Mint (newspaper)

Mint

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Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Berliner
Owner(s)	Shobana Bhartia
Founder(s)	Raju Narisetti
Publisher	Vivek Khanna
Editor	Sukumar Ranganathan
Managing editors	Niranjan Rajadhyaksha, Anil Padmanabhan, Tamal Bandyopadhyay
News editor	Anil Penna
Founded	1 February 2007
Political alignment	fiscally conservative, socially liberal
Language	English
Headquarters	16th Floor, 18-20 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001
Readership	272,000 (Indian Readership Survery, 2013 - MRUC)
Sister newspapers	Hindustan Times Hindustan Dainik
Website	www.livemint.com

Mint is an Indian daily business newspaper published by HT Media Ltd, a Delhi-based media group which also publishes Hindustan Times. It mostly targets readers who are business executives and policy makers. It is India's first newspaper to be published in the Berliner format. Mint exclusively carries "WSJ" branded editorial content in its pages by virtue of the content sharing partnership between HT Media and Newscorp, which owns the Journal. The current Editor of the newspaper is Sukumar Ranganathan.

History

Launch

Mint was launched in collaboration with The Wall Street Journal on 1 February 2007, with the Journal's former deputy managing editor, Raju Narisetti as its founding editor. Around eight months before the first edition was published, Narisetti went about hiring and assembling staffers for Mint. Several trial runs of the newspaper, with varying formats and names on its masthead were reportedly tried out before settling with the current ones. The launch team comprised some of India's leading business journalists as well as a handful of staffers from the Journal, whom Raju Narisetti had brought on board with the intention of bringing some Wall Street Journal style and flavour to Indian journalism. Informed observers saw it as a well calculated attack on the near monopoly of The Economic Times, published by The Times Group, HT Media's rival media conglomerate. Within two years of its launch, Mint was second only to The Economic Times and established itself as "India's fastest growing business daily."

Narisetti's exit

In late 2008, Narisetti quit his position as editor and decided to return to the United States where he joined The Washington Post. Ranganathan replaced Narisetti as editor. Narisetti's resignation, as it was revealed over time, was not without controversy: "He said he left earlier than he expected because of a “troubling nexus” of business, politics and publishing that he called “draining on body and soul.”"

Content and culture

Mint is the business daily from the stable of HT Media, which seeks to compete with The Economic Times, Business Standard, Business Line, and The Financial Express. Although it is a daily newspaper, Mint doesn't think of itself as a "newspaper of record," focusing instead on the bigger stories of the day, along with analysis and lifestyle pieces. Some media critics have called Mint a "daily magazine" because of this choice of presentation.

Style

Mint's design presents business and financial information in a compact format, often using infographics to tell stories and present data. The newspaper was initially designed by Mario Garcia, who has also been associated with the re-design of the Wall Street Journal.

Mint Lounge

On Saturdays the paper published the weekend edition Mint Lounge, instead of the weekday issues; which has a higher circulation figures, especially with women readers. "Lounge" is a magazine-style supplement that focuses on the arts, food, culture, fashion, sport, music, and the like. It contains columns by Rohit Brijnath, Samar Halarnkar, Shoba Narayan, Mayank Austen Soofi, Aakar Patel and Natasha Badhwar.

"Mint on Sunday"

Mint on Sunday includes such weekly features as "The Big Picture," a comics-format omnibus by an array of contributors; "Big Story," about the entertainment world; "Play-By-Play," about sports; "Life Hacks," about technology; and the financial feature "Economics Express."

Editorial stance

Mint's editorial or "Views" page emphasizes free people, free economies and free societies. Its editorial pages broadly support economic liberalization and an unfettered economy but provide for some space for social programs that tackle especially grievous inequity. It has taken an especially strong position on national security and terrorism issues, opining in favour of strategic national interest over more liberal alternatives. However, the paper, like most English-language papers and magazines targeted at affluent Indians, does appear to be socially liberal.

Quick Edit

Mint carries a short editorial piece on the front page titled "Quick Edit". The longer opinion pieces titled "Our View" and guest opinion pieces titled "My view" or "Their Views" are carried in views pages towards the end of paper.

Structure

The editorial staff are organised into various teams based on subject matter. Topic editors usually decide on the composition of stories for the next day's edition in a news conference held before the paper goes into the final stages of production. There are also small teams that focus on strategy, marketing, advertising and other aspects of publishing the paper and its ancillary offerings, and technicians who work exclusively on HT Media's digital media projects, including apps for mobiles and tablets featuring Mint and other publications from HT Media. The newsroom and management follows a relatively 'flat' structure, unlike in other divisions of HT Media.

Notable employees

• Sidin Vadukut, "Handyman", columnist, previously managing editor of livemint.com

External links

• Official website (Mobile)
• Mint ePaper (E-Paper – Digital Replica of the newspaper)
• Interview with Raju Narisetti, Mint
• Mint Market Info (Money Mint Market Information)