THIS IS MY STORY—48
MY JOURNEY THROUGH THE ERA OF AYUB KHAN TO THE TIMES OF IMRAN KHAN.
GHULAM AKBAR
After The Divide
My eldest son Inam was three weeks old when I was transferred from Karachi back to Lahore where two years earlier I had begun my journalistic career.
My fifteen-month long stay as incharge of Daily Kohistan’s Karachi office had given me a completely new insight into the profession that in my University days I had always associated with such “warriors in the realm of ideology” as Mohammad Ali Jauhar and Maulana Zafar Ali Khan. The names of Nasim Hijazi and Hameed Nizami also had figured prominently in my ‘mental construction’ of the image of journalism. The primary reason behind my leap into the world of words and ideas had been my burning desire to use this medium for the advancement of my nationalistic longings. In my mindset the word NATION had no other connotation except the followers of Mohammad (Peace Be Upon Him). The only interpretation of the phrase ‘two-nation theory’ that had appealed to my mind ever since my early boyhood had been that Muslims had constituted one of these nations, and all non-Muslims the other nation.
It may sound to be a sweeping statement to many ‘enlightened ears’ but that was what was meant by the great Quaid when he had used the phrase in the context of Pakistan movement, and that was the definition Allah had reserved for the Umma of Mohmmad (Peace Be Upon Him). This subject will be taken up by me later in the book. Here I only want to state that in my fifteen months as Karachi Chief of Daily Kohstan, I came face to face with the realisation that journalism was not entirely what I had envisioned it to be—it was also—and to a greater extent— an industry. Like in every other industry, in journalism too, capital mattered—regular flow of finance mattered. Salaries had to be paid. Newsprint had to be bought. Printing machine had to be acquired. Offices had to be maintained. Purchases had to be made. Expenses had to be incurred. All that required money. And money had to be earned.
Enayatullah Sahib had told me at the time of my transfer to Karachi that more important in the Newspaper Industry was the Publisher’s role than an Editor’s.
“As a publisher,” he had said, “you have to constantly enhance the newspaper’s revenue so as to meet the costs of production, growth and competition. The area in which it can be done is advertisements not circulation. Circulation infact eats away the resources, because cost of production per copy is always higher than the sale price. It is so because nearly forty percent of the circulation income goes into the pockets of the newspaper agents and hawkers.”
By the time I arrived back in Lahore, the preparations for the launch of Daily Mashriq were in full swing.
