Executive editor of news magazine The Caravan, Vinod K Jose, on Tuesday, January 31, announced his resignation from the organisation. Political editor of the magazine, Hartosh Singh Bal, will be replacing him. While The Caravan was launched in 1939, it was revamped as India’s first magazine of long-form narrative journalism in 2010 under Vinod. Vinod was hired by Delhi Press, the parent company of The Caravan in 2009.
Thanking the editor of The Caravan Anant Nath and his family, he said, “I also feel particularly blessed as fourteen plus years is among the longest runs an editor has received in Indian journalism. As a media scholar friend said the other day, the average tenure of an Indian editor is six or seven years, and I have passed double that.”
He recalled, “In 2009, Caravan probably was the smallest newsroom in Delhi, just enough people to fit into my small car, when we felt like going for a dinner at Karims in Old Delhi, we did not need a second car or Uber. But now the team is ten times bigger. Its subscription-first business model has made the magazine healthy,” he said.
Vinod announced that he will soon be finishing a book. “I'm planning to finish a book that I'm contracted to write with a major publisher. I consider myself a reporter who was caged in a beautiful editor's room, unable to report and write as much as I would like to do. I was fulfilling my reporting inclinations through the reporters I supervised, and since the Modi profile that I wrote eleven years ago I have not published a reported piece. I want to finish the book soon, which is going to be a reported history account of our recent times. The year 2023 is also the 25th year for me in journalism, with my first byline appearing in 1998.”
Recalling his days as a journalist, he said that there was never a day of non-event in his 25-year-long run career. “From escaping arson in my apartment in Delhi in the early 2000s that reduced my certificates to ashes to the ten-or-so sedition cases recently in the courts, there has never been a story without a memory, small or big.”
Bidding farewell to his colleague, Hartosh wrote, “Many reasons for us to thank Vinod (some of the best journalism I've been part of has come about working with him). but above all, almost uniquely in the Indian media, he's shaped an organisation that is reliant not on personalities but on institutional strength.”
many reasons for us to thank vinod (some of the best journalism i've been part of has come about working with him). but above all, almost uniquely in the indian media, he's shaped an organisation that is reliant not on personalities but on institutional strength. https://t.co/D9Snw8NMWL
— Hartosh Singh Bal (@HartoshSinghBal) January 31, 2023