A mix of the young, the old and the not-so-old readers of The Hindu came face to face with its editorial top-brass at the ‘Open House’ session here on Saturday. The requests and suggestions of readers ranged from more nuanced reporting on health, larger coverage of legal and judicial issues to more of investigation and attractive packaging of content.
Convened by Readers’ Editor A.S. Panneerselvan, the session facilitated direct feedback from readers in the presence of Editor Mukund Padmanabhan and Senior Managing Editor P. Jacob.
Word of praiseS. Sivaranjani, an Application Engineer from Oracle India, was all praise for the ‘Education Plus’ supplement. She wanted The Hindu to have an email newsletter where the editors curate a list of stories. Praising the newspaper’s exposé of the reality behind the Kairana “exodus”, another reader, Bizeth Banerjee, requested more such pieces of high-quality, investigative journalism.
The Hindu should take the lead in giving a fillip to citizens’ journalism by freeing up its space for young freelancers, felt S. Lakshminarayan, a retired Marketing & Sales professional. K. Suresh, president of Osmania Medical College Doctors’ Forum, advocated more coverage of health-related aspects, while J. Varaprasad Reddy wanted higher coverage of Telangana-specific arts.
The session saw active engagement by Mr. Padmanabhan, who dwelt at length on most of the points raised by the readers, at times enlightening them on core journalistic practices. On a complaint about “negative reporting”, he said news, by its very nature, is an aberration from the regular, and a break in the normal cycle of life. Positive stories from ground level are welcome, but not the mundane.
Direct interactionMr. Panneerselvan kick-started the session with general observations about the role of the Readers’ Editor. The idea of the Open House was to interact with the readers directly, without the latter being concerned about the political correctness of their observations.
This is the third time that the Readers’ Editor of The Hindu has organised an Open House. The first was in 2013 (Chennai) and the second in 2014 (Bengaluru).
