This publication started with a lie as if they are the ones to start the first English news print publication in TN/Madras when the truth is it was Gazula Lakshminarasu Chetty who did it and about which a detailed excellent book with authentic references has been written by B.Jaganath a well known advocate who fights for social causes.
To start with, it was never a good newspaper.
Its English has always been as good or as bad as any highschool essay. Nothing great about it. In fact, it pushed all those who read it regularly never to improve their English.
Unfortunately, TN Brahmins promoted it for too long. In the 70s & 80s it was useful for employment opportunities, government tenders and for old people scanning through the Obituary column to find out which of their colleagues' names was there.
Of course, it was useful for carnatic music concerts intimation and some reviews ( even they were never in depth and mostly refrained from good criticism) as well as some of its supplements which carried useful articles on regional art and literature.
The disadvantage is because of the glossiness the supplement pages were not useful for tea stall bajji oil removal while the rest of the newspaper is very useful for that.
It used to reprint with permission some good articles again pre 90s in center page from London Times, New York Times, Le Monde etc and some times from Washington compost as well.
I never used to get it even when I wrote in that paper because one cannot tolerate whole newspaper anytime.
They were never willing to accept any criticism about any of their articles, reports etc.
The worst part is ideologically it used to swing erratically between the sick agraharam 18th century hyper orthodox views and anti-national, anti-social opinion secretions presuming them to be liberal or modern as they followed the putrefied leftover LEFT ideologies.
Only period when it was worth reading was during Bofors corruption investigation news ( even in that they never had the spine to take it to the logical end).
From my college days itself often I have expressed critical views about it but hardly anyone was willing to accept anything against this news paper as if it was their only gateway to information and knowledge.
This obsession of it as the best newspaper fortunately got dented during The Emergency when Indian Express ( of Ramnath Goenka era) made at least some educated people to understand what is news.
Then after the entry of Times of India I thought it would get finished but the TN public continued to sponsor it.
Of late in the past few decades it is giving tough competition to Communist party pamphlets.
What baffles me is how the so- called educated South Indians are still considering it as a newspaper.
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