Overcoming a tough economy: hi India’s challenge

June 8, 2010 at 9:39 am · Filed under Indian community reporting, our neighborhoods

By Angela Evans

Tucked between a sprawl of Devon Avenue stores, and obscured by the bustle of life in the heart of Chicago’s Indian-Pakistani community, are the modest offices of Sandesh Publications.

But except for the cramped offices nothing has been modest about what happens here.

Hemant Brahmbhatt,48, is the publisher behind Chicago’s division of the major publishing company based in India. Brahmbhatt is the man behind the plan, a business- tried and true.

This business of his, or rather, that he has been an active participant of for the past 16 years is the publishing industry. That is only taking into account his experience in Chicago.

The soft-spoken Brahmbhatt was introduced to the business by family friends who ran Sandesh publications in India. His primary duties included all graphics and images, as well as writing- which he produced for 12 years prior to his voyage here.

Seeking a new opportunity in America, Brahmbhatt found it. He knew there was a large Gujarati-speaking Indian population in Chicago. So he decided to cater to that, obtaining permission to run a weekly version of India’s daily Sandesh newspaper.

It was granted to him, and thus began Brahmbhatt’s foray into ethnic publishing. The Sandesh paper, printed in Gujarati, has been a successful staple in local publishing for nearly 15 years, amassing 17,000 subscribers.

But the more ambitious venture is it is hi INDiA,weekly which considers itself as the only local paper catering to more modern, English- speaking Indians and Pakistanis who are interested in what is happening within their own communities here in the Chicago area.

The paper is positioned as a choice to some of the older publications who are more interested in what’s going on back home.

This is what, according to Brahmbhatt, makes hi INDiA fresh and different.

hi INDiA , which is nearly a year old, prints 20,000 copies of the paper per issue. They go to press every Tuesday, distributing the paper throughout Chicago and nearby surrounding suburbs- even on into St. Louis, Indiana and Milwaukee. This extensive reach further propels hi INDiA ahead of many of its competitors.

The paper covers a range of topics from the political to the humane, compiling editorial content from its staff of three in house writers and other contributors. Hi INDiA also subscribes to wire services from India and INS News, printing top international stories. The bulk of the paper’s content, though, are the stories taking place in Chicago’s Indian-Paki community. That is what Brahmbhatt believes that people want to read.

Another unique feature of hi INDiA is online accessibility. The newspaper is available in its entirety on each Thursday following publication. Brahmbhatt emphasizes how convenient this is for the businessmen who want to read the paper. They do not frequently have time to spend at a local grocer where they might pick up a copy, so an online version of the paper provides them with an easy alternative. The website averages an impressive 15,000 hits per week.

While the reader interest might be there, winning advertisers’ support is a more difficult battle.

But that is the challenge facing ethnic media in any community

“It’s a very tough market,” he said. “Indian TV channels nowadays are very, very popular- so most of the corporate advertisers go with the TV. But still we survive by the local advertisers.”

The paper is otherwise personally financed. Brahmbhatt explained that even when advertisers don’t pay on time (or at all), the paper is a business and they will always go to print. But it is a challenging task to pay for print, and this economy hasn’t made things any easier.

“In the last 15 years I have never seen this type of economy run like this.”

Conversely, hi INDiA appeals to advertisers because of its reach beyond Chicago.

And this smaller scale of outreach is just a glimpse of Brahmbhatt’s vision to eventually turn the paper into a daily. And not just a daily paper in the Midwest, but also in New York. But not just in New York, “I want to open hi INDiA in each and every city,” says Brahmbhatt.

“This is a business,” Brahmbhatt says. “This is what I did in India and what I do here. It is my passion….I could go into another business, but I decided to go into this business because I know this business and I can feed my family. This is business- so I like that.”

If the number of readers is any indication so far, they seem to like this business too.

Angela Evans is an intern with the Community Media Workshop

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Tellling our stories on the Internet – Contando nuestras historias a través del Red

December 7, 2009 at 3:07 pm · Filed under latino news media, our neighborhoods

Say you’ve just come to Chicago.

You don’t know where to shop. You don’t know how to go here and there. Or even how and where to take the bus. And where to find people’s addresses. You wonder about the weather.

You wonder  about the schools, the police, the weather, and the weather, and the food and the people, too.

So why isn’t there is a website or blog that helps you, if you are newly arrived here from Oaxaca or Buenos Aires or Monterrey or Merida or Guatemala City.

That just one of the suggestions that came up at a recent meeting of the Chicago Association of Hispanic Journalists. It was the beginning of an effort by the group to create a website that will link Chicago’s Latino press and community and which will make their spot on the Internet a door, a link, a way to connect.

So, will there be a space for poets and musicians, a digital room for people without papers and for people who help those without people, for people who are disabled and for those who see the need and try to help all of those who suffer disabilities in the Latino community and on and on?

Will it become a vast room of Latino blogs, opening up doors and vistas for people who can talk about their old and new lives? Will it become a website that takes us to places we should visit?

The possibilities are endless. This is how a community’s voice grows. Thanks to Tony Olivo and Teresa Puente and the all the others with the Chicago Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Stephen

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Can’t we find a good way to tell this story now

October 11, 2009 at 5:31 pm · Filed under our neighborhoods, our streets, reporting on crime and safety

A few days ago I was sitting in a room in central Egypt talking with reporters and NGO officials about how to tell the story about child brides, and child labor and all the bad things that happen when poverty swallows hopes and ambitions.

We talked about campaigns where the news media work with the NGOs to get things done and after some grumbling, some complaints and some uncertainty, folks agree that their problems were too important not to do anything. That was in Egypt.

And that is what I’m thinking about now and about Chicago. We’ve had a heap of violence lately and so isn’t this time to do something special?

 Why can’t the news media that serves Chicago’s black and Latino neighbors form partnerships and set a goal of telling this story and telling it in as many ways as possible until it is not a story of heartbreak and loss anymore. Amen.

Any thoughts? Any suggestions?

Stephen

And here is a wonderfully thought out story about immigrant workers. It takes place in Decatur, Ill. It can be a good guide for another one of the hundreds of tales of immigrant workers who die or suffer severe losses on the job and who suffer from the lack of justice.

http://tinyurl.com/yfm7aju

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Walking in the crowd we know

June 30, 2009 at 6:58 am · Filed under our neighborhoods, our stories - story telling we need to do, our streets, videos as salvation

http://scher.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/the-parade/?th&emc=th

You are walking on a street. You know the man in the car repair store, and the two women in the bakery, and the old man in the grocery who smiles everyday to you, and who has been there for ever, and the shoe repair man who never has business but who is always happy, and you see one, no, two, no 10 people you know well from the neighborhood, and you see another 20 who you think you know and then you notice a few who must be new to the neighborhood and you study their faces and you wonder who they are and you keep staring and wondering as you walk on the street in your neighborhood that you know and that defines you and this is what a local newspaper, a radio station, a media connection does and can do when it talks to us in the places where we live – we look around us, as we walk in the crowd we know.

Read this small article in the New York Times and follow the video and I think you’ll get the message.

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