MS Mani, who was Chief Editor of Kala Kaumudi, a Malayalam magazine and former Chief Editor of Kerala Kaumudi, a Malayalam newspaper, passed away on Tuesday morning in Thiruvananthapuram. He was 78 years old.

He was unwell for some time. The funeral will be held at his residence at 5 pm on Tuesday.

His father K Sukumaran was also a journalist and Chief Editor of Kerala Kaumudi newspaper. In fact, Mani’s grandfather CV Kunhiraman had founded the newspaper in 1911.  Mani followed in their footsteps as a young man of 20, joining as a reporter of the same paper in 1961. The next year he went to Delhi and began reporting on the Parliament. Mani reported on several important national developments such as the split of the Communist Party and the Chinese forces entering North East India in 1962. He received the Kerala government’s Swadeshabhimani Kesari award for his work in journalism.

Mani returned to Thiruvananthapuram in 1965 and took charge of Kerala Kaumudi. He founded the Kala Kaumudi magazine in 1975. He was a committee member of the Indian Newspaper Society.

Writer Sethu Madhavan paid his condolences on a Facebook post. “At a time when people rarely paid for the stories published, Mani gave Rs 100 for a story. That was a big amount then,” he wrote.

Mani graduated from the University College with a Chemistry degree.