An important thing that has been happening for the last few decades is the newspaper revolution. This change had started even before the liberalization policy of India. Two of India’s most popular newspapers are ‘Dainik Jagran’ and ‘Dainik Bhaskar’. Dainik Jagran had 21 lakh readers. Dainik Bhaskar had 17. Assamese Dailies grew their circulation in urban areas by 51.8% and the Bengali Dailies increased their circulation in rural areas by 129%. These growths were fast.
The Paper ‘Eenadu’ also has a success story. It was started in 1974 by Ramoji Rao. As it worked in close collaboration with the antiarrack organizations, this Telugu Paper got wide acceptance in villages. This prompted its district editions in 1989. District news, classifieds from villages and small towns were the main feature of this Paper, In 1998, it was published from 10 cities of Andhra Pradesh. It captured 70% circulation of all Telugu papers.
There are many reasons for this growth in the local papers. The first reason is the migration of literate people from villages to urban areas. For example, in 2003 a Hindi Daily from Delhi “Hindustan” had only a circulation of 64,000 copies. In 2005, it reached 425,000. This happened because many people from UP and Bihar migrated to Delhi.
The needs of the readers from villages and small towns are different from those of the cities. The second reason for their growth is they realized the needs of the readers and changed their content accordingly. Important newspapers like Malayala Manorama, Mathrubhoomi and Eeenadu came out of with regional editions with more local news. Papers like “Dailythanthi” (Tamil) used simple and conversational language. It attracted the rural population.
Indian language papers were able to make use of the latest technologies in printing. They also gave supplements, special editions and copies of popular books free to people. All this helped in the growth of papers. Another factor is the marketing techniques. There are programmes of meeting with the readers, home surveys and research. Dainik Bhaskar made the best use of these techniques. To compete with electronic media, the newspapers reduced their prices and were published from different centers. The National English Newspapers also did the same thing. All these helped the growth in the . Indian newspaper industry.
