We cemented our place through quality reporting: Hindi journalists  

 The second day of the Journalists’ Literature Festival held at the Chandigarh Press Club, featured some of the brightest minds in journalism.

The day started with a session on the evolution of narrative in Hindi journalism, transitioning from short to long formats. Senior journalists and authors Asha Arpit, Mayank Mishra, Ranju Arey and Arun Naithani were part of the panel, which was moderated by journalist Barinder Singh Rawat. 

Rawat started the session by remarking that Hindi journalism has indeed come a long way from days when the eligibility criterion for hiring a journalist was that he be passionate and be willing to work with just chickpeas as his sustenance to when vernacular journalists are taking home respectable packages. He also observed that leading minds are specially writing editorials in vernacular languages, which once upon a time had to be translated from English. 

Tracing the origin of Hindi journalism from the days of the freedom struggle, Nithani remarked that the first Hindi weekly was published from Kolkata, a non-Hindi speaking region, after Independence it took up topics such as social justice and economic justice. He also emphasised on the importance of editorial pages, which are the brain of the newspaper

Arey, however, wistfully remembered the days when there was no race to break the news, and how this hurry has affected the credibility of journalism. She also urged newspapers to give space to short and long-form pieces instead of reducing all news to 100-word pieces to accommodate the reduced attention spans of the public.

Underscoring the importance of providing all-round journalism, Arpit said, “The sahityak touch and old-world values of journalism have been lost. However, the packages are certainly good these days.”  

On the rapidly shrinking gap between Hindi and English newspapers, Mishra commended the vernacular journalists for writing about issues, no one was writing about forcing the elite “babus” and vice-chancellors who in their own words only read English papers to read the Hindi papers as well. “Today, whether it is the Shatabdi or the airplane, you will get both Hindi and English newspapers. It was not always like this.”