A refreshing mint in a cowboy economy
Mint is refreshing. A clarity of thought pervades the pages and the text, which media professionals dare to call “storiesâ€.
It hasn’t gone overboard on Day One, though it had a slew of reasons provided by Tatas, Corus and the apex bank. That’s a welcome relief from all the ‘exclusive’, painting-the-town-red sort of ‘interviews’ of Ratan Tata that almost all business dailies ran. Ratan Tata could have told them only one thing other than what he did at the media briefing – That he didn’t wink. Or, may be, it was easier to get sandwiches in the Taj than in Bombay House.
Mint stayed cool. Others went overboard. Fair enough.
But there is a cowboy economy out there when it comes to pink pals. Mint is not pink in its physical form, but it has space only in that smug of a rat race.
And the cowboy economy dictates that you flourish by killing the competitor, rather than leaping ahead.
That necessarily means something akin to buying all the copies and burying it under heaps of garbage. To be on the safer side, it could be burnt before burying, lest someone digs it out.
It is in jumping this hurdle that mint would find the competition tough, rather than in coming out with a smart product.
And one thing that it needs to do is to make available its copies to at least those who want it.
A flurry of SMSssssssssssss, an e-mail and a personal chat with the vendor did not bring it to the doorstep. It took an unscheduled long walk. Now, that is not how you sell your newspaper, whether you call it Berliner or Assamese or compact or Chinese. Or mint. Â
No one is waiting, but this is to inform the stray visitor, the faceless blogger or the unknown netizen that this space is to witness some activity in the days to come. Welcome to those who have nothing worthwhile to do, no horizons to conquer, no goals to work for and no energy worth boasting.