As you would have realised when your age-old newspaper arrived on your doorstep or news stand this morning, it wasn’t quite ‘business as usual’. Your old and trusted companion has had a trim, wears fresher clothes, has hopefully shed weight and is ready to sit on the same table where generation then meets generation now, in a colourful symphony of thoughts and ideas.
This was a call that we needed to heed. In a life span of a paper which is over a hundred years old, these knocks for change were heard from time to time but the comfortable embrace of its family members – like Herald’s readers, and the steady humdrum of business as usual, in service to Goa, had pushed back the priority to take another look in the mirror.
What you see today is a complete rethink of business as usual. It’s a conscious decision arrived at with three clear takeaways. a) We may be over a hundred years but have the heart, mind and spirit of the young man who has got his first job; b) We will embrace contemporary but never leave the continuity of tradition that is in the DNA of Herald and its readers and; c) The change will make us even more relevant to a generation whose fathers and mothers read Herald as a habit but they perhaps don’t.
The giant leap forward has been in the masthead of Herald. The italicized masthead is not just a design change. It’s an inspirational shift to signify that we are fresher and bolder, nimble on our feet, quicker in our reflexes, sharper in our thought and more responsive in our actions to the people we serve. You.
The team at Herald deliberated on this change for months. What you see is a product that has been crafted with sensitivity and with hope to enable your change agent for a century to be part of the change in the universe of journalism and society.
When Herald was born, editors of those times, Prof Messias Gomes and Luís de Menezes Bragança of O Herald O or Pedro Correia Afonso of A Vida or Alvaro Viegas of Ultramar, wrote in sheets of paper in long hand, there were no telephones or cars and information was received through letters. But they still wrote, made a difference and ruffled feathers enough to be even banned from writing. These greats showed us that true journalism in the service of people can override impediments like technology. Today we are slaves of technology and if you ask, are we better journalists, the honest answer is we don’t know, but if you ask if we can survive without the innovations in the newsrooms across the world, the only answer is no.
The O Herald O of today is produced with the best technology available to Indian journalists and uses the best tools to deliver content to you. The other allied changes that are taking place with the change in design will dovetail the Herald Groups strengths in print, television and online to serve you in any platform you chose.
Over the next weeks and months, you will see the full gamut of our new offerings in Herald, Herald Café and Herald Review where stories and editorial packages of depth and clarity will come to you. But we believe that inspite of the pleasure with which we offer this, our greatest joy lies elsewhere – that we were, we are and we will continue to be the Voice of Goa. The voice of your friend, your family, your supporter, your helper, your sounding board, your counsel and above all your foot soldier, who fights for your land and your rights.
With humility and hope, we bring to you the new look Herald with the same old spirit.
