2016 is a leap year, and all thanks to that I get to be here a second time to profess my love for one more thing. Even though I haven’t bought a newspaper to read the news in years, every time I spot a newspaper whose copy I don’t own, I need to buy it. What started as a couple of innocent purchases has turned into an obsession—some would even call it love!
A sample of nameplates from Indian newspapers (from top to bottom): Gujarat Samachar (Gujarati), Eenadu (Telugu), Madhyamam (Malayalam), Andolan (Kannada), Dinaethal (Tamil), Dainik Bhaskar (Devanagari), Lokmat (Marathi in Devanagari), Rozana Spokesman (Punjabi in Gurmukhi), Inquilab (Urdu in Nastaliq), Namasthe Telangana (Telugu), Sakal Bela (Bengali) and The Pioneer (English)
A sample of nameplates from International newspapers (from top to bottom): Al-Ittihad (UAE), San Francisco Chronicle (USA), The Chosun Ilbo (South Korea), Khmer Daily Newspaper (Cambodia), Dagens Nyeheter (Sweden), The Malaysian Reserve (Malaysia), Yomiuri Shimbun (Japan), Die Welt (Germany), Le Monde (France), Bangkok Biz News (Thailand) and Divaina (Sri Lanka)
It sounds insane, and it probably is, that I want to have in my collection at least one newspaper from every country there is, and each and every one that is published in my own, India.
My current favourites from the lot are some of the less-than-mainstream Indian newspapers that I began paying attention to once I bought a copy. Take these sex-laced crime publications from Maharashtra, for instance, that are targeted towards the police and criminals alone. They help the police find out about new entrants in the world of crime, and the criminals in honing their craft.
Police Times and Kali Ganga, both crime and sex publications
Equally fascinating are these newspapers from Goa, which are not really newspapers at all, but fronts for a form of local illegal gambling called Matka.
The front page of Golden Chance on the left, which presents the front of a newspaper; and the second page on the right, which only contains gambling information
Or cheap “litho” newspapers from Kashmir, like The Mirror of Kashmir, which don’t contain any stories with bylines, editorials or attributions to news agencies.
I had no idea that collecting newspapers would lead me down such fascinating rabbit-holes when I first started, but it has and I’m glad for it. If these newspapers caught your fancy, like they did mine, see more of them on Flickr: Indian newspapers and International newspapers.
Do you love letters as much as we do? Post your favourites on Instagram or tweet at us @alphabettes_org with the hashtag #letterlove.