The Statesman

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This article is about the newspaper. For the City of Heroes comic character, see The Statesman (City of Heroes).

Established in 1875, The Statesman is among the leading daily newspapers of India. It is published simultaneously in Calcutta, New Delhi, Siliguri and Bhubaneshwar. It has its headquarters at Statesman House, Chowringhee Square, Calcutta and its national editorial offices in Statesman House, Connaught Place, New Delhi. It is a member of the Asia News Network.

1 History
2 Characters
3 Supplements
4 Statesman Afternoon
5 External links

[edit] History

It was incorporated and directly descended from two newspapers: The Englishman and The Friend of India, both published from Calcutta. The Englishman was started in 1811. An Englishman named Robert Knight founded the new newspaper with a name of The Statesman and New Friend of India on 15 January 1875. Soon after, the name was shortened to the present The Statesman. During the British era, it was British run and managed, but after independence, its control passed to Indians.

[edit] Characters

It is known for its vehement anti-Establishment stance. It opposed the shifting of India's capital from Calcutta to New Delhi in 1911 in the following terms: "The British have gone to the city of graveyards to be buried there".

It strenuously opposed Indira Gandhi's Emergency in 1975-77. Currently it opposes [Hindu] nationalist politics of the [Bharatiya Janata Party]] in Delhi as well as the global interventionism of [George W. Bush].

The Statesman Award for Rural Reporting is presented to outstanding journalists every year, irrespective of affiliation, for furthering the social upliftment of India's indigent.

Though it is largely inspired and modelled on The Times (of London), many overseas based Indians consider it to be an Indian equivalent of The New York Times.

[edit] Supplements

Notable among all of the daily supplements of the newspaper is the Thursday supplement called Voices. Voices has gained enormous popularity since its inception in 1995. It gives the opportuniy to school children to showcase their writing skills with research articles, poems and short news clips.

Voices boasts of a large number of so-called Coordinators, or kid reporters who form the basic framework of Voices and the conduit among the Statesman and school children. The Voices every year holds the wildly popular 2-day long festival called Vibes in Calcutta, which showcases inter-school competitions in different fields and also shows by popular musicians and bands.