More news, new masthead, classy look and feel enhanced picture and print quality that is what the new international look of Hindustan Times promise to give you. HT Media Ltd revealed the all new Hindustan Times on 11 July, 2009. Recognising the altering face of news and the requirements of today’s multitasking, information-hungry youth, office goer men and laid back coffee sipper house wives the new avatar of newspaper will provide a new-fangled look of news updates, which is sure to modify the definitions of a newspaper. In an extremely user-friendly style with the up-to-the-trend interactive and personalised features, Hindustan Times editor-in-chief Sanjoy Narayan labels it as a charm of �new world and old strengths.�
A focussed content strategy, the presence of new colours, and a range of interactive features to personalised zones are all designed to enhance the consumer experience. Combined with new typefaces, new layouts and a new masthead (black and icy blue) and especially the change in its colour denote a pretty vibrant and upbeat feel. The look and style of different colour mid line is appealing.The second page right hand side �Anti-Aunty column’ has shifted gears with �Parenting’. It seems teenage focused questionnaire goes out of the window and parents and their voices in head are being answered.The third page of the Sunday edition has this new story of what �Noida speaks’? Just another name for Citizen Journalism may be, but surely a well turned-out way to quote people extended opinions and grievances.
Four new pages have been added to the latest makeover of HT (Saturday edition) under the name: YOUR WEEKEND FIX. Before getting on to describe these pages, one intriguing part about them is they are all under a generic title: DO! The word DOing has the pep, vigour, vibe and the spark to attract a diverse group of its spectators. �On Saturday, the paper will focus on getting you energised and active, discover new things, people, books, music and movies that bring you a serious sense of fun. It will make you DO things. On Sunday, a day perfect for a more leisurely read, we intend to give you the best weekend reading from across your city, the rest of the country and indeed the world. It will provoke, inform and entertain you,� says Narayan.
If simply put in more ways than one it has the visual appeal of a magazine, not only because of the extra whiteness of the pages but also in its subject choices, and when we get that pleasure out of a newspaper it is always a huge welcome!The eleventh page reveals how HT has inculcated a whole new stroke of colour in its canvas of full reader experience. Following to it twelfth page talks all about reading habits, books been the essential of it. This page goes beyond previews and reviews, hence covering how the books looks/feel and further on digested by its readers.
Thirteenth page chit chats with us on what to watch and how listen to it, if at all we have to do it! It talks about movies and T.V. It has the previews, reviews and most importantly the in depth analysis tone of depiction varies.Fourteenth page talks about driving as an experience. I personally like this section not only because of the visual appeal it renders right through its words piercing down the mental sketch, as if, you are yourself in the front seat of a vehicle on a zoom!Sunday’s edition has much more to offer our reading palette when it comes to a newspaper experience on a whole. HT does away with the DO! column of Saturday with Think! It’s actually an appropriately ironical title if one comes to think of it. Sections like �talking point’, �life on the web’, �reflections’, �botox for the brain’ and �lime light’ are its high point to mention a few. Reading newspaper has never been such an experience where information comes in handy not only with its practical usage engulfed in the visual appeal but also without losing the 90 years old tradition alive with a pinch of insaneness of the present.
It seems like Hindustan Times has pushed its fast-forward button but surely not for a slow pace. One still wonders if a 85 year old man who is breathing this newspaper would be able to adjust soon to it’s new hip look, but, none the less it promises to put our ‘lives first’ with a firm belief that the only thing constant in our lives is the change slipped under your door every morning and how!