RBU_JR_LIS_V23_2021-FULL_TEXT-E-Copy

Sharma & Karkee: Assessment of Newspaper reading …
Introduction
Information technology has shrunken the world into a
global village, and it is analogous to the fact that electronic
mass media has dramatically reduced distance and
isolation in a communities. One of the key parameter to
measure the contemporary society in this technologically
advanced era is “information”. Information-rich or
information-poor have become the new identities of
richness and poorness today. Newspaper is considered as
one of the carrier of primary source of information. It acts
as a mirror of a society, contributing to sustenance of the
democratic system of a nation. It is inevitable that
newspaper is a very effective tool for information diffusion
into a community. “Newspapers are one of the tools of
communication and they have a significant role in the
dissemination of news, promoting communal participation
and development, community integration and inclusion ”
(Franklin, 2013). Moreover Nielsen (2015) added that
locality based “community newspapers” are more effective
in community development than the bigger national level
urban newspapers, since they raise the local issues and
provide balanced and critical reports of issues and
happenings in a community. Fuller (2016) in his article
depicted that inherent participatory approach of a
community newspaper and community radio provides the
opportunity to the people to contribute in their inclusive
development of the community.
Reading habit and effective reading is other facet in this
scenario, which actually meet the purpose (becoming an
information rich society) of mass media. Morni & Sahari
(2013) rightly stated that “A great awareness of why
reading is important is that it does not contribute only to an
individual well-being, self-development and progress but
also to the whole nation and the world”. The conscious,
aware and passionate reading ignites the fuel of quest for
the knowledge and helps ones’ to sharpen the intellect and
thus leading towards the arena of wisdom. A study was
conducted by Owusu-Acheaw, Micheal (2014) in
Koforidua Polytechnic College situated in the Eastern
Region of Ghana, to analyze the reading habits among the
students and their effects on their academic performance.
It is found that reading creates a positive impact on their
academic performance.
Khas Community
One of the oldest aboriginal tribes of Indian sub-continent
is the Khasas who display a distinctive culture and
tradition, different from the other mainstream society.
Originally from Central Asia, the Khasas tribe migrated to
the northern Himalayas, centuries ago in search of food
and fodder for their cattle. Later on the Khasas settled in
the various pockets of the Himalayan Mountain ranges
stretching from Kashmir to Bhutan (Uttarakhand,
Himachal Pradesh, Nepal, Darjeeling Hills and Sikkim) in
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different period of the Himalayan history (Atkinson,
1884). Though living in the modern world the khasas till
this day follow most of their primitive culture, lifestyle,
and traits and chose to live in harsh isolation in hills due to
illiteracy and poverty. “Modern-day Khas people adopted
a new title (surname) named as Khas Brahmin (commonly
called as Khas Bahun), Khas Rajput (commonly called
as Khas Chhetri), and Khas Dalit” (Hitchcock, 1978) due
to negative perception associated to the word “khas”
meaning “degraded/lowered” in Nepali language (Subba,
1985). The “Nepali (Khas-Kura) of 1931 and 1911 and
Eastern Paharia (Khas) of 1921 have been taken as Nepali”
in census, 1961 (Ray, 1964).
Literature Review
Mabawonku, (2006) discussed that most of the Nigerian
women’s information needs are related to governance,
education, job performance, religion, family and domestic
matters. Newspapers, magazines, newsletters, radio;
television, library collections etc are the major sources of
information. A study carried out by Murugan (2015) on
“A Study on Reading Habits of students in University
VOC College of Engineering Anna University
Thoothukudi Campus Library users. The survey reveals
that most of the under graduate students daily read
Kannada and English newspapers [11]. The researcher
Kumar, Singh, and Siddiqui (2011) observed that
average 96.61% of students use Hindi for newspaper
reading, whereas 67.57% use English, and 3.25% students
use Urdu in Chaudhary Charan Singh University. Another
study conducted by Sharma & Saini, (2019) depicts that
the Punjab Kesari and Dainik Bhaskar are the most
popular and widely circulated newspapers among the
respondents of Kurukshetra University. A study conducted
by Asokan & Dhanavandan (2013) in engineering
professionals and found that they used the newspapers to
improve their general knowledge and they preferred to
read newspaper in Tamil language. The popularity of
newspaper published in native language along with
English language is seen among the students’ community
of studied areas in India. The local language newspapers
always have higher possibility of local community news
coverage. The Nielsen (2015) in his study stated the
importance of local coverage of news “the community
newspapers are able to act as catalysts in improving
people’s living standards, more so as they are locally
based newspapers, with a potential to disseminate
information and news aimed at the betterment of the
society”.
As the numbers indicate that, “in United States, about 97%
of newspapers are classified as "community" newspapers,
with circulations below 50,000. An American journalist
Penny Abernathy in her book “Saving Community
Journalism”, argues that most newspapers under 100,000
should consider themselves community newspapers