Family feud? Not really dude

Board room battles cost The Hindu a good editor 

It is a newspaper with a ‘serious’ tag attached to it. Well, I am talking about The Hindu, South India’s leading newspaper long known for its serious and sober approach to journalism minus any skin shows. The 135-year old English daily became a fodder for news recently following top-level changes which saw the removal of the editor and CEO.

Patch-up, really?

In effect, Kasturi and Sons Limited, family trust which owns the newspaper, has regained its control over the paper, both in editorial and operations.

Siddharth Varadarajan, the first editor from outside the Kasturi family in the 135 years’ history of the paper, resigned immediately after the board retained its control, by appointing N Ravi as the Editor-in-Chief and Malini Parthasarathy as the Editor of The Hindu. N Ram brought Siddharth at the height of the family dispute. 

“With The Hindu’s owners deciding to revert to being a family-run and edited newspaper, I am resigning from The Hindu with immediate effect,” he tweeted after submitting his resignation letter to the HR department.

The latest patch-up among the family members of Kasturi & Sons is attributed to the sudden exist of Sidharth and the paper’s CEO Arun Anant. And Sidharth appears to be the unwitting victim of this family feud which was dragged to the Supreme Court level.

Both Sidharth and Arun have been accused of deviating from the “core values” of The Hindu.

N Ram alleged that the changes at the helm had to be effected as there were “recurrent violations and defiance” of the framework of the institution’s longstanding values on the business side. 

Just an alibi

But, this appears to be an alibi for removing Sidharth from the editor’s post and to retain the family control.
Sidharth says that the Board has never spoken to him about the so-called violations. “In fact, the Board has never asked me any questions on editorial content in the 20 months I was editor even though I submitted a report to them every two months,” he said in an interview after his resignation.

No editorial values flouted

He claims that had the editorial values been flouted, the best solution would have been to appoint another professional editor. But instead, the family came back to take over editorial control, a pointer to the fact that the removal of the editor and CEO had to do with the family’s alacrity to retain control rather than any other reason they want the world to believe.

Sidharth also brushed aside the allegation reportedly raised by N Ravi that the “news desk was given standing instructions not to take any stories on Narendra Modi on page one.″

He claims that Ravi must have been misinformed, as he has never issued any particular missive blacklisting Modi or any other leader for that matter.

He has specifically instructed his editors not to carry any photo-op or non-news photos of prominent national politicians (such as Sonia, Rahul or Modi) as that would give them undue space for self-promotion prior to the 2014 elections. His instruction was that front page coverage of leaders like Sonia and Modi was required only if it was news-worthy. Else it had to be relegated to the inside pages. 

He exudes humility

Sidharth claims that under his editorship, The Hindu became a vibrant paper to work with, as he tried to do away with “sycophantic institutional culture,” even while implementing a better layout and presentation.

All these changes brought by Sidharth have been very much palpable. He launched new columns and brought a vibrant array of writers with divergent perspectives, moving away from the typical 'Hindu' way. Another noteworthy thing he did was he had all the correspondents in all foreign bureaus sent to conflict zones to cover the stories unfolding, instead of doing armchair copy journalism sitting at their respective capitals. Despite having the largest number of foreign correspondents, The Hindu has not been able to make good use of them, with usual insipid coverage, to the few exceptions of Anantha Krishnan from Beijing. But Sidharth changed all that and ensured that correspondents reported from the field.

It is a fact that he had infused the much-needed progressive outlook and values into the newspaper and tried to extricate the paper from the conservative clutches, even though the Victorian language remained the same. May be, he must have come under pressure from the top management to retain the Gazette-like language, which is one of the many distinctive traits that sets this newspaper apart.

Asked if he felt betrayed given the fact that The Hindu management dumped him after the family patch-up, he answered: “There is no question of feeling betrayed. I came to this job with my eyes wide open. I had a great run as Editor of The Hindu, which is India’s finest paper, and am grateful to the KSL Board for appointing me to the post.”

It seems The Hindu owners were being unprofessional by unceremoniously ousting Siddharth.