The Week (Indian magazine)

The Week is an Indian news magazine founded in the year 1982 and published by The Malayala Manorama Co. Pvt. Ltd. The magazine is published from Kochi and is currently printed in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Kottayam. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, it is the largest circulated English news magazine in India.
The magazine covers politics, entertainment, social issues, trends, technology and lifestyle.

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History

Chief editors

The Week was launched by The Malayala Manorama Co. Ltd in December, 1982, and has had two chief editors, before the designation was discontinued.

K. M. Mathew, the founder chief editor, remained in office until 25 December 1988. Popularly known as Mathukuttychayan, he was chairman of the Press Trust of India, president of the Indian Newspaper Society and chairman of the Audit Bureau of Circulations. He died on 1 August 2010. The obit which appeared in The Times of India said, "The highly acclaimed English news magazine-The Week-was his brainchild."
K. M. Mathew's eldest son, Mammen Mathew,, took over on 1 January 1989, and continued until 9 December 2007. He is currently chief editor of the Malayala Manorama daily, the group's flagship publication.

Currently, The Week does not have a chief editor. K. M. Mathew's second son, Philip Mathew, managing editor since 1 January 1989, is the highest-ranked editor.

Publishers

Philip Mathew, the first publisher of the magazine, held the post until December 1988.
Jacob Mathew: 1 January 1989 till date. K.M. Mathew's third son, he is currently president of WAN-IFRA. He is the second Asian and the first Indian to hold the post.

Editors

The magazine has had two editors, after which the designation was discontinued.

V. K. B. Nair: 26 December 1982 to 3 June 1984.
T. V. R. Shenoy : 10 June 1984 to 11 December 1988.

Editor-in-charge

Currently, the editor-in-charge is responsible for selection of news under The Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867. The present editor-in-charge, V.S. Jayaschandran, took over on 1 April 2017.

Design and style

The magazine was initially designed in-house, and was periodically redesigned. A major content overhaul was led by Peter Lim, author and former editor-in-chief of The Straits Times/Singapore Press Holdings. He authored the book Chronicle of Singapore: Fifty Years of Headline News.
The two major redesigns were led by:

Peter Ong on 8 November 1998.
Dr Mario Garcia on 20 February 2005.

Based in Sydney, Australia, Ong was formerly Picture & Graphics Editor of The Straits Times. He is principal consultant at Checkout Australia, and was regional director for the Society of News Design. Garcia owns the premier newspaper design firm, Garcia Media. Both of them also helped redesign the Malayala Manorama.
In the early years, cartoonist Mario Miranda designed many covers for The Week. He also had a regular pocket cartoon in the magazine.
The Week does not have published stylebook, but generally follows the down style for capitalisation. Its dateline carries the pull date, not the date of issue.

Columnists

The Week has these regular guest columns:

Ivory Tour by Sanjaya Baru
DeTour by Shobhaa De
Forthwrite by Meenakshi Lekhi.
Mani-festo by Mani Shankar Aiyar
Last Word by Shashi Tharoor, Barkha Dutt, Navtej Sarna and Bibek Debroy
Schizo-Nation by Anuja Chauhan.
Sound Bite by Anita Pratap.

In addition to the guests, there are two staff columns.

Power Point by K. S. Sachidananda Murthy, resident editor in New Delhi.
PMO Beat by R. Prasannan, chief of bureau, New Delhi.

Former columnists

Former columnists of the magazine include Priyanka Chopra, Khushwant Singh, Saurav Ganguly, General Bikram Singh (retd), P. C. Alexander, Binayak Sen, Sania Mirza, Saina Nehwal, Swara Bhasker, Sanjay Manjrekar, R. N. Malhotra, Sanjana Kapoor, A. P. Venkateswaran, Harsha Bhogle, Sreenivasan Jain, Mallika Sarabhai, Nandita Das, Manjula Padmanabhan, Amjad Ali Khan, Santosh Desai and Antara Dev Sen, among others.

Supplements and stand-alones

Two supplements go free with The Week:

Health, a fortnightly on health and fitness.
The Wallet, a monthly guide to personal finance and investment.

The standalone magazines are:The Man: The Man, a monthly lifestyle magazine for menWatchTime India: A quarterly magazine on luxury watches

Smartlife: A monthly magazine on wellness and lifestyle
Livingetc: A monthly magazine on home and interiors

''The Week'' Hay Festival

Hay Kerala 2010

The Week was the title sponsor, of the inaugural Hay Festival in India. Held in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, from 12 to 14 November 2010, the festival was held at Kanakakunnu Palace, the former summer retreat of the Travancore royal family.
Writers and speakers for the event included Mani Shankar Aiyar, Rosie Boycott, Gillian Clarke, William Dalrymple, Tishani Doshi, Sonia Faleiro, Sebastian Faulks, Nik Gowing, Manu Joseph, N. S. Madhavan, Jaishree Misra, Vivek Narayanan, Michelle Paver, Basharat Peer, Hannah Rothschild, K. Satchidanandan, Marcus du Sautoy, Simon Schama, Vikram Seth, C. P. Surendran, Miguel Syjuco, Shashi Tharoor, Amrita Tripathi, Pavan Varma and Paul Zacharia.
The event closed with a concert by Bob Geldof, where Sting made a surprise appearance.

Awards

In 2001, Special Cover Designer Ajay Pingle entered the Limca Book of Records for designing the most number of covers for an Indian newsmagazine.

Man of the Year

2009 – Brother Christudas, for Little Flower Leprosy Welfare Association
2010 – Satinath Sarangi, for voicing Bhopal disaster victims
2011 – Ajeet Singh, for Guria
2018 – Nilesh Desai, Lighting up the Darkness
2019 – Madhav Gadgil, for his work in ecology
2020 – Sonu Sood, for his humanitarian efforts during the pandemic
2021 – Balram Bhargava, ICMR Director-General
2022 – Neeraj Chopra, Olympics athlete, Javelin thrower
2023 – S. Somanath, Chairman ISRO
2025 – Shubhanshu Shukla, Member of Axiom Mission 4

Couple of the Year

2017 – Ramesh Awasthi and Manisha Gupte

Controversies

The magazine was mired in controversy for an article on Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. In response to a defamation suit filed by Ranjit Savarkar, the magazine publicly apologised for the publication of the article.