COVER STORY
The Magazine
?Defining it, the origins, signposts, citations...?
Outlook Magazine - 2 November 2015
The Vicennial Special
We Asked Them For Stories
You will, woncha? By mid-October? While the goddess is straw still?.... Oh, but to count the bellows of the beast!
How We Load Our Magazine
News rides a cycle and is scooped up at a stop called <i>Outlook</i>. It’s all in a week’s work, explains Sunit Arora.
Reading By Their Lamplight
Every magazine ecosystem needs its visionaries. These luminaries helped evolve the modern Indian journal.
“I’d Go Live In India. It Has The Best Print Scene.”
The magazine queen Tina Brown in conversation with Tunku Varadarajan.
‘Death Of Print Exaggerated’
A freewheeling roundtable discussion in Mumbai with some eminent faces of the magazine world.
The Colour Indigo And Other Dyes
A look at the magazine revolution that swept through Bengal and beyond and shaped the political, social and aesthetic ethos of India
A History Of <i>Outlook</i>...
In 20 sentences, one for each year, by Manisha Saroop, who’s seen it all since 1995
A 20-Question Quiz You Can’t Google
Magazines are all about details and distillation; about making the important interesting. Here, then, are 20 questions from this issue, in 20 words each.
To Perfect A Cover Drive
What’s the cover story? That’s the most frequently heardquestion at magazine editorial meetings, and it says a lot.
We Asked Them For Stories
You will, woncha? By mid-October? While the goddess is straw still?.... Oh, but to count the bellows of the beast!
How We Load Our Magazine
News rides a cycle and is scooped up at a stop called <i>Outlook</i>. It’s all in a week’s work, explains Sunit Arora.
Reading By Their Lamplight
Every magazine ecosystem needs its visionaries. These luminaries helped evolve the modern Indian journal.
“I’d Go Live In India. It Has The Best Print Scene.”
The magazine queen Tina Brown in conversation with Tunku Varadarajan.
‘Death Of Print Exaggerated’
A freewheeling roundtable discussion in Mumbai with some eminent faces of the magazine world.
The Colour Indigo And Other Dyes
A look at the magazine revolution that swept through Bengal and beyond and shaped the political, social and aesthetic ethos of India
A History Of <i>Outlook</i>...
In 20 sentences, one for each year, by Manisha Saroop, who’s seen it all since 1995
A 20-Question Quiz You Can’t Google
Magazines are all about details and distillation; about making the important interesting. Here, then, are 20 questions from this issue, in 20 words each.
To Perfect A Cover Drive
What’s the cover story? That’s the most frequently heardquestion at magazine editorial meetings, and it says a lot.
OTHER OUTLOOK MAGAZINE STORIES
1995-2000
To use cricketing metaphor, our first fifer. On a dead wicket.
Postage Stamps From Time
The biggest events in each of the last 20 years which shook our lives or made us wonder about our existence and how the magazines in India and the world presented them
Babudom On A Sunday
Aveek Sarkar’s shrewd dispassion, and the mystery about <i>Sunday</i>
‘The Editor Must Draw A Line In The Sand Early On’
Anand P. Raman, editor-at-large at the Harvard Business Review Group, on the evolution of business magazine journalism in India.
And The Rest Is Rust And Stardust
In the midst of all the razzmatazz, they are reading their favourite mags
Unfounded Rumours Of A Death
The magazine is what led the way. Even newspapers learned from them. And those who like to read magazines will keep them alive.
Thank God It’s Friday
Vinod Mehta’s wife recounts how the magazine life defined everything and how a deep conviction lay at the core of this
An Enduring Impress Of Brutality
Typewriter guerrillas, you could say. Our method to fathom madness, such as with the Bhagalpur blindings, blazed a trail in journalism.
The Curated Art Of Life
Magazines will survive, though the stakes are higher. They will have to be an emotional, sensual, intellectual addiction that will stun readers.
A Muse For All Seasons
Magazines can grow on you—from being part of childhood memories spent in the hills to being inside the magic factory
A Weekly Fix Like No Other
It wasn’t the best magazine around, but it kicked the butt of formula. And that was that <i>Weekly</i>’s secret of success.
Gentleman, Plan B In Action
We were looking to plug the gap for feature magazines, andprovide something for the affluent, educated urban male audience
A Few Mag Pies
<i>Outlook</i>wallahs recall their other-magazine moments
2001-2005
Was it a decade that went by? A century? Or certitude?
The 20 Greatest Magazine Stories
They exposed State failure, they touched hearts, they highlighted humankind’s failure and arrogance. One was a profile and one proved a hoax!
Of The Shattering Of Bell Jars
The times have changed drastically, and women’s magazines in India have come a long way from the days of housewifely advice.
Thousand Lights In The Pocket
Small in format, but brimming over with articles and photos on everything under the sun, explaining politics, films, gobar gas
Condensed In Comfort
How does one edit for a magazine whose articles one grew up on? A former editor speaks about working at the ‘family’ favourite.
When Sam Cut Asia’s Paper Veins
<i>Asiaweek</i>, started by two energetic journalists, was known for its feisty reportage. Its reluctant moneybag owners later scuppered it.
From Black Plastic To Gravura
Slums, <i>Slumdog Millionaire</i> and working for a magazine, all that comes together in this autobiographical piece from <i>Newsweek</i>
Slow Water, Paddle Faster
A hack’s progress through magazines—an assemblage of ideas, words and photos—and how they need more of them in these times
The Pages Aren’t Yet Numbered
With agility and some rethinking, some magazines are surviving. Some are thriving. The magazine as a form has several issues ahead.
Their Spines Tingle Still
Old magazines may seem to be a foreign country, yet they satisfactorily explain the bewildering present
Spy Vs Spy And I In The Middle
Excerpts from <i>A Hack’s Progress</i>, recounting how Knightley unwittingly ended up working both for the CIA and the KGB
Is The Liberal Reader Dead?
An avid reader of magazines and a prolific writer for both Indian and international publications, Pankaj Mishra on the ways magazines impacted his life.
Into Clicklit
Print is tied to a ruthess market. Literary magazines, light purses notwithstanding, are thriving on the internet.
The FEER Factorial
The vision of a Czech journalist went on to become the Bible of Asia, documenting political, economic eruptions with searing accuracy
“We Had A Political Magazine Ready In The Mid-’70s”
Media baron Nari Hira on his stellar career and the relevance of magazines.
Between The Eloi And The Morlocks
Running a general-education science magazine with an English Honours is the stuff of fond memories and witty self-deprecation.
Goan Prawn Curry With An Attitude
<i>Vanitha</i>, 40 years and running strong, is the magazine with the biggest circulation—across all categories. Everybody reads it.
The Frisky Godavari
Formulaic they may be, but Telugu film magazines are big biz
The Centre Spread Unevenly
In this excerpt from <i>Lucknow Boy</i>, our former editor recounts how he came to edit <i>Debonair</i> and his juiciest adventures thereafter
Lending A Reading Hand
For many who can’t afford to buy all the books they would want to read, lending libraries are a saviour
2011-2015
Cusp years perhaps. Something not yet defined is upon us.
2006-2010
Politically, bang in the middle of the UPA years. Biased, did you say?
From The Scrivener Of Tempests
Bullet-riddled, grief-mad, dying and dead: Anita Pratap has seen people in all possible calamities and lived to tell the tales
Down The Invisible Stream
Allahabad acquired its cultural iconicity in the spaces of the colonial public sphere, embodied in cafes, journals, educational institutions
The Man Who Found Shapinsky
How an English teacher at a Bangalore agriculturaluniversity made it to the pages of <i>The New Yorker</i>
