Sign up for afaqs! Newsletters
This will be the fifth edition of the Hindi newspaper published from Shilpanchal in West Bengal.
Sanmarg, a Hindi daily from West Bengal, launched its fifth edition earlier this month from Bardhaman district in South Bengal. It will cater to the needs of the Hindi speaking readers in the region from Hooghly, Puruliya, Murshidabad, Asansol, Bankura and Birbhum. The edition has been titled as Shilpanchal.
The edition will have 12 pages during the week and 18 on the Sundays. Three pages will be dedicated to local news focussing on the district issues, problems, achievers and others. There will be sections on state news, business, sports, national pages and others.
Sanmarg has initially kept 50:50 ratio for advertising and content for the new edition. The editorial operations will be presided over by Vivek Gupta, editor-in-chief.
Surendra Singh, associate editor, Sanmarg, says, "We had been previously sending the newspaper to all the above mentioned districts but in lesser numbers, sent through train, which sometimes caused immense delays. But with our new edition from Bardhaman and a printing facility there, it will be easier for us to dispatch copies to all these districts. Also, according to our research, there has been a huge demand from all these regions for our paper, so coming out with an edition from this region made sense. Our earlier edition from Kolkata is doing well."
The newspaper plans to launch a brand campaign to promote its new edition.
Sanmarg is a six-decade old newspaper and has four other editions that are printed from Kolkata (West Bengal), Bhubaneshwar (Orissa), Ranchi (Jharkhand) and Patna (Bihar). The newspaper claims to have a daily circulation of nearly 3 lakh copies.