Sakshi paper completed 10 years since launch. So YS Jagan, chairman of Sakshi congratulated the team and wrote a few words to the team. He told in his letter that Sakshi was born to challenge the monopoly in media. He also mentioned that Sakshi was born to show the other side of the coin to readers. He added, as a result, many became his enemies. However, if we see there has been foot print of Sakshi in print media and it impacted the way Telugu media operated. Some changes it brought are good but some are bad. Let’s review the journey of Sakshi.
Positives:
Sakshi changed the “Look and Feel” of Telugu dailies. While many dailies including Eenadu used to give, first, last and cinema pages in color and remaining all pages in black and white, Sakshi started with all-color pages from day one. This made all other papers also to change.
Sakshi introduced family page that was a huge hit and it changed the “perspective” that daily “news” papers are not just for “news”.
Sakshi did expose some scams and gave extensive coverage to them especially the ones that were downplayed by other news papers because of their allegiance to the political parties involved. To be frank, this role was earlier played by Udayam and Vaartha papers. Of course, Vaartha slowly faded out after Sakshi.
Though alleging to a political party does bad to the news paper, it also has some positive points in it. The news paper has courage to publish some startling news that are anti government.
Negatives:
Sakshi had extreme political bias in their news.Even though Eenadu has some political bias, it was very mild. In 90s, Andhra Prabha used to show mild soft corner for BJP and RSS. Vaartha also had anti-TDP stand from day one. Andhra Jyothy (before Radha Krishna) didn’t have strong bias for parties. But Sakshi’s political bias is much much higher than all these papers. Mainly because no other paper has its chairman running major political party. This extreme bias did some damage to good will of the paper that some of the political news in Sakshi were never taken by readers as is. They used to confirm from other sources.
Selective coverage of the news. As the chairman of the paper is running political party, the paper has some limitations. For example, Jagan attending courts for his cases, some negative updates on his cases do not find place in his paper
Directly mentioning names of other papers and screen shots. Before Sakshi, one news paper never used to directly mention name of other paper directly, especially when sharing a bad news on that paper. For example, in Eenadu, they used to write “in other daily paper (Not Eenadu)”. But Sakshi changed that. It directly started mentioning Eenadu and Andhra jyothy names. Moreover, it started the culture of sharing screen shots of other paper’s news and counter that news. At one point of time, it mentioned Ramoji as “Dramoji”. It looked mean.
Price of the paper. Sakshi started at the price of Rs 2. It’s the choice of the management of that paper to decide the price. But in business there is a concept of PREDATORY PRICING, which is unethical. Sakshi followed that concept to damage all other papers. Moreover, it started a “movement” (that’s what they called it) that all other papers must sell at same price. Opponent papers alleged, as Jagan’s father was CM at that time, it was getting lot of illegal money into it and thats why they are able to sell the paper at that price. Some opponents even alleged, Sakshi paper had a daily deficit of Rs 1 crore. (If we do math, Sakshi had 10 lakh circulation, sold at 2 Rs, to have 1 crore deficit, it’s cost – including, production+distribution+marketing must be Rs 12. Remember, Sakshi initially has many more pages than what it has now)
Probably lowest point in Sakshi was trying to cash on family issues of its business rival Ramoji. It interviewed Ramoji’s son Suman who was cancer patient and published his controversial statements on front page. Actually that day, Sakshi had terrific sales. In some small towns, xerox copies of only that interview were sold on stalls as all copies were sold by noon. Though this kind of sensationalism is not a new thing in electronic media and social media, Daily papers used to maintain some self-restraint. By breaking that sakshi lost it’s good will, though on that day Sakshi had great sales,
– Zuran
