Aakar Patel : India's newspaper reading culture

The Quaid-e-Azam was also a newspaperman and founded Dawn with these words: "The Dawn will mirror faithfully the views of India's Muslims and the All India Muslim League in all its activities: economic, educational and social and more particularly political, throughout the country fearlessly and independently and while its policy will be, no doubt, mainly to advocate and champion the cause of the Muslims and the policy and programme of the All India Muslim League, it will not neglect the cause and welfare of the peoples of this sub-continent generally."

He saw no anomaly in handing its editorship to Pothan Joseph, a brilliant south Indian journalist, who was clearly no Muslim. Though Joseph did not last long at Dawn, it shows you the kind of man Jinnah was. Joseph also edited the Bangalore newspaper, the Deccan Herald, and the Hindustan Times, and was one of the writing editors.

Modern day editors in India do not write much, and many of them do not have backgrounds in reporting. They rise through the ranks of the desk, which is what the editing side of the paper is known as. They see their job as crafting the paper and its sections, and not writing editorials while smoking pipes.aa