Inquilab - Format, Layout and Editorial Team

April 2004 – The new format

When SHahid Latif, the present Editor took over, he decided to give the age’s old paper a makeover. Inquilab’s previous look was like that followed by all Urdu newspapers as standard. Most Urdu publications still follow the same style and format.

It is characterized by an absence of masthead, the title appearing in the right top corner. The news section beginning right at the top of the page, Urdu papers that have colour pages are still a rarity.

So the new look that Inquilab incorporated has been similar to the English newspapers. On the frontpage it has a masthead, an ad-space bottom left (instead of bottom right in English papers). The introduction of colour pages and a greater ad-edit ratio are a few characteristics of the latest edition.

Shahid has been a part of Inquilab for more than a decade now. He took over from Mr. Fuzail Jafferey, who was the editor of Inquilab from 1st Feb 1990 to 31st May 1995 and again from 27 May 2000 to 31st march 2004.

The New Layout
Earlier all important news came into the front page and sports was on the back page. But during the relaunch they decided where the local news (city)- Page 2 & 3 covering news upto Vasai and upto Vashi.

In case there are any news in other areas they are included in the National news.

The page for international news as Page 5,

Page 6 - Manzar-pas-Manzar (Roughly translated as Seen and Unseen). Issues that are given special focus and attention, e.g. the 123 Indo - US Nuclear Deal,

Page 7 - Edit Page

Page 8 – Women- Unique among Urdu papers; Inquilab is the only Urdu paper that has a page dedicated for Women readers. Besides beauty tips it covers other aspects like current issues facing women, women’s rights issues etc.

Page 9 – Daily Features page
This is a special focus page and each theme has a designated day in the week. Monday is when the education special is published. On Friday it is health, on other days stories on environment and on business are published

There are 12 pages in an Inquilab Paper, with the exception of Friday and Saturday when you find 16 pages;

Post re-launch every page was entitled to a particular person on a particular day. E.g. Qutubuddin Shahid is responsible for Page 3 on Tuesdays and on Mondays he gets to do the Front page. On other days he works on the Sunday Magazine, which is a politically centered supplement.

A surprising fact is that pre 1996, Inquilab was entirely written by hand. The team composition then was entirely different. Twice the number of people were required to run the team in the earlier format. Now with pages assigned to each person, their role became far clearer