Today January 1, 2018, the Daily Excelsior begins the 54th year of its journey in the service of the people of the country and the State. This journey had started 53 years ago in 1965 when the visionary and veteran journalist, late S.D. Rohmetra took the modest but pioneering step of bringing out a tabloid to cater to the taste and the needs of an enlightened segment of civil society that evinced interest in current affairs and in the nation’s march on the path of development.That was the time when the broad contours of national development policy and political consciousness of the people in the county and the State had become distinctly clear.
This scenario had special significance for the task which the visionary founder of Daily Excelsior had volunteered to take up. On the one hand, the State was expanding its activity in economic, political and social areas and on the other, greater responsibility was devolving on the media to rise up to reflect the changing Indian social fabric. Excelsior was the foremost in responding to this need of the State and its people. Fortunately, the vision and the strong initiative of its founder proved of immense value first in converting the tabloid into a regular daily and second in bringing within its purview almost all aspects of a developing society.
Days rolled by and the paper graduated from one achievement to another and from one success to another success.
During the year that has left us, we have not only maintained the level of delivery as is expected of us but have also taken some more steps to improve the service and give more to our readers. The success of a paper lies in the number of its readers and catering to wider tastes of society. We are highly on this count. In doing so, we have been guided by the spirit of late S.D.Rohmetra who always dreamed that we should reach wider sections of people not only in the State but outside the State as well.
Excelsior’s online edition (www.dailyexcelsior.com), its Mobile App and news channel (www.excelsiornews.com), have also become immensely popular. This can be found from manifold increase in the viewership during 2017. We are very particular that we should respond to queries, comments and suggestions of the cross section of our readers because it is owing to close interaction with them that we remain posted with the feedback on our reportages. In a developing State, it is but natural that people have grievances, complaints as well as suggestions. We look at this as a pragmatic phenomenon of development. Even the Government, more often than not, finds our constructive criticism as contribution to the furtherance of good governance. In that sense, we perform the role of the fourth estate to our best ability and recognition.
It will be noted that we have had the unique distinction of exposing many irregularities, aberrations, scams, discrepancies and gross violation of rules by various Government and semi-Government organizations. Excelsior has thus maintained its long tradition of making the administration answerable to the people.
Excelsior’s reputation as the keeper of the conscience of people and the voice of the deprived and weaker sections of society has been a temptation for many powerful and articulate writers, analysts and commentators to approach us for giving space to their ideas and observations and we have always tried to accommodate them. We do not tamper with their independent views and ideologies and we do not encourage suppression of truth in any form. Thus our panelists are people of outstanding credibility and merit.
The State is still going through turbulence caused by acts of militancy. From the very beginning, we have been dealing as harshly as possible with militancy and militancy related criminal activities and to that count, we are not going to make any compromise whatsoever.
We have the satisfaction that we strongly highlighted important local issues of all the three regions of the State about which respective people have been somewhat nostalgic.
And finally, Excelsior has been in the frontline of reporting on the acts of violation of ceasefire along the LoC and IB by Pakistani forces resulting in avoidable casualties and spoiling chances of improving bilateral relations. We salute the brave martyrs of the Indian Army, paramilitary forces and the JK Police who laid down their precious lives in fighting the enemy. Excelsior pays homage to them.
All the achievements of the Excelsior made during the outgoing year have been possible essentially because of the high level of team work among the field and office staff of our institutions. Their dedication to the national cause and their high sense of astute journalism are the crucial elements of our success. Along with that, we are happy that we have a highly conscientious readership, which is the crowning factor for a newspaper to become popular with them to almost iconic level.
Kamal & Neeraj
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