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Written by: Lakshmi Chaudhry, Founder, Splainer Pte Ltd

 

Writer’s note: On August 29, we will publish the last edition of splainer’s news edition. It will also mark the culmination of my long stint in daily news—which began in 1999. But for both splainer and me, this is not an end but the beginning of a new engagement with the world—expressing the same values and mission but in fresh, exciting ways. Hence, the lead image: ‘Rooms by the sea’ by Edward Hopper suggests an open doorway—leading out to a dazzling unknown.

 

My career in journalism started as an intern in Mother Jones—a legendary magazine known for its investigative journalism. My job was to fact-check… everything. I checked exact quotes of sources—be they in Atlanta, Cairo or London. I even called a traffic officer in South Africa to confirm the description of a road crossing in Johannesburg. I was trained in the tyranny of accuracy—not so much truth which was grander but far less reliable. It was exhausting and, frankly, irritating. 

 

All that hard work landed me my first job at Wired.com, the golden gig in the newborn world of digital journalism. The year was 1999, the last year of the dot com boom that went resoundingly bust in 2000, an inauspicious start to the first year of a new millennium. Then it got worse. In 2001, the Twin Towers fell. Soon came the leadup to the Iraq war—imaginary WMDs that birthed ‘shock and awe’ devastation. Amid the chaos, I rose to senior editor—and scored three Webbys for reporting obvious facts that the New York Times was too ‘patriotic’ to acknowledge. When the first bombs fell on Baghdad, I cried. It was the first crack, the first realisation that journalism could not hold back the tide of history. I wept more when George Bush Jr was reelected despite being exposed as a shameless liar. Accuracy, it’s a (thankless) bitch.

 

It smelled like failure. My grandfather, S Sadanand, had built one of the first swadeshi newspapers—courting imprisonment and more. They threw him in jail and then his wife—pregnant with Amma—for the audacity of challenging the ‘facts’ of the Raj. Both were long dead by the time I was born but my mother—most inaccurately—convinced me that news could change the world. Apparently not. 

 

But soon enough I became a political writer for The Nation covering Barack Obama and his paeans to hope in 2008. Failure was a blip, surely, not an omen. 

 

*****

 

The same year, I came back home—to the mommy track with a newborn baby and a dying mother… until the birth of Firstpost. In 2011, I was given the unexpected opportunity to be the co-founder of what would become the largest standalone digital news site in the country. I had the fortune to speak to a staggeringly large audience and run sprawling newsrooms—at a tipping point in Indian politics: The collapse of Congress, rise of Anna-ji/AAP and the triumph of Modi. 

 

The value of Firstpost remains what I hold to even now. We cannot be good citizens until we are truly exposed to a great range of opinions in a democracy—however unpleasant to one side or the other. The alternative is what we have now—congregants chanting ‘amen’ to priests spouting theology. 

 

Firstpost also marked my first encounter with the politics of the Indian newsroom—the subtle but unmistakable pressure to bow to a phone call or email from the boss or his boss. Change this headline, take out this paragraph, kill this story. But it was all very tasteful so no one felt they were selling their souls for a hefty salary. Then Mukesh-bhai came along.

 

Reliance took over the reins in the same month as Modi-ji won in May 2014. Within weeks, everyone above me quit. I held on to the baby—and our opinionated journalism as usual—for an entire year. The Reliance men said little until they said it all—politely—there will be no criticism of the trinity (PM, finance minister and party chief). It was their business and the financial equation was stark: a dus crore ka Firstpost and gazillion crore ka 4G. I didn’t blame them. I quit.

 

I still believed in hope (though no longer Barack)—as did the wealthy men and women who put crores into the IPS Media Foundation to fund independent digital media. I was an investment adviser and mentor to the many startups that bloomed during that golden 2014-2018 era. Then I foolishly (perhaps) decided to start one of my own—Broadsheet, a popular newsletter for Indian women styled on The Skimm. When a founder split ended Broadsheet, I rushed to replace it with splainer, born along with the pandemic in 2020. It too was an act of faith amid a dark time.

 

*****

 

Let’s be accurate. That act of faith has been a failure as a business. The news edition can no longer cover its modest costs—and it gets worse with each passing month. Our already modest subscriptions are dwindling. For over a year, splainer has been financed by my personal funds—never mind I haven’t seen a salary for over a decade. It is no longer possible to ignore the obvious: splainer is not a viable business—and for sound reasons. 

 

Broadsheet and its successor splainer are an expression of a different theory of news. Splainer is not an agent of change (sorry)—instead it is a service. It helps people understand the world they live in—and why—with as much integrity and sincerity we can muster. I thought it would be useful in a world blanketed with outrage, clickbait and virtue-signalling. Today—be it a movie release or a book or election, everything is designed to make you feel big emotions: anger, despair, joy or validation. Surely, many people will pay to be freed from that kind of manipulation. I was wrong.

 

The reason: emotion is the only thing that sells news today. As a fellow founder asked, "Why aren’t you like The Wire, people will at least donate.” The few remaining ways to make money in news is to a) get serious ad revenue; b) offer professional value like biz news or c) amplify the politics of your audience. Save us because we are good battling evil. But that’s not what we do. We bet instead on our old friend ‘accuracy’—not exactly sexy or even unbiased—since we have a clear set of values. But we were focused on ‘informing’, not ‘triggering’. Well, it didn’t work. 

