BANGALORE: Newspapers today could ill afford to ignore readers, who had virtually become their bosses and could make or mar a publication, the former Editorial Representative of The Hindu in Bangalore, C.M. Ramachandra, said here on Thursday.

Participating in the monthly interaction programme organised by the Media Academy and the College of Communication of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, he referred to the fast-changing perspectives of news, display aesthetics and marketing ethics.

Reader is the king

Describing himself as an "ancient mariner" of professional journalism as he had retired 15 years ago, Mr. Ramachandra said the reader could reject, regulate or patronise publications.

"Aggressive journalism is absolutely necessary" in dealing with the present generation of politicians.

Public interest

He was of the view that a reporter was not a reformer and should only monitor things in the larger public interest.

He should not refrain from posing challenging, inconvenient and pragmatic questions aggressively but not offensively.

In that context language newspapers had been doing a commendable job, he said.

Mr. Ramachandra observed that journalism was once considered a noble profession. But over the years it had become an industry that had imbibed the values of corporate bodies. There was growing centralisation and "metropolisation" of newspapers, he said.

Monopoly

He decried the return of newspaper monopolies and referred to the takeover of two Karnataka dailies, Vijaya Karnataka and Vijay Times by The Times of India.

The veteran journalist dismissed two vague questions on the functioning of The Hindu . The questioner had claimed that The Hindu was meant for retired persons and its pages had remained unchanged unlike in the case of other English newspapers.

He dubbed the observation as being baseless.

Academy chairman V.N. Subba Rao presided.

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