This is the first part of a series of writings I plan to continue for a year.
The Poor Papers
I absolutely hate the English print media in Nepal. It is as if someone decided that Nepal should have English papers too because, well there are some people who cannot read Nepali, and so created English newspapers out of nowhere.
And so the business began. Right now there are three daily papers that deserve mention--no actually, those three are the only ones-- Republica, The Himalayan Times, and The Kathmandu Post. OH, and then there's The Rising Nepal, but I am forgetting it. Oops!
Those who are in Kathmandu probably know that The Kathmandu Post is the oldest. Some journalists in The Rising Nepal decided in 1996 that they had had too of licking the governments shoes, and so they started TKP. In the beginning it was almost an English translation of Kantipur, its sister publication, and it got its independent editorial team only a few years ago.
Being the oldest, it was also the oldest to be really bad and annoying( I ignore The Rising Nepal because giving it a place in this discussion would be giving respect it does not deserve). Poor grammar, unintended puns (what does 'Driver's body gets new head' say about those in editing) plagued it a lot until its first real competitor The Himalayan Times came out. Since then, it improved considerably, but it still is something to be ashamed about.
It increased its page count from 8 to 12, and got back to 8, and right now its again at 12 pages,, with possibility of increase to 16 pages in the near future.
I will talk about the other papers, and other media in upcoming posts.