To reach a reader

Despite what some claim, the printed word is still eagerly sought, sometimes in unlikely places

Is the practice of reading, particularly the reading of the daily newspaper, dying out? There are some who claim that TV, smartphones, and other digital devices have virtually rung the death knell of the morning paper.

However, to paraphrase Mark Twain’s remark, the news of the newspaper’s death is highly exaggerated.

This was made evident to me a week ago when I received an email asking for my assistance in getting a TOI subscription for a young would-be reader of the paper.

The sender of the mail wrote that while visiting a Jain temple in a small village in Bihar’s Nalanda district, he had met a young boy, Sanket, a student at a local school and the son of a temple worker, who had shown a keen interest in improving his English language skills.

Impressed by the boy’s eagerness to get a better grasp of the language, the visitor promised to get a TOI subscription for the youngster.

This was the background of the mail I received. I made enquiries in the circulation department and found that it would be prohibitively expensive to get a single copy of the paper to the remote address given in the email.

The Delhi resident editor of TOI suggested that an online subscription to the paper would solve the problem, and give the young reader access to all 50-odd editions of the paper.

I conveyed this to my correspondent, who wrote back saying that the boy would prefer the tangible immediacy of the paper edition to the digital version. The writer provided an alternative, more accessible, address for the paper’s delivery from where the boy’s father could go and collect it.

I’ve just received a mail that the Patna edition of TOI has managed, for the first time ever, to get an English language newspaper to reach Sanket’s home. My correspondent writes: “Sanket now knows who the prime minister of India is, and who is the president of US.” The print medium dead? Ask Sanket.