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The New Indian Express
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The New Indian Express is a newspaper with its head office based in Chennai, India. It started life in 1932 as the Indian Express under the ownership of Chennai-based Veradharajulu Naidu. In 1999, following the death of the then owner Ramnath Goenka, Goenka's family split the group into two separate companies. The northern editions, headquartered in Mumbai, retained and renamed Indian Express into The Indian Express title ,whilst the southern editions became The New Indian Express.
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Encyclopedia
The New Indian Express is a newspaper with its head office based in Chennai, India. It started life in 1932 as the Indian Express under the ownership of Chennai-based Veradharajulu Naidu. In 1999, following the death of the then owner Ramnath Goenka, Goenka's family split the group into two separate companies. The northern editions, headquartered in Mumbai, retained and renamed Indian Express into The Indian Express title ,whilst the southern editions became The New Indian Express. Although the two newspapers occasionally share articles they are now very much different corporate entities.The newspaper is known for its intrepid and anti-establishment tone.
History
Indian Express was started in 1932 at Chennai (then Madras) by an Ayurvedic doctor and Indian National Congress member Varadarajulu Naidu,publishing from his “Tamil Nadu” press. But soon under financial difficulties he sold it to S.Sadanand, founder of the The Free Press Journal, a national news agency.
In 1933 The Indian Express opened its second office in Madurai and launched the Tamil edition Dinamani. S. Sadanand introduced several innovations and reduced the price, but was later forced to sell part of the stake in form of convertible debentures to Ramnath Goenka due to financial difficulties. Later when his The Free Press Journal further went into financial crunch in 1935 S. Sadanand lost the ownership of Indian Express after a long controversial Court battle with Ramnath Goenka, where blows were exchanged between some of the parties.Finally a year later Ramnath Goenka bought the rest of the 26% stake from S. Sadanand, and the paper came under Goenka's control who took the already anti-establishment tone of the paper to greater heights. Also at that time it had to face stiff competition from a well established The Hindu and the Mail besides other prominent newspapers. In late 1930s the circulation was no more than 2000.
In 1939 it also bought out Andhra Prabha, another prominent Telugu Daily. Later it gained the name Three Musketeers for the three dailies. In 1940 the whole premises were gutted by fire. The Hindu, its rival, helped considerably in re-launching the paper, by getting it printed temporarily at one of its Swadesimithran’s press and later offering its recently vacated premises at 2, Mount Road later to become the landmark Express Estates. This relocation also helped the Express obtain better high speed printing machines, while some claimed the Goenka had deliberately set fire to escape financial embarrassment.
In later years Goenka started the Mumbai edition with the landmark Express Towers as his office when the Morning Standard was bought by him in 1944. Two years later to become it became the Mumbai edition of The Indian Express. Later on editions were started in several cities like 1957 the Madurai edition, the 1965 Bangalore edition, and the 1968 Ahmedabad edition. The Financial Express was launched in 1961 from Mumbai, Kannada Prabha (Kannada Daily) from Bangalore in 1965 and a Bangalore edition of the Telugu Daily Andhra Prabha, and Gujarati dailies Lok Satta and Jansatta in 1952, from Ahmedabad and Baroda.
The Delhi edition started was when the Tej group's Indian News Chronicle was acquired in 1951, which from 1953 became the Delhi edition of Indian Express. In 1990 it bought the Sterling group of magazines, and along with it the Gentleman magazine.
After Ramanath Goenka’s demise in 1991, two of the family members split the group into Indian Express Mumbai with all the North Indian editions, while the Southern editions were grouped as Express Madurai Ltd. with Chennai as headquarters.
Editions
The New Indian Express is now published from all major cities in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, including Chennai (Madras), Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Kochi. It also brings out an edition in the state of Orissa. In total, it publishes from 22 centres in the south.It also publishes city supplement known as Expressp which covers the local news of each city. Its various supplements, which appear on a weekly or fortnightly basis, include pull-outs on career and education. Also a special supplement for Saturday edition by name Zeitgeist is being published after its Relaunch during 2008.
Format
The New Indian Express has a net paid circulation of 301,601 copies (source: ABC July-December, 2007). The NIE achieves its biggest penetration (paid sales per head of population) in the state of Kerala. It also claims to be the first Indian newspaper to give insurance benefits to all its readers In terms of the area it circulates in, the New Indian Express covers approximately 24% of the total national population. The New Sunday Express (the Sunday edition of the NIE) is arguably the flagship publication, with magazine supplements incorporating both national and international themes and sections on arts, leisure, travel, lifestyle, sport, new age living, books, self-development, entertainment and development issues.
In October 2007, the New Indian Express launched a 40 page Friday magazine supplement (almost total colour) called "Indulge". During late 2007/early 2008, there was a big shake out of editorial staff, with many old hands leaving to make way for new staff. In April 2008 the newspaper also underwent a major, drastic and exceptionally modern layout and design makeover and had set aside a large budget to embark on a huge advertising campaign. These activities were in response to previously sluggish circulation and increased competition, not least from the Deccan Chronicle, which entered the Chennai market in 2005, and the Times of India, which entered the market in April 2008.
At present The New Indian Express is the Only National Daily which publishes news of far-flung Andaman and Nicobar Islands on everyday basis. The TNIE has posted Sanjib Kumar Roy, a staffer at Port Blair, the capital city of Andaman to cover daily events of the remote Indian Island.
Contributors
The TNIE is now famous for articles by T. J. S. George and S. Gurumurthy and is managed by Manoj Kumar Sonthalia, from Chennai. Journalist and editorial advisor of the New Indian Express T. J. S. George, won the prestigious C. H. Mohammad Koya Journalism Award in 2005 for his outstanding contribution to the field.
The New Indian Express Group of Companies also publishes Dinamani in Tamil and Kannada Prabha in Kannada and these magazines: Cinema Express (Tamil), Malayalam Vaarika (Malayalam) and Tamilan Express (Tamil). The Group runs the following websites:
- (English)
-
- (Tamil)
- (Kannada)
- (Telugu)
- (Telugu)
- (Tamil)
- (Malayalam)
- (Tamil)
External links
- S. Gurumurthy's articles
- T. J. S. George's articles
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