Frontline has a robust presence, an extraordinarily loyal audience: Malini Parthasarathy

The Hindu group relaunched its fortnightly news magazine Frontline on Friday in Delhi. Speaking at the event, group’s chairperson Malini Parthasarathy said that it is a challenging environment for magazine journalism with a generational shift in readers who prefer the digital medium.

“Frontline is fortunate that its print product has retained a robust presence in the market as many other publications have declined and gone bust. This is because its long-form journalism has an extraordinarily loyal audience, enjoying the thought-provoking analysis and the introspection,” Dr. Parthasarathy said.

The magazine was started in December 1984 against the backdrop of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the anti-Sikh riots that followed. Frontline, she added, takes pride in “its unflinching honesty and has a well-defined perspective which does not hesitate to highlight what it sees as the ‘rights’ and the ‘wrongs’ in developing situation”.

The redesign, she explained, is to ensure that the magazine continues to hold the imagination of its readers. “Going forward in a rapidly changing market environment, Frontline’s vision and path has to embrace a more realistic and market-friendly approach ensuring that its mode of story-telling captures and retains the imagination of its subscribers, print and online,” Dr. Parthasarathy said.

Speaking on the occasion, Frontline Editor Vaishna Roy said that the publication was known as the only “mainstream magazine for intellectual writing”.

“There is no need to leave this legacy behind and rush into some sort of brash new avatar. Frontline’s reputation as a space for serious, considered, and in-depth journalism will continue. That is a space we do not wish to cede,” Ms. Roy said. The redesign, she said is aimed at expanding this space.

The event was graced by senior diplomats, academicians, authors and political leaders. Peoples Democratic Party president Mehbooba Mufti, author Arundhati Roy, Congress leader Pawan Khera, senior Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Manoj K. Jha, Communist Party of India general secretary D. Raja, activist Harsh Mander, political activist Sudheendra Kulkarni, and former Kashmir interlocutor Radha Kumar, among others were present. Ambassadors from Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Austria, Lithuania, Afghanistan and diplomats from Greece, U.K., U.S., Singapore, Israel and Pakistan attended the event.