Deccan Herald was the first home-grown English-language daily in Mysore and Bangalore. K.N. Guruswamy, a liquor businessman with no news experience took a risk and launched the paper in 1948. While there were 130 Kannada-language publications in Karnataka, there were none in English. Deccan Herald became the first of its kind - a modern Indian journal that grew along with India’s independence. Even the term “Deccan” is derived from the Sanskrit word ‘dakshin’ (south) and subsequently the newspaper came to be identified strongly as a Karnataka paper.
Along with K.N. Guruswamy, veteran journalist Pothan Joseph was the founding editor. His career spanned twenty years before independence and twenty years after. He was famous for daily political column ‘Over a cup of tea’ and later went on to win one of India’s highest civilian honors, the Padma Bhusan. He developed 26 newspapers among which the most notable are the Hindustan Times, the Indian Express and Deccan Herald.
These two journalists closely guarded editorial freedom. Under the ownership of Guruswamy's adopted son K. A. Nettakallappa, the newspaper grew in the 1950s and 1960s. Since the early 1980s, the paper has been privately owned by Nettakallappa's sons—K. N. Hari Kumar, K. N. Tilak Kumar, and K. N. Shanth Kumar. The family is known for its philanthropic endeavors and of the three brothers, K.N. Tilak Kumar founded Deccan International School in 2003.
The paper was initially launched as an eight-page tabloid and later became a broadsheet newspaper. It remains steadfast in covering national and international news with an emphasis on state-wide affairs and editorials. Yet even after Bangalore exploded as the information technology capital of the country, the paper doesn’t cover much of the IT sector.
The Indian Readership Survey (IRS) termed the Deccan Herald as the eighth largest English-language daily in India. Its average readership stands at 458,000, including 338,000 in Bangalore city. Along with it being one of the early publications to launch its own website (1996), it was also one of the early few to hire women journalists in reporting roles.
Deccan Herald turns 75 this year and remains one of the most widely read and indigenous papers of southern India.
Deccan Herald
