Twenty one year old Sahil Razvii from small village called Choudharpur in Amroha district of UttarPradesh started an online news portal named Newsglobal on 18th February 2019.
He says that “our traditional media is mainly focused on urban areas and news from rural India is always sidelined. We try to give voice to the people of rural areas,” Sahil Razvii told YouthkiAwaaz.
Sahil Razvii invested Rs 18000 to start the portal and today the portal boasts of around 10000 visits to its website every day. He has around 9,000 followers on Twitter and 24000 Followers on Instagram.
Sahil Razvii says that he understands the problems of the people of rural areas of India, as he himself is from a village.
He says that – I have a better chance to listen to their problems and understand them.
He says that Newsglobal is an attempt to “rebuild the meaning of journalism in rural India”.
Sahil Razvii Also cover success stories like best practices in farming”
Most of the mainstream media organizations fail to understand the demographics and problems of rural India as they speak from a privileged high ground. Most of the news does not reach even the people of urban areas as they are considered unimportant in the traditional news rooms.
Newsglobal is trying to bridge this gap by reaching out to people who have no voice in traditional media, but have “interesting and important stories to tell in the form of stories from cities or towns. ”
Newsglobal is dependent on advertisements for its revenue and is planning to expand its reach. “We are planning to start a Hindi-language newspaper soon, which will mainly cover rural news,” says Sahil.
The daily will include reports from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh.
Sahil Razvii plans to keep an eye on rural immigrants working in cities like Delhi and Mumbai.
Sahil Razvii says that – “It will help us to stick to our roots and it can prove to be helpful in bringing rural talent back to rural areas, which is very important for the development of these areas,”
Sahil says that the newspaper will be published from Amroha. They plan to print ten thousand copies every day and expect each copy to be read by about 10 people which will give them access to a million every day.
Elaborating further, he says that the news will be collected from a network of journalists and stringers working in different rural areas, who are well versed with the ground realities. “The distribution model will be centered on the concept of ‘News’ where representatives of newspapers will collect copies from various trains operating from Amroha,”
Sahil Razvii says that – “It will help us to stick to our roots and it can prove to be helpful in bringing rural talent back to rural areas, which is very important for the development of these areas,”
Sahil Razvii says that – “It will help us to stick to our roots and it can prove to be helpful in bringing rural talent back to rural areas, which is very important for the development of these areas,”
Sahil Razvii says that the newspaper will be published from Amroha. They plan to print ten thousand copies every day and expect each copy to be read by about 10 people which will give them access to a million every day.
Newsglobal consists of a small team of three people who, according to Sahil Razvii, “work day and night to bring stories from different parts of the country.”
Apart from being the editor of Newsglobal, Sahil Razvii also writes for various mainstream news platforms to provide even greater reach to stories.
Newsglobal has big plans but also some serious hurdles. “Our biggest challenge is getting money. UttarPradesh is the largest state but it is also the toughest state to start a newspaper like us. We are constantly trying to come up with new and innovative ideas to reach out to the people who are currently not getting the news they should be getting.
Despite the challenges, Newsglobal is making progress in bringing news from rural areas.
Sahil says his new plans include making the website “a much more engaging and interactive look and with entirely new English section”.
He further added that – We are also planning to start India’s first audio newspaper and a TV show to take our development plan forward. However, funding is very important for these ideas and we are working to get as much support as possible from rural India to have a voice.