http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Mumbai/Decoding_the_newspaper_/articleshow/3457180.cms
Decoding the newspaper 8 Sep 2008, 0818 hrs IST, Santosh Desai In a world without newspapers , how would we know if today is not tomorrow? The idea that every new day is a new date with its own specific existence is not something that comes naturally to us. The lunar calendar linked a date to a visible external event; the Gregorian calendar does not allow us to discern what date it is from our surroundings. Today could be the 16th or the 25th; we cannot tell the difference in anything we see around us. The newspaper is the one device that makes every individual date a milestone by uniting the world under a single banner. It provides a retrospective snapshot of the day that has passed and in doing so, makes the date an indestructible part of history. Of course, there are many other ways of telling today from tomorrow but the newspaper plays a central role in our consumption and understanding of time. The role that the newspaper plays in delivering the news of the day is obvious but it does much more than that. The newspaper constructs a sense of continuous time that moves sequentially in discreet steps. As we hold the morning paper with a cup of tea in the other hand, we assume the vantage position of overseeing the world that is relevant to us and examining its state at a glance. The world may be full of chaotic events that we cannot comprehend but the newspaper packages it for us in terms we become familiar with and things appear to be within control. Order and its primacy is implicit in the idea of a newspaper; unrest is a deviation from which the world will eventually recover. The structure of a newspaper is carefully constructed . We have columns of equal size arrayed linearly. Size of the news item and the font used to headline it signify its importance while the sequencing of pages follows a more complex logic. The Big News gets on the front page while increasingly the Fun News, essentially sports, starts from the rear. The newspaper allows two points of entry for two different kind of interests-one through the front door and the other through the back. The editorial pages are usually in the middle, a sort of symbolic centre of the universe from where the authoritative voice of the editor rings out, pronouncing judgment on the world. The letters to the editor become a kind of "diwan-e-aam'' , where the public can in very tightly controlled doses vent its feelings about the world and the newspaper's take on it. The idea of the newspaper is compressed in the very distinctive names they carry. We have magisterial words like tribune, guardian, sentinel and monitor; or words like mirror, observer, spectator and enquirer that point to the kind of vantage point they occupy and of course we have words that signify time like express, mail and of course what this newspaper carriesthe times. The notion of the times is a particularly interesting one. It moves away from singular time as experienced by an individual and creates the idea of collective time shared by all. Time becomes an enclosure, a canopy we all share. In that sense, time becomes space, a roof under which we all live. When a person begins to read a newspaper, he becomes a part of the collective 'we' that lies outside his immediate circle of acquaintances. He becomes a part of the times we live in. The world includes him and he can see a reciprocal relationship between the rest of the world and himself. That is why when regional language circulation of newspapers grows in India, it is an event of great significance. For we are seeing an entry for the first time of a large number of people who so far had no reason to seek membership of the larger world, begin to register themselves as citizens of a world outside their immediate neighbourhood. The newspaper is evolving in response to other media and to the very times it helps construct and chronicle and that is understandable. However, the roles it plays go way beyond reportage . It is a fulcrum of some kind on which our notions of order, stability and change rest. The newspaper should perhaps be cognizant of the needs it fulfils and be less anxious about its own relevance today and in the times to come. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
