Dawn (newspaper)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet

Owner	Dawn Group of Newspapers
Publisher	Herald Publications
Editor	Abbas Nasir
Founded	1941
Headquarters	Haroon House,Dr. Ziauddin Ahmed Road, Saddar, Karachi

Website: www.dawn.com

Dawn is Pakistan's oldest and most widely-read English-language newspaper. One of the country's two largest English-language dailies, it is the flagship of the Dawn Group of Newspapers, published by Pakistan Herald Publications, which also owns the Herald, a magazine, and the evening paper The Star. Pakistan's newspaper of record, it is considered to be something of a national institution.

It was founded in 1941 by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan. The paper was created to counter anti-Muslim "propaganda" being stated by the Hindu press.^[1]^[2] The newspaper has offices in Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad, as well as representatives abroad. As of 2004, it has a weekday circulation of over 138,000. The CEO of Dawn group is Hameed Haroon, and the current editor of Dawn is Abbas Nasir.

1 Early history
2 Freedom of expression
3 Controversy
4 24-hours News Channel
5 See also
6 External links
7 Notes

[edit] Early history

Founded by Mohammad Ali Jinnah on 26 October 1941 as a mouthpiece for the Muslim League, Dawn was originally a weekly publication, published in Delhi, then the capital of British India. Jinnah summed up the paper's purpose when he stated:

"The Dawn will mirror faithfully the views of Muslim India and the All India Muslim League in all its activities: economic, educational and social and more particularly political, throughout the country fearlessly and independently and while its policy will be, no doubt, mainly to advocate and champion the cause of the Muslims and the policy and programme of the All India Muslim League, it will not neglect the cause and welfare of the peoples of this sub-continent generally". ^[3]

Dawn became a daily newspaper in October 1942 under the leadership of its first editor, Pothan Joseph. In 1944 Altaf Husain took over as the editor and brought nation wide fame to its daily circulation. After the creation of Pakistan, Altaf Husain moved the newspaper to Karachi, the capital of the newly formed nation state.

[edit] Freedom of expression

Recently Dawn has run into some problems with the government: see its webpage here. Dawn has seen a "two-thirds decline" in government spending on advertising, which it relies heavily on for funding. The publisher has accused the government of deliberate measures to put pressure on Dawn.

In addition, Dawn regularly carries syndicated articles from western newspapers like The Independent, The Guardian, the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post.

In Pakistan Dawn has in-paper magazines such as Sci-tech World, Young World, "Images", "Books & Authors" etc.

On Sundays, the weekend advertiser carries three sections namely "Ad Buzz", "Career" & "Real Estate".

[edit] Controversy

In the wake of the Kargil War in 1999, the Dawn website was blocked from access within India by Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited, a government-owned telecommunications company which at the time had monopoly control of the international Internet gateways in India. Media site Rediff elicited that the ban was instigated by the Indian government, and then published detailed instructions as to how one could bypass the filter and view the site.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] 24-hours News Channel

On Friday, May 25, 2007, DAWN Group of Newspapers launched the test tranmission of Dawn News. It is the first 24-hour English news channel in Pakistan. The launching ceremony of the channel was inaugurated by President Pervez Musharraf. The channel started full transmission in late July.