The Hindu Business Line : A new look Business Line!

You are right now browsing your favourite financial daily in a brand new design. It may not be either a grand design to bring about a sensational break from the past, or new wine in a new bottle.

Newspapers do not differ from one another too much in regard to the matter they carry, since news stories are common to all of them. So, how to acquire their own distinctive personality and identity? One way is to literally go pink. Or, invest the headlines, leads, edits and op-ed spaces with a spin and sheen of their own. Or add value by illumining the pathways to the future and pointing to new opportunities.

Any human being, organisation or commodity, too long confined to the same groove, becomes stale and drained of its zest. It needs to rejuvenate itself periodically to regain its dynamism. A newspaper, in particular, will fast lose the hold on its readers unless it experiments with form and content to suit its substance.

To my mind, designing itself is a part of the process of value-addition and makes a difference to the content. Creative designing, such as what I think Business Line has undergone, can help in several substantive directions in raising the content itself to an elevated dimension.

The advantage of a new look is that it automatically gives a boost to dissemination, by enlarging the "catchment area" and enhancing the appeal. This helps deepen the impact and broaden the influence.

With events and issues cascading in an unceasing torrent, reordering of priorities and depicting them in perspectives that match the context, becomes an all-important duty of the newspaper. Yet another purpose of a new design is to keep pace with a fast-changing world by repositioning items and utilising space innovatively.

Strangely enough, a freshly minted newspaper makes for a quicker and better absorption of the published material itself.

All I can say, with all this in mind, is: Bravo, BL!

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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