On Saturday morning, Mumbai Mirror and Pune Mirror published their final daily print editions. On December 5, the Times Group, which publ...
On Saturday morning, Mumbai Mirror and Pune Mirror published their final daily print editions. On December 5, the Times Group, which published the papers, said that the the economic crisis induced by the Covid-19 pandemic made them unviable. Mumbai Mirror will now be launched as a weekly while continuing to publish online.
This is a huge blow to the journalists and staff of the Mumbai and Pune Mirror, many of whom will now be out of work. But the impact will be felt far beyond Mirror’s offices too.
The Mirror was Mumbai’s most widely-read tabloid, well regarded for its focus on civic issues that directly affected the lives of readers in the city of 16 million. The closure of its print edition comes just over a year after two other major city papers shut their operations: The Afternoon Despatch & Courier, which shut shop entirely in July 2019, and DNA, which stopped printing in October 2019.
These closures contribute to the growing erosion of local city reportage that is an essential part of journalism and democracy.
“Take a city’s paper away and you steal a citizen’s opportunity for redressal, however slim that chance may be,” said Shishir Joshi, the founder of Project Mumbai, a non-profit organisation that amplifies citizens’ concerns about civic issues. “Mumbai Mirror did not just report news. It raised issues. It...
