An entire newspaper. Written by hand.
Wired’s Scott Carney reports from India:
[Editor-in-Chief Syed] Fazlulla, who is deep into creating the next issue of the handcrafted The Musalman daily newspaper, frowns as he deciphers the handwriting and searches for a cover story. After some consideration, he passes the page to his brother who translates it into Urdu. He in turn sends the text to the back room where writers take calligraphy quills in hand and begin.
Here in the shadow of the Wallajah Mosque, a team of six puts out this hand-penned paper. Four of them are katibs — writers dedicated to the ancient art of Urdu calligraphy. It takes three hours using a pen, ink and ruler to transform a sheet of paper into news and art.
No Illustrator. No Freehand. No InDesign. No CCI. No web refers.
A newspaper written entirely by hand.
How the hell do they pull it off?
Each katib is responsible for one page. If someone is sick, the others pull double shifts — there are no replacements anywhere in the city. When calligraphers make mistakes they rewrite everything from scratch. They earn 60 rupees (about $1.50) per page.
The final proofs are transferred onto a black and white negative, then pressed onto printing plates. The paper is sold for one cent on the streets of Chennai.
Read all about it — in a story not written by hand – in Wired.
July 25th, 2008 at 6:47 am
So cool. What a different perspective on this whole newspaper thing.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:05 am
But its not a new thing in India.Handwritten newspaper and magazine is a part of Indian culture. During my college days I had brought out handwritten mag for two year.I will post it in my blog soon