By Kollengode S Venkataraman
The Pittsburgh Patrika enters its 25th year. Reaching this milestone for a financially and editorially independent small-town Ethnic Media publication is noteworthy. Publishing is a time-consuming job requiring attention to detail, working against deadlines from the get-go. Editing, proofing, and laying out in the format, then getting it printed and mailing them for free to 1800-plus addresses every three months takes time.
By choice, we do not seek financial support from any social, political, cultural, religious, or other entity. We pay all our ever-rising bills through our advertisements. Three of our readers on their own send us unsolicited small contributions every year. We owe a big Thank You to all our advertisers and these supporters for their trust in our integrity.
People living among us find time to write articles for the magazine, informing readers about many topics. All the stories in the magazine are about ourselves or on a topic that interests our readers. And deliberately we stay away from the juicy Indian filmi tidbits and also from local gossip. After all, are we all not naked underneath our clothes?
The Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area, with a population of nearly 2.4 million, is the 22nd in the nation. The Indian population in our area is only around 20,000, yet we do have vibrant practitioners of Indian classical and contemporary dances, and vocal and instrumental music, with support from a handful of individual patrons. We can do better with more ticket-buying audiences, given our better education, higher earnings and net worth.
As is the case with all print publications, the Patrika too is facing tremendous headwinds in these days of information overload and other social media choices being available. TV and cell phones have cut into our reading and writing on complex issues. This is a global trend.
In the next several issues, you will see occasional reprints of articles from yester years. In the meanwhile, bouquets and brickbats from readers on the magazine’s 25 years of journey are also most welcome. $$$$