The Hindu is living up to its positioning of Always Classic, Always Contemporary.’ Since the launch of its new design, the publication has been ringing in the changes consistently, the latest of which will be the introduction of four additional pages in its city-specific supplement Metro Plus,’ starting June 13. Besides this, the publication has done an upward revision’ of salaries of its employees, and is going full steam on the events front too.
The Chennai edition of ’Metro Plus’ will see special features on topics including auto, travel, gender issues and wellness, running into four pages. This will increase the number of pages on the city supplement from the present four to eight, on four days of the week. The city supplement is circulated on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, and the extra features will become a fixture on all these days save Tuesdays.
On a possible ramp up of the team for the additional pages, N Murali, Joint Managing Director, said, "We have a lot of people to draw upon. Scaling up from four to eight pages will not be an issue for us and we would not need to engage additional staff for the same."
Murali, who has just returned from the World Association of Newspapers Conference in Seoul, sounds upbeat. One possible reason could be the event put together by The Hindu, titled the Metro Plus Lifestyle Show’. "Events are now very important. The response to the Metro Plus Lifestyle Show was well beyond our expectations last year. This year, the event is much bigger in scale. It gives us an opportunity to bring together our readers and our advertisers," he said.
This year’s fair has been advanced by two months. The fair is on from June 9 to 13 at the Chennai Trade Centre. According to Murali, The Hindu is looking at creating more event properties as well as more cities to hold them in. Its job fair was held at Bangalore around 10 days ago, and is scheduled to be held in Hyderabad in July. The publication is looking at cities like Coimbatore too for event concepts including Education fairs.
Lastly but perhaps most importantly, at least for those working with The Hindu, the annual salary revision at the publication has been more than routine’ according to the spokesperson. He added, "We did some upward revision." Sources said that the revision has been higher than in previous years.
