Chandan Mitra became owner of ‘The Pioneer’ without spending a rupee. The group is now in financial trouble.

27 January 2021

In its hey day, The Pioneer counted Rudyard Kipling, Winston Churchill and Harivanshrai Bachchan among its star correspondents. But 155 years after it rolled off the press in Lucknow, the newspaper has run into serious financial trouble, with insolvency proceedings being launched against its publishing company CMYK Printech. *** Purchased by the Thapar Group in…

The best editor The Pioneer, Delhi, never had?

17 November 2009

The writer Rudyard Kipling was once on its rolls; the former British prime minister Winston Churchill served as its war correspondent. Now, The Pioneer, New Delhi, has announced its best editor who wasn’t: Eric Arthur Blair In a front-page story, the right-wing paper reports that the left-wing novelist and political thinker (born in Motihari, Bihar)…

How Chandan Mitra has his halwa and hogs it too

5 May 2009

One of India’s oldest English dailies, The Pioneer, has undergone not so much a transformation but a transmogrification in recent years. Once a paper which had Rudyard Kipling on its rolls, and for which Winston Churchill served as a war correspondent, the low-circulation paper has returned to its politically conservative roots and become an unabashed…