Newspapers

Newspapers, they say, are on the way out.  Are they? When television came, they said, films were outdated. But TV channels showed even worn out, by-gone day, old films.  Films did not replace dramas on the stage, but certain dramas were made into films as on stage.

Now, why should newspapers go? They won’t. Mangalore has a 150 years old news history, starting from the Mangaluru Samachara, or Mangalore News published in 1840.  Today we have Mangalore Times in a monthly form called ‘Mangalore Today’ The latest topic is on unruly  Vice-Chancellor in the Mangalore University, who later opologised to the students for his earlier mistakes.  Mangalore newsmen march with modern attainments.

 Newspapers thrive in Mangalore city where ever 80 percent are literate and an  'education for All' movement is alive in every school. Children up to 14 have free education, with free uniforms, food and text-books.  The dailies report on anything that goes wrong in a school or college, and on which union of students did what.

 Mangalore has special local editions of well-known Kannada and English dailies with presses and information websites working for them.  In Kannada, we have Udayavani, Hosa Digantha, Kannada  Prabha, Samyukta Karnataka and Vijaya Karnataka, Usha Kirana offices bringing out  2 to 4 pages of ‘Karavali’ (Coastal) news around the city almost daily.

 The English newspapers include ‘The Hindu’ (125 years old), Deccan Herald (56) The (New) Indian Express (55), Vijaya Times (4) Times of India, Asian Age which have either local or regional editions from Bangalore.  There are many evening newspapers like Karavali Ale, Jayakirana, Sanjevani, Mangalore Mithra, Sanje Ale and several others functioning on a small scale but with a strong following of readers.  They cover a large field on local matters .

 Mangalore brings in a lot of periodicals (Weekly, monthly etc.) in Kannada and English, also in Hindi (likeOutlook or India Today).  We have Malayalam newspapers also selling out to local Malayalees who call ‘Mangalore’ only as Mangalapuram’ a name which must be dear to Mangaladevi, a Queen who ruled here several centuries ago.  Though Mangalore is home for Tulu and Konkani languages, there are no dailies or schools for them as they like Kannada and English more.  But world conferences and literary meets have been organized in these languages in this majestic historic city.