Outlook removed its editor-in-chief, Krishna Prasad, and appointed its former reporter Rajesh Ramachandran

(S.Ravi Seshu)
In a significant development, Raheja Group’s prestigious news magazine Outlook removed its editor-in-chief, Krishna Prasad, and appointed its former reporter Rajesh Ramachandran, who is now with Economic Times after changing many newspapers, as the new chief.

The Executive Director and Publisher of Outlook, Indranil Roy, conveyed this change over to the staff in an e-mail on Saturday. According to the mail, Rajesh will take charge on August 16. KP is shown the door only days after Outlook carried an expose on Rastriya Swayam Sevek Sangh’s alleged role in trafficking tribal girls to convert them to Hinduism. The RSS filed an FIR against the magazine for “inciting communal hatred’ on August 4 in Assam.

“Threats against journalists may be an occupational hazard but what we are seeing today is a more serious attempt to shoot the messenger. The country is fast hurtling down a fascist mode and this fiction of public narrative of demonising journalists is dangerous for free speech,” KP had told in an interview to The Hoot, a comprehensive website on media matters, recently.

Rajesh, who was the national bureau chief of India Today group’s tabloid Mail Today after working with Outlook under the founding editor Vinod Mehta, later joined The Hindu group in Kerala and later shifted to Times Group’s financial newspaper. Rajesh reportedly confirmed his appointment. A highly ambitious journalist, Rajesh interestingly claimed that he had been in conversation with Outlook for about a year and his appointment was done almost a month ago.

Rajesh will be the third editor-in-chief of the magazine that carved a niche for its in-depth, investigative reporting. Launched in October 1995, Outlook made a name under the able stewardship of Vinod Mehta, who had quit the position in 2012. Krishna Prasad, who has been brought in as Editor of Outlook in October 2008, took over the cudgels from Vinod and tried his best to maintain the quality ever since.

KP was senior editor and in a consulting position since the launch of Outlook in 1995. In 2006, he left it to take up a position with The Times of India (TOI) as editor of the broadsheet, Vijay Times, which was then being launched in Bengaluru.

He left TOI after seven months when it decided to turn Vijay Times into a tabloid. After coming back to Outlook, he said: “I have an umbilical link with Outlook, having been part of the team that proudly launched it.” Rajesh too had umbilical link with Outlook!

“If Outlook magazine sacked KP because of the story on RSS, it is unfortunate. Entire journalism community knows that Rajesh, a hardcore journalist with leftist ideologist, is also equally anti-Hindu. Rajesh will create more headaches to Raheja group than any other editor,” a journalist who worked under Rajesh observed.

Senior editor Sagarika Ghosh tweeted the following on coming to know about KP’s exit:

“Any journalist today who’s been sacked or has resigned should hold this as a badge of honour. Let the toadies crawl before the powerful.”

She is more than true.