How Sarojini Naidu’s son helped launch a paper

The Times of India has turned 175; its rival in Hyderabad, Deccan Chronicle, has turned 75.

Despite the travails the publicly listed company is publicly going through, Andhra Pradesh’s No.1 English daily has kicked off its 75th anniversary celebrations through 75 artists who have joined hands to pay tribute to the spirit of Hyderabad with an exhibition at the Salar Jung museum.

And on the pages of the paper, the paper’s embattled owner T. Venkatram Reddy has a short note:

The Deccan Chronicle is as integral a part of Hyderabad as the Charminar. Deccan Chronicle was conceived by three friends — a journalist Theodre La Touche, an advocate, B. R Chari and Sarojini Naidu’s son, a homeopath, M.N. Jaisoorya. They sold the idea of an “everybody’s paper” to Mr Rajagopal who supplied papers to the Nizam’s government Press. Thus was born the Deccan Chronicle in 1938.

“From those patriotism-filled pre-independence days, Deccan Chronicle has retained its position as the leading newspaper and has only grown stronger as the ‘people’s paper’.

“The expansion and modernization of Deccan Chronicle began when my father, the late T. Chandrashekhar Reddy, acquired DC in 1977. As the city changed and evolved, so did its people. And along with them changed and grew the Chronicle.”

The paper’s editor, A.T. Jayanti, writes:

“As we complete 75 fantastic years, we look forward with excitement and energy. We are ready for the learning curve that the changing technology of the ‘now’ generation will demand of us. This is a familiar challenge.

“Each time a new medium of communication has been introduced, the pundits have predicted the end of newspapers. On each occasion, we have integrated the new with the old and converted it into a win-win situation for you, the reader, by providing the latest news, views and visuals, and for us by garnering increasing readership.

“We find that the explosion of news and views on every new platform — 24×7 live TV, Internet news sites, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and online comments — has only helped make newspapers more relevant. Readers depend on newspapers to make sense of all the cacophony, filter and present the fragmented picture in a sober and fuller manner.

“TV depends on the print medium to promote its programmes. Online achievements and apps benefit from newspaper coverage. We can say with quiet pride that when something goes viral, the readers learn of it through DC.”