Internal email sent to employees of The Caravan on salary cuts
By: Cyril Sam
Tags: Business Of Journalism, Covid 19, Journalism, India

You can read about all the cutbacks in Indian newsrooms so far at https://link.medium.com/Waf8GJraY5

[Updated at 2103hrs on 20 May 2020 with cover image and correction in the headline. Previous update at 2048hrs on 20 May 2020 with the correct meta information. ]

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To:

From: ananthXXXXX@delhipress.in

Date: 12 May 12.58PM

Subject: Navigating our way through these times

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Hello Everyone,

Hope everyone is keeping safe. As I began writing this mail, it occurred to me that soon it will be close to two months since we started work from home at Caravan. While there have been obvious benefits and drawbacks to this necessity, one of the things that I have personally missed most is the flow of regular interactions that are part of office routine, and to pick up conversations on the go, about the magazine, stories in work, current affairs, and very often, the never ending saga of admin issues that keep cropping up. Well to be honest, I haven’t missed the last one that much! But jokes apart, I know while my own interactions have been limited in this time with most of you, work has only been more hectic and fast paced than ever before. We have published far more stories and reached a much greater audience in this period of lockdown than ever before. I know everyone has been pushing themselves harder and I can only say it is a matter of great pride for me to work with such a talented and dedicated team.

Over the past two months, we at Caravan have published perhaps the most objective reportage on the government’s handling of this most difficult crisis of our lifetimes. At times like these, when there is a general environment of dissuading media from asking tough questions to the government, mostly under the pretext of supporting the fight against the pandemic, it is so easy to overlook one of the most fundamental tenets of journalism- that by questioning, we don’t weaken the efforts of the government, but hold them accountable for better response.

I will be stating the obvious when I say that amongst other things, this spirit of questioning the establishment has been at the heart of what Caravan has stood for over the past ten years, and if I may add, of our publishing house as well. We know that establishment exists in every field and can take multiple forms- political, corporate, religious, judiciary, caste, cultural, and in current times, medical as well. We should be immensely proud that we have been able to preserve and nurture this spirit and ability to question establishment, of every kind, and of being one of the few truly independent publications in India.

As you all know very well, this is never an easy battle for any media house, for a variety of reasons, but mostly because it is so difficult to remain financially independent in these times. Fortunately for us, because of historical legacy, we have managed so far. However we are now in the midst of the most debilitating financial crisis. I am sure everyone is well aware of the gravity of the problem, which continues to get worse with extension of lockdowns. April and May have been a washout and even if the economy starts opening up gradually, it will take months for things to reach some kind of equilibrium. While digitally we have remained resilient, that is not nearly enough. Therefore, at this point, our primary objective is to protect the independence of the magazine and the publishing house and come out of this crisis with the same spirit of producing excellent and independent journalism. This requires strong steps for financial budgeting, which we are taking in every field of our operations. But sadly that will not be enough.

We have tried to work out all possible ways for financing our way through this crisis, and we have no choice but to ask everyone to take some painful salary cuts for 4 months. Please know that we have tried every possible way to avoid this option, but we don’t have much to fall back upon. We shall continue to do whatever is possible at our end to ease up the financial crunch, but there are limitations to that as well. With respect to the framework of cuts, we feel it will only be fair to adopt a system where those in lower salary brackets take a minimal cut, and we progressively adopt a higher cut. Since there are various components to the salaries, Haripriya shall share the exact details separately. Please also bear in mind that since the cashflows are extremely sluggish as advertisers and distribution agents are delaying even past dues, the disbursements will be in parts.

I know everyone is bound to have more questions about this, and also about the general state of affairs at the publishing house. Therefore I was thinking it will be good to connect over a video-call some time soon. I would invite everyone to join in and will be happy to discuss this in greater detail. At any time, please feel free to speak to me directly as well. I briefly touched upon the fact that this year we completed ten years of Caravan. Besides being an independent publication, what we have with us is a beautiful institution, which is a result of hard work of so many people over the last ten years. There will be a time to celebrate in future, but for now, our primary concern is to preserve and protect this legacy. And for this, we need to brave the next few months and I request everyone’s continued support in this.

My sincere thanks to everyone for keeping up the spirits and the momentum in these difficult times. I look forward to speaking to everyone very soon.

Best wishes,

Anant

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