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Combative Indian magazine struggles to sell ‘bad news’

By hovo | January 28, 2008

A glance at a newsstand in any major Indian city reveals a media market in the midst of a boom. There are frothy tabloids, slick business papers, racy Bollywood glossies and lifestyle magazines, with new titles hitting the stands every week. Advertisers are shoveling out cash and foreign investors are stampeding in.But the news is not as good for the country’s boldest English-language news magazine, Tehelka. The crusading independent weekly is struggling to expand and take a bigger slice of a highly competitive print market.

Like many anti-establishment publications around the world, Tehelka has garnered only lukewarm support from advertisers and relative disinterest from readers more interested in upbeat news.

Tehelka, which means “sensational” in Hindi, has lived up to its name with hard-hitting investigations that have often used undercover cameras to confront officials and expose corruption. Its crusading reports also focus on the downtrodden of India.

After beginning as a Web site in 2000, Tehelka rocked the country the next year with a sting operation in which its reporters secretly filmed senior politicians and army officers taking bribes and, in some cases, consorting with prostitutes. The scandal forced top politicians, including the defense minister, to resign.

“Tehelka has pioneered a new kind of journalism in India,” Anil Dharker, a media critic and columnist who has edited several Indian publications, said. “It has forced other papers to investigate more and become more competitive in their reporting.”

But shortly after the bribery scandal broke, a government-appointed inquiry turned its focus on Tehelka. Reporters were arrested and questioned and the Web site’s main financial backer was imprisoned for two months. Tax raids and judicial investigations followed, and its staff fell from 120 to three. The site went into debt and finally out of business.

In early 2004, Tehelka emerged from the rubble as a reader-financed weekly newspaper. Calling itself the “People’s Paper” and promoting what it called “free, fair and fearless” journalism, it was, and still is, backed by the intellectual and social elite - writers, lawyers, businesspeople and activists. Arundhati Roy, Shashi Tharoor and V.S. Naipaul lined up to support it. More than 200 people became founder-subscribers by paying 100,000 rupees, or $2,500, to be associated with the venture.

“Tehelka attracts a very affluent, influential, well-educated readership in India, which could potentially be very attractive to both investors and advertisers,” Harjinder Singh-Heer, a media analyst based in London, said.

From its offices in a swank south Delhi neighborhood, Tehelka’s staff of about 45 journalists combines vigorous reporting, interviews and straight analysis with essays and columns by high-profile writers and intellectuals.

“It is crucial to bring stories of people who will never read a magazine to those who ought to be made aware of them,” said Tarun Tejpal, the paper’s founder and editor in chief, a charismatic 44-year-old who has worked for and edited several major Indian magazines.

The weekly’s hallmark remains its sting operations. The footage is often sold to national television channels.

“That’s why people who will never read a magazine in English in India will still have heard of Tehelka,” said Shreekant Khandekar, a media analyst who said the method also provided a clever marketing tool.

Last year, a Tehelka reporter spent six months undercover in the western state of Gujarat, where more than 2,000 Muslims were killed during a pogrom in 2002. The undercover footage showed Hindu nationalists confessing to murder and rape. The transcripts were published in November. The next issue, headlined “India Writes Back,” contained only reader mail, most expressing deep shock. Nonetheless, the chief minister of the state, Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist who was implicated in the sting, was re-elected last month.

The weekly’s fame, however, has done little to help lift its financial fortunes. Tehelka has been hampered by a cash crunch. With a budget of close to $3 million last year, according to Tejpal, the loss last year was under $1 million.

Tehelka, which sells around 75,000 to 90,000 copies a week and has a subscriber base of about 30,000, attracts few advertisements. Its 106-page special issue on the Gujarat massacre featured just three ads. Last year, ad revenue came to around $750,000, Tejpal said.

Its main rivals - the English-language political news magazines Outlook, India Today and The Week - are backed by large media groups and, in one case, a business conglomerate. The market leader, India Today, has a circulation of 1.1 million each week and a readership of more than 15 million, according to its Web site.

source: Herald Tribune

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