When we re-launched India Legal as a fortnightly magazine some two years ago, dubbing it “India’s first politico-legal fortnightly”, we were unsure how long we could maintain this special niche identity and how soon it would be before we ran out of good story ideas and writers and reporters who could provide focused, exclusive content.
Would we turn into a plodding legal tome or a law gazette or a me-too Lex Witness or Legally India or Bar & Bench or a law review? We did not know because ours was a novel experience. We knew what we wanted—a journalistic magazine and not a handbook or an academic paper for lawyers. We wanted to tell fast-breaking news, current affairs, investigative and features stories within their legal and constitutional framework.
The idea was not only to attract lay readers to a novel concept of reporting and editing but also to hook the legal profession and community to the product and to make it our core target audience. Deft and nimble-footed editors ensured that the stories kept coming. In fact, all the major stories we broke—ranging from misfeasance and malfeasance on benches, the judicial appointments controversy, executive vs judiciary, rape and dowry laws, the beef ban, intolerance and sedition debates, dismissal of state governments, judicial activism in the cricket and tele-spectrum scams, the first interview with former telecom minister A Raja after his release from prison, animal sacrifice, actor Sanjay Dutt’s legal tangles… were solid law-oriented stories which we reported and analyzed in our own special format.
Our covers reflect vigor, dynamism and currency. The appreciation from the general public was hugely encouraging. But what about the legal community? Why should lawyers and judges and law students read India Legal if they could get the same news elsewhere and unless there was something exceptional within its pages which was of special interest to them?
We expanded our reach by adapting our stories to the needs of our sister concern, APN News TV (Tata Sky 481) and added special programs like the daily half-hour Courts and the hour-long India Legal talk show in Hinglish that airs Saturday nights at 8 pm. Coming Soon: An English language 24X7 India Legal TV channel.
That our editorial formula, partly planned, partly self-materializing, is working is evident from an agreement signed on April 13 between India Legal and the iconic National Law University in Delhi. I cannot describe its significance, its uniqueness better than I did in my pithy Facebook post that same evening:
“This is a great moment for my news organization India Legal/APN News-TV. We just signed an MOU with one of the world’s most renowned law colleges, NLU, Delhi, for a joint venture in involving students/ faculty/journalists/foreign law schools like Columbia and Harvard and visiting professors to bring powerful legal news and opinion to the world. BTW NLU is to law what IIT is to science and technology. This month NLU received 80,000 applications for 80 student (full strength) openings. What a rocket science campus!
“This is truly a Make-in-India success story (without political showmanship) producing Rhodes Scholars and faculty/student exchanges sought after by Colombia and Harvard and Princeton and Oxford. Vice-Chancellor Prof Ranbir Singh is a legend in his own lifetime. It was an honor to shake his hand.”
Not only will students and faculty participate and help in moving forward the content of India Legal magazine but also participate in seminars, discussion groups, reconstruction of trials from the moot court on their campus which will be aired on our TV channels via campus-based studios and broadcast facilities.
I have already tried to explain the USP of India Legal. Dr BS Bajpai, NLU’s registrar, explained his institution’s USP beautifully: “We do not treat our students like inmates. We encourage them to set creative agendas.”
Bringing the two institutions together, I hope, will create editorial magic.