The print edition of The Statesman could not be published on two consecutive days – Thursday and Friday – from Kolkata due to a conflict between a section of employees and the management of the newspaper headquartered in the city.
The English daily — The Statesman — and the Bengali daily owned by the same group – Dainik Statesman – remained unpublished on both days. This is unprecedented in the history of the newspaper that was founded in Kolkata in 1875.
Sources said that the management has taken initiative to resolve the crisis. But the section of employees who started the stir, remained firm in their demands. Talks are on to publish the print edition on Saturday. The management is also considering options of bringing out the newspaper from some other printing press, as work in its own press has not resumed.
Some issues had cropped up between employees and the management late on Wednesday night that resulted in the print edition of Thursday not getting published, though the editorial staff had prepared the newspaper for publication. The same was repeated on Thursday – the editorial team prepared the newspaper, but it could not be printed.
The e-papers and online editions of the papers were published though.
The protesting employees are mostly from the office’s Systems section, along with some other non-editorial employees.
Employees could not recall a similar event in the recent or distant past, and it is thus both unprecedented and heartbreaking for past and current employees.
Founded in 1875, the daily is headquartered in Kolkata’s Chowringhee Square with its national office in New Delhi’s Connaught Place. The newspaper is simultaneously published from Kolkata, Delhi, Siliguri and Bhubaneswar.
The Statesman is a descendant of The Englishman and The Friend of India, which were both published from Kolkata (then Calcutta). The Englishman was started by Robert Knight (who was the principal founder and editor of The Times of India). Knight founded The Statesman and New Friend of India on January 15, 1875, which later came to be known as The Statesman. It was managed by a British corporate group, and ownership was later transferred to a consortium of companies in the 1960s. The first editor under the new ownership was Pran Chopra. The Bengali edition – Dainik Statesman – was started in 2004.
The Statesman Award for Rural Reporting is an award of The Statesman Ltd, is given to outstanding work by journalists reporting on rural India. The Stateman’s Vintage Car Rally is a major event in Kolkata.
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