It's a good time for Asians internationally. Look at television and entertainment, for instance; there are the very talented Archie Punjabi, Sean Penn, Jay Sean… They are the popular ones everybody already knows about. And there are many others displaying their own sparks of brilliance in many other fields that many would want to know of. Republic of Brown hopes to put them together.
The weekly web magazine, started by Geetanjali Dhillon, follows the newsletter model, which means those interested can log on to >www.republicofbrown.com and subscribe to the newsletter by filling in a few details. And every week one gets their spoonful of “Indo-cool” in their personal email inbox. For free. Under sections like ‘Style', ‘People', ‘See', ‘Eat/Drink', ‘Go', ‘Listen', and ‘Street', Republic of Brown covers a range of lifestyle topics. At present, for example, there's an interview with actor Aasif Mandvi, a regular on American television and film, who now stars in Manoj Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender . There's one story on the shoe that Christian Louboutin created after being inspired by Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus (and the Indian ribbon that made a special appearance).
On the planned direction for the web magazine's content, Geetanjali says, “When you launch a media property, an internet property, you have some room to make changes. I launched with the idea that I would see what people liked. I have very specific aesthetics, I'm a very specific voice. Right now we're doing it once a week; we send a story out and then we archive it at republicofbrown.com.” Combining a personal blog-like tone with objective reporting, the stories make for an interesting read.
The content, Geetanjali says, will stay lifestyle for now. “What people are really loving is that the stories come to them in small digestible bits, and I link out very liberally. People are so busy these days to sit and read… we tell you the one thing you need to know. And you can read it in a minute or two and find out more about it if you choose to.”
Based in Los Angeles, Geetanjali was in the Capital recently to get a Delhi feed in. Among areas in which she expects Delhi to be a content source, fashion and food, seem promising. There's also a planned trip to Mumbai to meet potential writers.
While “different places that come on the radar” in the U.K., U.S. and India are the places largely covered at present, the aim is to ultimately ramp up the content more than once a week.
In a highly crowded World Wide Web marked by readers' attention deficit, it was with the aim of gathering a small but dedicated group of readers that led to the Republic of Brown being sent out as a newsletter rather than put up as a website — a preference for the “push” over the “pull” model.
One thing of interest for people behind Republic of Brown and readers is the upcoming ‘10 to Watch' section. Elaborating on it, the editor says, “In the next few weeks, we're going to do a profile on the 10 South Asians, cross-industry, out of the U.S., who we feel are people to watch in 2011. It's a defining project because we feel that nobody has collectively put together a group of people like this and presented it in a way that it makes more impact as a group than individually. And we'd like to do this across different territories, wherever there's a South Asian population — U.K., we're looking at Dubai, and, of course, Canada... everywhere. .”
Big question — who is the ‘brown' in Republic of Brown? “I want it to be inclusive. To me, brown includes all South Asians, and while much of our content right now is India, we really try and include as much of Pakistan, Bangladesh and we try and be as inclusive as possible. So I see a collective consciousness.”
