After the murder of publisher Arun Singhaniya, the popular regional daily has lost its panache with everything cropped under the new deadline. Whatever comes after 6 pm is shelved, and there is little penetration into the issues. Worse still, the newspaper which originally had eight pages has been reduced to half its size. The newspaper now does not have business, sports, entertainment and op-ed sections. [break]
“First, we were hurt by the murder of Uma Singh but we did not change the way we worked. We thought we ought to overcome the tragedy,” said editor Yadav, who has been attacked twice by unidentified persons over the last four years. “Once Arunji was murdered, we lost our drive.”
“Our priority has changed from news to life,” he added. Soon after the clock strikes six in the evening, his cell starts ringing and the callers would either be his wife or his son. And younger colleagues at office press him to go home -- a seven-minute walk from the office at Mills area.
On Friday evening, it was till 7 pm he stayed with myrepublica.com briefing about his newsroom and by the time he moved he was receiving fourth call from home.
“Janakpur Today would challenge any other newspaper published from the capital in terms of news. They scaled this height only because they worked hard for news,” said Ramesh Ghimire, 78, the editor of Dhanusha weekly.
“This was the lone newspaper outside the capital to break the news of the royal massacre,” claimed Yadav. The newspaper now faces an uphill challenge to ensure its survival, he added.
“Arunji was mature enough and a decade-long experience in the field had enabled him to handle any situation,” Yadav said. “We would all travel up to Dhalkebar at 2 a.m. to oversee the distribution of the freshly printed papers. We had everything to go headlong.”
Yadav said that Mrs Renu Chaudhary, the widow of Arun Singhaniya, would soon take the position of the publisher as per the recent decision of the management board.
Singhaniya, a prominent social figure and entrepreneur, was the president of both Janakpur Today and Radio Today, a community FM. Both media outlets, which still employ 24 persons, have been facing a tough time after the murder of Uma Singh last year and the killing of Singhaniya one-and-a-half-month ago.
“We enjoyed our work earlier. Now I just want to finish work quickly,” said Rajeev Thapa, a designer and the lone man left in the newsroom at about 7:15 p.m.
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