MM: Neighbourhood newspapers have had it tough in Mumbai: May 20, 2008

 This month, a group of residents in Cuffe Parade started a monthly newsletter called Cuffe Parade Times. The first edition of the one-page journal carried a ‘report’ on a scam at one of the high-rise buildings in the area. The managing committee of the building, the article claimed, was planning to spend a few crore rupees to repair the otherwise well-maintained structure while other residents argued that the money could be better used for other pressing needs.

  There was another write-up on a building referred to as ‘Jolly good twin towers’ where the building’s manager was sacked and the honorary secretary of the building’s managing committee sought anticipatory bail after allegations that they were involved in misappropriation of funds from the building’s maintenance corpus.
In the west, particularly in the United States, independent community newspapers (distinct from suburban supplements of large newspapers) compete for readership and advertising revenue with mainstream papers. These periodicals, which are free and mostly distributed in shopping malls, have often been accused of taking away readers from big newspapers.

In India, some mainstream newspapers have started suburban supplements with varied degrees of success. A few communities like the Kutchi Visa Oswals, the Parsis, Chitrapur Saraswats and the Dawoodi Bohras have their own journals. But independent neighbourhood newspapers are still a rare breed. Bangalore is one of the few cities in India that has a thriving community newspaper scene. The city is reported to have around 25 such periodicals. But in Mumbai, a few neighbourhoods did start their own newsletters. But the mortality rate for such publications have been quite high. 

Before it folded up two years ago, the Bandra Samachar was delivered free to around 10,000 households in the suburb. Production cost for the eight-page yellow-tinted monthly newsletter — the publishers wanted to make a point that the colour yellow did not always represent irresponsible journalism — was entirely met from advertising revenue.

In its 16-year run, the monthly covered local civic issues and featured home-grown achievers and sportspersons. By campaigning for more accountability from the elected representatives and municipal officials, the publication managed to turn around a lot of things in the suburb. It demanding better management of the Bandra fair so that locals were not inconvenienced by the festivities. “As a concept, suburban newspapers are a great idea. We managed to be an effective voice for the citizens of Bandra,” said Bandra village resident Clarence Gomes, who brought out the publication with his wife Gloria. 

  However, when a city newspaper started a suburban supplement from Bandra, the Bandra Samachar could no longer compete for advertising revenue and had to shut down.

Another prominent community newspaper was Voice of Wadala (VoW) that started in 1995 as a two-page publication. Volunteers distributed it free to commuters at railway stations and road junctions. In the evening, it was given away to visitors at Five Gardens. At the height of its success, 20,000 copies of the paper were distributed in Sion, Wadala, Matunga and Dadar. When the newspaper celebrated its tenth anniversary, the commemorative issue had 22 pages in colour. The newsletter’s success spawned similar editions in Andheri, D and S wards.

But adding colour to its pages proved to be the newspaper’s nemesis and unable to meet the increased cost of printing, the VoW fell silent a year ago. A plan to publish it in black and white did not work out because the local printers did not have the facility.

“It was a mistake to bring it out in colour. We could have sustained it if it was black and white,” said Wadala resident Sharad Kumar, who was part of the team that brought out VoW. “It was sad that we had to shut it down because the volunteers who brought out the newsletter used their networking with the local police and civic officers to get issues solved.”

Now, there are plans to revive VoW, probably as a bi-monthly. And after the Bandra supplement of the city newspaper closed down a few months ago, there have been demands that Bandra Samachar should be revived.