news presentation we still follow to this day. The news began on page one with bold headlines. The HT ignored the British tradition and went with the American pattern forcing all Indian newspapers (including the two colonial market leaders of that era: Delhi’s The Statesman and Bombay’s The Times of India) to follow suit. (The last to make the change was The Hindu and The Times of India took many, many years to come to terms with 20th century design).

A second important design innovation was the reduction of column width. Designers will tell you now that if a columnis too broad, it is more difficult for the eye to follow the text. I have no idea how the early editors of the HT workedthis out but they changed column width (again in accordance with the American pattern) and forced all other papers tofollow suit.

Nor were these changes limited to design. We pride ourselves at the HT on the prominence we give our journaliststhese days. Unlike some other papers where they are treated as minions who write the stuff between theads and regarded as secondary to spacesellers, the HT’s journos are treated with pride and dignity. We recognisetheir roles as stars, give them bylines and carry their photos as often as we can so readers can put faces to the stories.

But in doing this, we are only upholding an old Hindustan Times tradition. The HT has always made much of itsjournos. In 1944, when Durga Das joined the paper as Special Representative (a position somewhere between today’sSpecial Correspondent and Chief of Bureau), the HT bragged about his arrival on page one.

The story, which included a photograph of Durga Das’s unsmiling visage, complete with spectacles and toothbrushmoustache, was headlined “India’s News-getter No. 1 joins The Hindustan Times.” The story outlined Durga Das’scareer and noted “although not a scoopmonger, Mr Durga Das has a record of big stories...he has travelled widely inIndia and Europe.”

Would newspapers brag about their Special Correspondents today? I’m not sure. Editors, perhaps. But correspondents?In this respect too, the HT was ahead of its time.

Then, there’s the honours list of HT editors. In all honesty, I must concede that we’ve had a few duds, but we’vealso had some real stars, the biggest journalistic names of their times: Khushwant Singh, B.G. Verghese, DurgaDas (he rose to the post eventually), the legendary S. Mulgaokar, Prem Shankar Jha and Devdas Gandhi. Others leftbefore they reached the very top: Sham Lal who went on to become the best editor The Times of India ever had;Chandan Mitra who now edits The Pioneer, Aditya Sinha currently Editorin-Chief of the New Indian Express andBharat Bhushan who edits The Mail Today.

But, apart from the odd exception, the HT’s editors have never been windbags and bores unlike many editors ofother papers. This too is part of the tradition. Khushwant Singh saw no contradiction between editing India’s mostpowerful paper and writing an entertaining weekly column (which still appears every Saturday in the HT). Andthe current editor, Sanjoy Narayan, writes the best rock music column in the business (on Sunday in Brunch).This tradition goes back to the 1920s.

When the HT came out, editorials in other papers were long and verbose. Often they occupied an entire page. Itwas the HT that introduced the shorter — and often wittier — editorial to the Indian media. Integral to the HT’sstyle was that early and later editors tended to be multi-faceted persons who did not take themselves too seriously.S. Mulgaokar was a celebrated gourmet and a champion bridge player.

Khushwant Singh was never less than entirely readable. Which brings us back to the thought with which I startedout. How much that is new or innovative have any of us, who have been editors more recently, really done?

My conclusion is that we have not done that much that is out of keeping with the traditions of the HT. There issomething about the atmosphere at the paper that makes us want to be slightly irreverent, more focused on what ishappening in world media and eager to try and create a paper that showcases the best Indian journalism.

God knows it isn’t always easy. There have been two big changes in newspaper reading habits in India over the last20 years. The first is that post the 1991- liberalisation, our readers became consumers of all the goods that were suddenly available in the shops, and advertisers became more significant contributors to our bottom-line. The HTtook a little longer than it should have to come to terms with this change.

But when we did accept that the needs of our readers had changed, I’d like to think that we coped with thetransition better than many other papers. We still have content; we still treat our readers as our primary constituency;you can’t buy your way into the HT; every word that appears in the main paper or in such supplements as HT City or Brunch is edited and vetted with the same attention to detail and ethics. As far as we are concerned, whether we are writing about the prime minister, a new restaurant or a cricket match, we will still give each the respect and attention it deserves.

The second major change has been the growth of new media. The reality is that many, if not most, of the people who pick up the HT each morning already know what the big news stories are. If they haven’t watched TV news then they have probably surfed the Internet. The challenges before a newspaper are to a) look as sleek and glossy and modern as global TV and b) to convince readers that there is still something left to say.

The content has not been a major problem. Because of the excellence of the HT’s journalism, because of our obsession with local stories that are often ignored by national electronic media, and our continuing effort to develop original voices with a fresh perspective on the world, there’s always something new to read in the HT.

The appearance issue is slightly more difficult to resolve, at least partly, because we have ourselves set the barso high by consistently hiring the world’s finest designers. The only way to achieve a level of design excellence thatis always contemporary is to continually update the design, to go back to global graphic geniuses and to ask themto better their work.

It’s going to sound slightly boastful but I think the HT is now not just the best paper in India but it is also thecountry’s first 21st century newspaper.

It reaches millions: it influences events; it can dictate policy; it doesn’t just analyse the news — if often makes it;it’s well written and intelligently edited; it can be trusted because nobody can pay his way into our pages; and nowit looks even better than before.

The best thing about all this is that all of it is entirely in keeping with our traditions. For just under a century theHT has always set the trend and changed the rules.

And we intend to keep doing exactly that.

Hindustan Times has been at the forefront of innovations in newspaper design from the day it started. This one is for new India.

Vir SanghviAdvisory Editorial Director