Mathrubhumi

Mathrubhumi is one of the prominent Malayalam language newspapers in Kerala state of India. K. P. Kesava Menon, an active volunteer in the Indian freedom struggle against the British, is the founder of Mathrubhumi.

History

Down the line, Mathrubhumi played important roles in many social reformation movements such as ‘Vaikom Satyagraha’ and ‘Guruvayur Satyagraha’ against untouchability. Participating in the Satyagraha, K.P. Keasava Menon was arrested and was sent to Jail.

Patriots like P. Ramanunni Nair, K. Kelappan, P. Narayanan Nair, C.H. Kunjappa, K.A Damodara Menon, and A.P. Udayabhanu did serve as Chief Editors of the newspaper.

In 1932 the company entered into the Magazine Journalism with the launch of ‘Mathrubhumi Illustrated Weekly’, which nurtured the careers of most of the titans of Malayalam literature.

In 1940, ‘Viswaroopam’, a comic magazine was launched with Sanjayan as the Chief Editor. ‘Yugaprabhat’, a bi-monthly in Hindi was also published whose editor was Late N.V. Krishna Warrier. But now, these two publications are not in print.

Mathrubhumi today is the second most circulated newspaper in Kerala. It is published from Calicut, Thiruvananthapuram, Kottayam, Ernakulam, Thrissur, Kannur, Palakkad, Malappuram, and Kollam besides from Chennnai, Bangalore, Mumbai, and New Delhi. It has a circulation of over 1.3 million and its readership is around 7.5 million.

Currently, M.P. Veerendra Kumar is the Chairman and Managing Director of Mathrubhumi, P.V. Chandran is the Managing Editor, K. Gopalakrishnan is the Editor-Daily, and K.K. Sreedharan Nair is the Editor-Periodicals.

Controversies

Mathrubhumi carried out an expose that Venugopal, nephew of founder leader of Communist Party of India, A.K. Gopalan and deputy general manager of CPI(M) daily Deshabhimani, received a bribe to the tune of Rupees ten million from the owners of ‘LIS’ (a dubious finance company, which deals in investments in lottery for appreciation of assets) for watering down the cases against it in courts. The leaders of CPI(M) later threatened the Mathrubhumi for expose. The left activists threw stones on the Mathrubhumi office in Perambra district in Kozhikode.[1]

The Editors Guild of India has strongly condemned threats to K. Gopalakrishnan, editor of Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi, by leaders of the CPI(M) and its frontal organisations in Kerala. [2]

Publications

• Balabhumi (Children\'s publication)
• Grihalakshmi (Women\'s publication)
• Chithrabhumi (Film publication)
• Thozhilvartha (Opportunities publication)
• Arogyamasika (Health publication - The largest selling health magazine in India)
• Mathrubhumi Azhchappathippu (Weekly)
• Mathrubhumi Successline (Educational publication in English)
• Mathrubhumi Vidyarangam (Educational publication in Malayalam)
• Mathrubhumi Sports Masika (Sports publication in Malayalam)
• www.mathrubhumi.com (The complete multipurpose portal in Malayalam)
• Mathrubhumi Yearbook Plus

See also

• List of Malayalam language newspapers
• Malayalam journalism

Links

• Mathrubhumi website (in Malayalam)
• About Mathrubhumi (in Malayalam)

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia