1,000 weeks of Nepali Times

Retailing for Rs20 and running to a full 20 pages, the ‘demo issue’ of the Nepali Times, NT #0, was printed and distributed in early July 2000 (below). Its ambitious masthead asserted that it was (or perhaps would be) ‘Nepal’s Top Newspaper’. This was at the height of Nepal’s civil conflict, and the front cover led with the headline ‘The people don’t want war’. Alongside ran a ‘Publisher’s Note’ extolling the virtues of fairness, objectivity and professionalism in the media, and pushing back against the dominant cynicism of the time.

Many of the contributors to this demo issue would go on to become regular columnists, including C K Lal with his ever-thoughtful ‘State of the State’, the late and direct Barbara Adams and her ‘Barbs’, Sujeev Shakya writing under the pseudonym Artha Beed in a wide-ranging column entitled ‘Economic Sense’, and editor Kunda Dixit’s spicy ‘Under My Hat’ satire on the back page. A first-rate collection of Nepali writers and journalists filled out the rest of the issue. The publishing landscape of Nepal was about to change forever.

In the following week’s issue, NT #1 (19-25 July, 2000), editor Kunda Dixit answered an implicit question that many were asking: why this weekly, now, and why in English? Noting that 1,300 newspapers were currently registered in Nepal, Dixit made an impassioned case for the relevance of an English-language weekly, arguing that the Nepali Times would 'take the concerns of those who matter to those who chatter', and do so by talking 'about us in a language that they understand'.

Read also: 16,600 pages of Nepali Times on Digital Himalaya, Mark Turin

An essential element in achieving this broader goal was the page of translated articles ‘From the Nepali Press’ that became a regular, and much anticipated, weekly feature of the newspaper, ensuring that important local and national news received appropriate attention in Nepal’s English-speaking international community. Twenty years since the first issue, I caught up with Publisher and Editor Kunda Dixit to ask about the present and future of the Nepali Times.

Mark Turin: What were your goals in establishing the Nepali Times in 2000?

Kunda Dixit: We aimed for the Nepali Times to be a window on the whole of Nepal -- not just Kathmandu -- for the outside world. We opted for the ‘Berliner’ tabloid format with visually rich design, world-class production values, and a lively presentation of serious and not-so-serious issues. In short, a paper that people would read cover to cover. Actually, I could quote from the Editorial from NT #1 on 19 July 2000: 'Nepali Times will aspire to be a true reflection of our times -- a journal to record the life and times of Nepalis in the decades ahead.'

Have your goals changed over time?

We never had a big circulation compared to the Nepali-language broadsheets, but very soon after starting we sensed that we had influence disproportionate to our reach. The reason was obvious: the language, subscription price, and subjects we dealt with, put us in a different bracket. A former Finance Minister once told me the Nepali Times made him nervous because donors came to meetings on Fridays carrying the morning’s print edition. Not much has changed in terms of the mission and vision of the paper. We haven’t even tampered with designer Rustom Vania’s original masthead and page arrangement -- it has stayed the same for 20 years.

What changes have you seen in the publishing landscape in Nepal since you launched the Nepali Times in 2000?

Nepal’s media terrain is transformed because of the internet, as elsewhere. The business model of legacy media has collapsed. While reader eyeballs have migrated online, many advertisers haven’t. People get their breaking news from social media, but the Nepali Times was never in the business of hard news, so we haven’t had to change our focus much. However, we do understand our role now also in terms of countering the fake news and alternative facts being propagated on the social web. Our role is still to explain, explore and extrapolate. In general, our text is shorter now because of shorter attention spans of readers, which means there is tighter editing. We try to show more, and say less. And we have revamped our digital edition since ten times more readers access us online than in print. This means using multimedia packages, lots of videos, photo galleries, and interactive infographics.

When have you felt that the Nepali Times played a decisive role in exploring an important political moment or covering an underreported issue?

A highlight would be our coverage of the royal massacre in 2001, and our continuous follow-up of the story as new evidence became available. I believe the Nepali Times and our sister magazine Himal helped quell some of the wilder conspiracy theories. During the conflict, we prioritised field reports highlighting the plight of ordinary citizens caught in the crossfire, investigating human rights violations, torture and disappearances. After Gyanendra’s coup, we defied the censors by leaving white holes in print, and inserting a ‘freedom gauge’ on the masthead. In the post-conflict era, we have kept up the reporting on the lack of closure for survivors and families of victims. Lately, we have consistently followed the impact of the climate crisis on the Himalaya as part of our focus on the environment.

What value do you see in having a complete online digital archive of back issues?

One of our most important assets is our archive. It offers a complete history of Nepal over the past 20 years. The archive is used a lot by researchers, academics, teachers and even novelists. We ourselves use it a great deal in the newsroom because a site search puts all the events and trends of the past two decades at our fingertips. We also value our partnership with Digital Himalaya because all 1,000 print editions of the paper are available as freely downloadable PDFs.

What are your aspirations for the next 1000 issues of the Nepali Times?

We will keep doing what we are doing, with in-depth field reporting and expert analysis to make sense of Nepal’s fluid socio-economic and political state, and to uphold press freedom. We also want to maintain the quality of language and design, and tweak the online content to make it even sleeker and easier to navigate for the 120,000 loyal readers we have every week in Nepal and around the world.

Read also:

In a state of statelessness, CK lal

Branding Nepal, Artha Beed

Visit Nepal while it’s still dark, Under my hat, Kunda Dixit

Mark Turin teaches at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He has lived and worked in Nepal for many years.