Chinki Sinha, editor, Outlook magazine feels magazines with good content can withstand digital boom

Goa Khabar: Journalist Chinki Sinha, editor of the Outlook magazine, New Delhi is of the opinion that magazines with good content can definitely withstand the digital boom.

Chinki who was in conversation with Pushkar, director of the International Centre Goa (ICG) as a part of the “Patrakar” series of ICG on Saturday said, “Our subscriptions have risen in the last three years.

People appreciate good stories,”

Chinki, who has been editor of the national magazine for the last three years said that they were a “decazine”, as their editions came out  every ten days. “In this sense, we are not competing with anyone,” she said.

Chinki said that the emphasis at Outlook was always on creating good content and thinking out of  box. Citing some of their stories, she said they had done a story on Goa, as viewed from the eyes of a mermaid. Or a focus on the Asura community, an indigenous people in central India who worshipped the demon king, Mahisasura.

Or visited Kashmir, to interview farmer-poet, Madhosh Balhami, whose house was burnt down in a gunfight between paramilitary forces and suspected insurgents. Balhami lost all his manuscripts, besides suffering huge financial losses.

More recently, at the start of 2024, Chinki mentioned how they had asked filmmaker Amar Kanwar to helm a 100-page edition on resistance poetry. “We compiled 183 poems from  across India and kept publishing them across our subsequent editions,” Chinki said.

And their cover story on Ram. “We interviewed indigenous people in Bihar, who tattoo their entire bodies with the word, “Ram”, as they are prevented from gaining access to popular Ram temples,” Chinki said.

Chinki, who has considerable experience of field reporting in rural India during her stint with the Indian Express newspaper said, “Caste, education and health are extremely important areas and we focus on these very closely in our magazine.”