THIS IS MY STORY—50
MY JOURNEY THROUGH THE ERA OF AYUB KHAN TO THE TIMES OF IMRAN KHAN.
GHULAM AKBAR
The Launch of Daily Mashriq
“I am glad you think so highly of me— despite not having really known me personally. But this is not going to be an easy organisation for you to run. By this time you should have known that there are elements here that manipulated or triggered this conflict leading to Enayatullah Sahib’s exit. These elements are not going to make life comfortable here for you Sheikh Sahib. Nor do I foresee any high degree of comfort for myself too.”
He looked intently into my eyes, before allowing a grim smile to appear on his face.
“I understand what you are saying. The directors supporting Nasim Sahib have no idea of what this industry is all about. It will be hard to handle them but we will try. As far as Khalid Nasim is concerned, we will try to convince him that his talent is best suited to manage the affairs of printing. But for all that I want your total support. You are a director of the company too.”
“Thanks to Enayat Sahib,” I said a bit sarcastically.
“I appreciate your regard for him,” Sheikh Sahib said. “But now we have to compete him. Kohistan has a challenge to overcome. I have learnt that the National Press Trust owned by the government is fully behind Enayatullah. Chaudhry Zahur Elahi has secured guarantees from the National Press Trust that it will not charge costs of printing and paper for well over a year from Mashriq. That is a huge favour. We are up against a gigantic challenge Mr Akbar.”
“I’ll do my best Sheikh Sahib,” I replied after a while. “But what have I to do?”
“You will be General Promotion Manager, in which role you will have on the one hand the responsibilities of an Executive Editor, and on the other hand the task of coordinating the management of all the departments of the newspaper”.
I was speechless for a while; then I spoke cautiously: “Do you think I can handle all that Sheikh Sahib?”
“My gut feeling is you can,” Sheikh Sahib said with a smile.
The next day I was handed over the charge of virtually all the departments of the newspaper— editorial, advertising, circulation, administration and printing.
The launch of Daily Mashriq from Lahore was beginning of a new era in the country’s Urdu journalism. Till that point of time the Urdu newspapers used to be published on 20×30 size newsprint. Daily Mashriq was the first Urdu newspaper to appear in what was termed as Jahazi size. The size of the newsprint sheet was 23×33. This allowed the newspaper page to have eight columns instead of seven.
Enayatullah Sahib also increased the number of pages to 12. The additional four pages were used to accommodate featurised articles for each segment of readers— such as women and students.
Riaz Batalvi’s features were to create a real point of difference. The other big plus was Khanam Ki Diary by Mussarat Jabeen.
I knew right away that Kohistan was up against a newspaper that couldn’t be stopped without induction of huge financial resources.
There was no capital behind Kohistan whereas Mashriq had the financial backing of the National Press Trust, and was receiving facilities of long credit from the Progressive Papers Ltd— the publishers of Pakistan Times and Imroze. Most importantly Mashriq had the seasoned and dynamic brain of Enayatullah, whereas Kohistan was in the hands of a Board of Directors that was unwilling to part with the authority it had used—to force the exit of Enayatullah Sahib. Sheikh Hamid Mahmood did not have the ideas required to counter Mashriq’s challenge. And I had very little experience of publishing behind me.
But I was quick to decide that the area in which Kohistan could have a big lead over Mashirq was Policy.
