RIP Vinod Mehta: An editor who was aware of his responsibilities and lived his beliefs

In early 2004, I had the privilege of interviewing Vinod Mehta, then editor-in-chief of Outlook. To my mind, it was the finest interview that I have conducted – becaue Vinod Mehta made it so wonderful. We spoke for more than 30 minutes, stopping as it was obvious that he was quickly losing interest in the exercise.

Astonishingly, this is how the interview ended: “When I die I would not be unhappy if they put on my tombstone: Here lies a print journalist.’

The entire interview, conducted with Samidha Sharma, then a cub reporter and now working with The Times of India, can be read here.

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[caption id="attachment_2142159" align="alignleft" width="380"] Mehta beileved magazines should be commercially viable. Firstpost image[/caption]The interview is now ten years old, but there is so much that one can learn and apply in today’s world.

Mehta’s view on editorial freedom was refreshingly candid.

"I would say that I have been one of the few editors who have been very conscious of the fact that to enjoy real editorial freedom, you have to be commercially viable. All those publications which are commercially weak, are also editorially vulnerable. If you have a weak commercial publication, for example, politicians or advertisers can tell you, “Listen, either toe the line or I am cancelling that two-page spread.” If your publication is doing well and is commercially viable, you can say f*** off!”

In an era of native advertising and paid news, learn from Mehta. Commercial viability is paramount. This, from an editor.

A few days ago, the Association of Indian Magazines met for their annual jamboree to talk up the prospects of the category. They could have saved themselves the expenses incurred in the past ten years just by reading what Mehta had said in 2004.

“All of us who work in magazines need to remind ourselves that we have to reinvent our products. Everybody reads one newspaper, everybody will watch television -- magazines are optional reading. Now the old ways of presenting news that we used for many, many years needs to be re-looked. We have to reinvent our products and we have to make our products compelling to the reader. Major surgery is required. Magazines are slowly being moved to the margins because news is moving so fast. Newspaper editors tell me, 'My god! These television people get away with murder simply because they are there on the spot.'

"They commit terrible blunders but they get away with it because they are covering it ‘live’. So it’s my belief that the big challenge for any magazine in the future is for it to somehow reinvent the formula and to see how it can become relevant again. And that can only happen by looking at editorial content. The same old way of covering politics, the same old way of covering features, the same old way of doing things will not work. Like they do on television, they put a table and two chairs and then they make two guys fight and generate a lot of noise. More heat than enlightenment.”

This piece does not aspire to be an obituary, more a collection of nuggets that I prised out of Mehta. For example, we spoke on his stint as editor of Debonair (which was as much the Playboy of India as Mumbai resembles Shanghai).

“But there was always something sleazy associated with the magazine. I could put any amount of 'intellectual' or what I thought was good literary material but I could not change the image of the magazine. Mr Vajypyee gave us an interview and when I met him later to thank him, he told me, “I had to keep your magazine under my pillow.” That’s the day I decided to quit. In the seven years that I had been there I could not change the way the magazine was perceived. I conceded defeat.”

Which Vajpayee, do you ask? It was Atal Behari Vajpayee, the erstwhile Prime Minister of India.

I’ve met Mehta five or six times, each time for an interview. Each time I met him, I walked out of his room with deep admiration for his intense and obvious love for print – and for the constantly conscious awareness of the power and responsibility of the editor.

He lived his beliefs.

And, therefore, it’s not tough to say on his tombstone, “Here lies a print journalist.”

We could add, “And a damn good one.”