Effectiveness of vernacular newspapers in relation to the development of the readers

Pages: 1620-1625
Nida Zakaria (Department of Mass Communication, Mewar University, Rajasthan)
Shobha Kulshreshtha (Department of Mass Communication, Mewar University, Vice President, Shri Venkateshwar University, Gajraula, India)

Knowledge, awareness and information play a crucial role in helping the country to lead its people to growth and development. In this regard newspapers have been playing an important role to achieve development process through informing the masses about the happenings of the world. The local newspapers have reached to the grass root level. No doubt that these papers keep the readers alert of the activities, mobilize the masses for an opinion and are d also helpful in fighting for the wrong practices of the societies. Here it becomes important to note and study how these vernacular presses are helping in the development process. It is a prime function to analyze how the newspapers are delivering the news. And whether the readers are associating themselves with the newspaper they read. Therefore the following are the proposed objectives for my study. To study the newspaper reading pattern of the sample chosen (Agarwal & Gupta, 2002). To study whether the vernacular press is playing any role in the development process (Ahluwalia, 2016). To study the likes, dislikes, preferences of the newspaper readers of Jamshedpur The sample was collected from the Under Graduate student. Students who newspaper were chosen for my study. It consisted of 200 students (100 male & 100 females). A set of questionnaire was constructed and standardized for the purpose of data collection. Purposive sampling technique was applied for the present study. Mean, were applied for the analysis of data obtained. The study reveals that the newspapers of Jamshedpur are playing a crucial role in informing and educating the masses about the day to day happenings of the world. Moreover, the readers feel that the regional stories are covered by these papers which are generally ignored by the mainstream media. Contrary to this it was found that the papers are lacking in the coverage of development stories like health, education.