The Old Lady of Guwahati grapples with new tech: 'Assam Tribune' experience

Office of Assam Tribune, Guwahati

I am scheduled to meet the executive editor of Assam's oldest English newspaper, The Assam Tribune.

Started in 1939, The Assam Tribune had the cake and ate it heartily for many decades until the promoters of  dailies in Kolkata decided to increase their footprint. The Telegraph started an edition here and thereafter, the Times of India. The Old Lady of Guwahati got some rude shocks, woke up to increasing competition, rejigged its content and promotionals and survived the challenges from many ends.

Today, the Tribune runs two editions - in Guwahati and in Dibrugarh.

Page One of the Assam Tribune

Much of what the mainline newspapers have been publishing on the elections on the north-east has been primarily because of the consistent and high-profile campaigns that the BJP has been making in this region.

And the BJP has not been shy from making its intent known - get a bigger footprint here.

On Guwahati's main road, the shopping hub, the image of Narendra Modi beams down from multi-storeyed complexes. Save for the odd mini-vans of the BJP and of the Congress which blasts recorded slogans, the election buzz is low profile.

It is well past 8 p.m. when I walk into the office of the Assam Tribune. In the corridors, the staff are crowding at notice boards and are animated. I learn that the results of the elections of the Staff Union have been announced.

Executive executive Prasanta J. Baruah  says he will be with me once he sees off some key stories.

So I catch up with Ramanuj Dutta Choudhury, Deputy Editor in his cabin. When he learns that I am from Chennai, Ramanuj says he just stopped his subscription of the Kolkata edition of  'The Hindu' because it was giving him too much of news from Kolkata city when his expectation was for news from the state and region.

Deputy Editor Ramanuj at his desk

Noticing that he is scrolling the website of his newspaper ( www.assamtribune.com), I ask him to tell me about their online experience. He does not have a long story. The website is a simple, old generation one, with National news dominating the top, links to videos sourced from different places and a generous roundup of local news that does not get great play on the home page. There are a few local adverts.

Ramanuj says the Tribune's E-paper generates good traffic. And he lets me know that in recent months, a good percentage of traffic is from China! But he does not know why.

With such basic online operations, the Tribune is yet to move to a multi-media, tech-driven News Room. And hence, its reporters are not GenNext hackers.

Executive editor Baruah admits the Tribune has much to do to be in line with the technology age of journalism. He takes me down to the times when the Tribune seemed complacent because it was the No.1 newspaper of Assam and assumed that local editions started by The Telegraph and Times of India, from their bases in Kolkata would not affect them much. They did, so the Tribune woke up, ran a tough phase in changed content and marketing and circulation and saw through the competition.

Newspapers like the Tribune in Assam face a big human resource problem. There aren't skilled, educated youth who fit the bill. So, publishing a daily is a challenge by itself.