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PUBLISHER
THE VERDICT IS ONE YEAR OLD
By KRISSHNA ARJUN
WE AT
The Independent Media
of India, promoted by professionals are happy to acknowledge our
sincere gratitude to our readers, whom we count as our own family
members while launching the first anniversary issue of
THE VERDICT – of
the reader for the reader!
Week-after-week, we enjoyed reaching you, better say, interacting with
our readers and well-wishers, who extended their whole-hearted support
to our publication during last one year – 52 issues. We took it as a
challenge producing this tabloid as an independent weekly for our
readers without bending and flexing any of the editorial policies to
please vested interests!
THE VERDICT was first published on Thursday, August 30, 2007 as a
tabloid weekly, which summarized and organized the news and views so
that our readers could stay informed. We used to interact with our
readers and well-wishers time and again and tried to understand their
wishes and tastes.
As with every issue we produce for our readers and put up on the
stands, we wish we had more time to work on this one. We caught up
with as many respectable contributors as we could and requested them
to write for the issue. We were confronted by skepticism from some,
and embraced by others. We relied on our previous experience in the
print media to establish
THE VERDICT –
of the reader for the reader
-
as a comprehensive weekly tabloid that reflected the mind of our
readers, not so much the people who put it together.
Today, we are one of the happiest publishers, even though the smallest
amongst those in the industry; wish to say that our reach extends from
Jammu and Kashmir to down-south Kanyakumari. To serve the
northern-region better, we are all set to launch an edition from New
Delhi, which would be headed by senior journalist, Neeraj Mahajan, who
is our current Associate Editor, based in New Delhi.
Beginning with a print order of a few thousand copies, we have grown
to the current print-order of 60,000 copies per week, reaching the
main metros and district head quarters of India. The original list of
200 subscribers has grown to a circulation of 2500 throughout India.
Our web-edition which has been updated week-after-week has been viewed
by several thousand readers and we are receiving a hearty welcome in
the web world, for this we are happy to link with Vimal Shah of
Alive Interative.
We would not like to exaggerate our innovations in journalism. We
don’t think that our claim is exaggerated that
THE VERDICT is one of
the national weekly in tabloid format that tried to be both
comprehensive and systematic in its coverage. It packaged the news of
the week, well researched analysis, regular columns, features, and
hope that we have begun to develop what came to be known as
THE
VERDICT style.
The contributions and bylines appear in our weekly, viz,
Kuttippurath
Gopalan, Vikram Jadav, P R Bijuchandran, Robert Clements, N
Rajasekharan Nair, M B Ratnannavar, Asghar Ali Engineer, Ram Puniyani,
K A Shaji, Yoginder Sikand, Jubel D’Cruz, James Manalody, Dr T T
Sreekumar, Ashwini Ahuja, M S Verma, Sumit Hakhoo, Basudev Acharya,
Gokul Chandrasekharan, Sreelesh V K, Pranjal Baruah are well
appreciated by our readers! Some of our stories are the result of
collaboration among many individuals, so that credit is difficult if
not impossible to apportion. The services rendered by
IPS - Inter
Press Service – Asia Pacific are also commendable and we take this
opportunity to acknowledge our well-wishes to the dedicated team
behind the organization.
Needless to mention, the popular column, BYLINE by senior journalist
and editor of COVERT English weekly,
M J Akbar and column
Kautilyan
Perspective by
U Mahesh
Prabhu, editor of ASEEMA boosted our image
amongst our readers.
Although our stories often have a strong point of view, we try to make
sure they are informed by open-minded reporting rather than partisan
biases. We are proud to claim that
THE VERDICT showed that journalism,
the rough draft of history, could illuminate momentous events by
profiling the gifted and powerful personalities who helped shape them.
When we launched the weekly, we had the brash idea that
THE VERDICT
would 'serve the modern necessity of keeping people informed. We
always wanted our readers to not only read but to think and discuss
about each and every word printed in the readers’ weekly.
Our mission has also evolved with the times, so every week we try to
offer readers an unparalleled mix of reporting, analysis, debates,
opinion, comment, view point, photography, cartoon section, kidspage,
all designed to help our readers better understand an increasingly
complex world. The front-page design of the weekly became
THE VERDICT’s brand-image throughout the market. Needless to mention, the
credit goes to our design consultant Vikram Jadav. The photographs by
LIVEPHOTO supports the articles appearing in THE VERDICT. The vendors
and hawkers’ who are the backbone of newspaper industry – that’s what
we feel – supported us without expecting much from us eventhough we
could not offer them lucrative ‘schemes’ or monetary gains as others’
do, in the industry. May be we did not want to compete with any one!
We thank all of our well-wishers who contributed their bit by
releasing advertisements on their own to make it possible for us to
reach our readers without much hassle!
We also take this opportunity to express our sincere gratitude to the
team behind GYAN Offset Printers, who kept the printing machine and
workforce free for us at any given time to see that
THE VERDICT
reaches on the stands on every Sunday. Our distribution network,
headed by Pratik Nikate, official couriers Professional Couriers and
the Posts and Telegraph department who ensured that the subscribers’
copies reach them on time, also need to be congratulated for putting
their energy behind
THE VERDICT.
We take this opportunity to thank Mr Ramesh Wani and family who
offered us a place to start. And he even did it with a portrait of
Lord Shree Ganesh.
As we mentioned time and again
THE VERDICT is of the reader and for
the reader. We anticipate your whole hearted support of yours in the
coming times too…and we stress
THE VERDICT
was result of a team-work
with the support of good spirits all the time!
We wish you good reading!
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