Allahabad Pioneer (Newspaper)
The Allahabad Pioneer was an Anglo-Indian newspaper founded in Allahabad in 1865 by George Allen, an Englishman who had had great success in the tea business in north-east India in the previous decade.[1] It issued a weekly as well as a daily edition (circulation of 5,000).
In 1872, Alfred Percy Sinnett became the editor of the newspaper, and oversaw the transformation of the newspaper to one of exercising great influence in British India.[2] It was regarded as "the ablest and most influential of all Indian newspapers published in the interior of the country.[3]
It was said to be a "virulent mouthpieces of British government propaganda"[4]
In 1874, the weekly Pioneer Mail became the Pioneer Mail and India Weekly News and began to also feature short stories and travel writings.[5]
In 1887, a few years after the dismissal of Mr. Sinnett, author Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), in his early 20s, worked at the newspaper office in Allahabad as an assistant editor from November 1887 to March 1889.[6]
The proprietors of The Pioneer also owned a smaller newspaper, The Civil and Military Gazette, published from Lahore, at which Kipling had worked from 1883 to 1887, and which had served to launch his career as an author.
The newspaper remained a primarily Lucknow-based paper until 1990, when it was purchased by the Thapar Group, under L. M. Thapar, who made it a national newspaper, published from Delhi, Lucknow, Bhubaneswar, Kochi, Bhopal, Chandigarh, Dehradun and Ranchi.
However, it did not make money for the group and Thapar cut his losses, selling the paper to its editor Chandan Mitra in 1998. At that time it had 484 employees. Mitra announced that he intended to seek other investors in due course rather than to remain the owner.[7]
On October 17, 2010, The Pioneer launched its Hindi version of the newspaper from Lucknow.[8]
Notes
- ↑ Das Gupta, Uma. 1977. "The Indian Press 1870-1880: A Small World of Journalism", Modern Asian Studies, 11(2):213-235. pp 233-234.
- ↑ Das Gupta, Uma. 1977. "The Indian Press 1870-1880: A Small World of Journalism", Modern Asian Studies, 11(2):213-235. pp 233-234.
- ↑ Rudyard Kipling - Biographical Sketch at About.com Classic Literature
- ↑ Indian Newspaper Reports at Adam Matthew Publications
- ↑ National Library of Australia. 1994. South Asian Newspapers in Australian Libraries: A Holdings List
- ↑ Rudyard Kipling - Biographical Sketch at About.com Classic Literature
- ↑ Editor steps in to save The Pioneer, The Times Of India, 12 May 1998.
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
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