 

Quite apart from splainer’s inability to read the room, there are far larger forces ripping apart the news industry—which we covered at great length in this two part series: Part one goes into the details of how the ad-supported model—which kept newspapers alive for decades—was destroyed and part two looked at the consumers—and why so many of them won’t pay for news. Let me just add this last nail to our coffin. If I were to tell an investor, we curate and explain the news—carefully sourced and fact-checked—s/he would say… arre, ek saal mein to ChatGPT yeh kar lega. The truth is that AI is going to devastate newsrooms—and remake journalism for good and bad. 

 

Now, do I think a machine can do what we do? Not entirely, not in the way that matters. But most people won’t be able tell the difference—at least not enough to pay for it. To keep plowing heart, soul and money—in the face of sweeping societal and technological change… becoming Don Quixote was not on my list of life goals. All of which brings us to where we are now—the end of a news publication and of my career in daily news. 

 

But every end is a breath before a beginning…

 

****

 

In January, 2024, I had a serious heart attack that took me entirely by surprise—which is absurd given that one brother died of heart failure and the other had an open heart surgery. Ok, maybe I am a bit deluded like Don. After the angioplasty, the surgeon suggested I spend an hour with a therapist to identify the source of my stress. Yes, I was drinking, smoking, worrying way too much… but all roads led in the end to splainer. ‘Your startup is killing you,’ he said. I rolled my eyes. My daughter raged. A month later, I asked my ex-husband for an official divorce. We had remained close friends but it was time to move on. Then I saw my settlement… in Silicon Valley stock options. 

 

What to do with such life-changing events—a great scare and bounty, all rolled up in one? This then is my decision: To stop the insanity—doing splainer every day, over and over again and expecting different results. But to also preserve its spirit in the form of something as bold and new: Souk (explained at great length here). Souk is not just a shopping guide but a doubling down on judgement and honesty—which is just another word for accuracy.  

 

I am proud of the talent and integrity of the Souk team (led by Shubhra)—and just as proud of the talent and integrity of Indian brands and products we will showcase. In other words, I am personally funding the exact same set of values as those who invested in splainer—an investment I hope Souk will help them recover with interest.

 

And then there is Taste—the ultimate act of cupidity in our online AI-driven world. At the end of the year, we will publish a stunning anthology of essays and conversations. It is extravagantly designed to the highest specs, with the best writing—in collaboration with Juggernaut. Aatish Taseer on why the very rich recreate their homes as luxury hotels; Srinath Perur on Indians’ love affair with Boney M; Abhijit Banerjee in conversation with the most talented fine dining chefs from around the world; visual essays on the history of taste; image spreads from the finest artists, be it Subodh Gupta, Mithu Sen, Simran Lal or Shazia Sikander.  

 

It’s all absurdly lavish and deliberately so. Consider it a shout in the wind—against a world obsessed with winning—be it money or wars. Our creative director sent me this quote from an essay by Michael Bierut:

 

The inefficient realms of education and good taste no longer tempt rigorous CEOs with their eyes on the bottom line. Even Thomas Watson's heir apparent, Steve Jobs, limits his passion for design to stuff that sells product; Apple's dazzling contribution to civic life is the Apple Store, where you can go have a social experience that has solely to do with buying Apple products.

 

Is all hope lost, then? Here is some optimism, perhaps perverse, from a surprising source. "I offer a modest solution: Find the cracks in the wall," wrote Tibor Kalman in his valedictory monograph. "There are a very few lunatic entrepreneurs who will understand that culture and design are not about fatter wallets, but about creating a future.... Believe me, they're there and when you find them, treat them well and use their money to change the world." Wishing will not make it so, but Kalman knew that the search itself was fundamental to the design process. Now more than ever, let's start looking.

 

If nothing else, I would like to be remembered as the truly lunatic entrepreneur. 

 

****

 

There is an ancient Chinese curse ‘May you live in interesting times’... Actually, there is no such thing. Rather the phrase is a classic case of misinformation, first spread by stuffy British diplomats, chief among  them, Sir Austen Chamberlain—whose brother Neville is best known for gifting Poland to Hitler. In 1936, Austen was convinced “no age has been more fraught with insecurity than our own present time.” Ending my long stint in the daily news, I embrace instead RFK’s spin on the curse—used in a speech at the height of the 1960s civil rights movement: “Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind.” As splainer leaves the newsroom, it walks through the door to new ideas and opportunities. New ways of being creative in these far-too-interesting times. 

 

I leave you with the original Chinese phrase that inspired the non-existent curse: ‘寧為太平犬, 不做亂世人’ (níng wéi tàipíng quǎn, bù zuò luànshì rén). It means “it’s better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a man in a chaotic period.” Sounds about right to me. 

What you need to know: We will publish the last news edition on August 29—the last Friday before September 1, which is the notice period for our team. Our weekend Advisory—with popular recommendations on books, travel, music, entertainment etc—will continue as a free zine. It will go out to all Souk and splainer subscribers along with Souk’s curated recommendations. We also plan to offer a hefty discount to our paid subscribers on the Taste book—as compensation for the inevitable disappointment. So don’t unsubscribe or you’ll miss out.