Open House

As an octogenarian reader of The Hindu , I wish to express my deep appreciation of the newspaper’s efforts to reach out to its readers through its Open House events (“What The Hindu means to its readers — young and old” and “What readers want,” March 30 and 31). As rightly stated by the Readers’ Editor, digital forms of communication are a poor substitute for face-to-face interactions with readers. In commercial parlance, readers are the paper’s consumers who like being pampered. Finally, it is heartening to hear that Gen-Y has not abandoned newspaper reading as widely feared.

T.K.S. Thathachari,

Bangalore

It is heartening to note that readers know what they want. What is interesting is that young readers seem to have been calling the shots at the Bangalore meet, with a youngster even wanting periodic on-site visits to newsrooms to help readers to understand editorial functioning. In this connection, I recall my high school days when our English teacher accompanied us to the local Tamil daily newspaper office. It was a treat to have the staff pamper us and explain in detail every stage of production. With the advent of the Internet, radical changes have taken place. It will be interesting to have a feature on newsrooms then and now.

S. Nallasivan,

Tirunelveli