Orissa Today
Orissa Today is an English-language daily newspaper published from Bhubaneswar, the capital of Odisha. It has been coming out since 2005, which makes it one of the smaller, independently minded English dailies in a state whose newspaper market is dominated by large Odia-language titles. What has always set Orissa Today apart is not its size but its stated editorial purpose. From its very first issue, the paper declared that it would give priority to rural news — the schools, jobs, roads and food distribution systems of village Odisha — at a time when most English-language coverage of the state was written from the capital, for the capital. More than two decades later, the paper continues to publish daily, with a print edition and a daily e-paper carrying the Bhubaneswar edition to readers online.
Founding in 2005, on the Day of the Gundicha Jatra
According to the paper's own account of its history, Orissa Today began publication in 2005, and its first day coincided with the beginning of the Car Festival of Sri Jagannath — the Srigundicha Jatra, the opening stage of the famous Rath Jatra at Puri. Launching an English daily in Odisha was, by the founder's own description, a small initiative, and an anxious one: the expenses of a daily newspaper are relentless, and a new English title had no guaranteed readership. The paper records that it was carried through those early uncertainties by encouragement from friends, from senior and junior journalists, and, as the founder puts it, mostly from his own brothers. That founding story matters because it explains the paper's character. Orissa Today was not launched by a media conglomerate diversifying into a new market. It was started by a journalist who believed the venture was necessary, and who relied on a close circle of family and professional well-wishers to keep it going.
Why an English Daily for the State Capital?
The founding rationale, again in the paper's own telling, was simple: those behind it felt the necessity of an English daily in the state capital. Odisha's great newspaper tradition is overwhelmingly Odia. The first English daily of Odisha, New Orissa, had been published from Berhampur as far back as 1933 under Shashi Bhushan Rath, but English-language publishing in the state remained thin compared with the strength of the Odia press, whose landmark titles include the Prajatantra, Dharitri, Sambad and the Samaja. By 2005, Bhubaneswar was a growing administrative, educational and information-technology centre, drawing officials, students, professionals and visitors who read their news in English. Orissa Today set out to serve that readership from within Odisha, rather than leaving English coverage of the state entirely to the Odisha editions of national newspapers published from outside. Its offices have been listed at Jagamara in Bhubaneswar, and business listings record the year of establishment as 2005, consistent with the paper's own history.
A Rural-First Editorial Mission
The most distinctive part of Orissa Today's identity is the priority it announced for rural news. "We bother to publish the rural news," the paper says — a slightly unpolished sentence that captures a deliberate editorial choice. In most Indian English dailies, rural stories appear when they are dramatic: a disaster, an election, a protest. Orissa Today's founding statement instead treats the countryside as the paper's home beat. That decision fits its state. Odisha is a predominantly rural society, and the questions that decide everyday life for most of its people — whether the school has teachers, whether work is available locally, whether the road to the block headquarters is passable, whether grain reaches the ration shop — are rural questions. A newspaper that puts those questions first is making a claim about what news is for, and Orissa Today has built its profile around exactly that claim.
Schools, Colleges and the Problems of Rural Education
The first specific subject the paper named in its founding statement was the problems of schools and colleges. Education coverage in Orissa Today therefore starts not with examination results and university announcements but with facilities and obstructions — the practical conditions under which rural students study. This remains one of the most contested areas of Odisha's public life, with recurring debate about teacher vacancies, school infrastructure and dropout rates, particularly in government and aided schools in rural districts. By naming education as a founding priority, the paper positioned itself to follow those debates from the village school upward rather than from the secretariat downward. For an English-language readership — administrators, teachers, parents and students themselves — that ground-level education reporting is precisely the kind of coverage that national English papers, with their thin district networks, rarely supply.
Rural Employment: Facilities and Obstructions
Alongside education, the founding statement committed the paper to examining the facilities for, and the obstructions in, rural employment. Work — its availability, its seasonal rhythms and its absence — drives migration out of Odisha's districts and shapes the economy of almost every village household. A daily that reports on employment as a standing subject, rather than an occasional feature, speaks directly to that reality. The paper's business summary, as recorded in listings, similarly describes a daily newspaper focusing on rural news, education, employment challenges and infrastructure development. Those four themes — village news, schooling, work and infrastructure — together form a recognisable editorial charter, and they mark Orissa Today out among English dailies, whose business and employment pages more usually address urban, organised-sector readers.
Roads, Communication and the Public Distribution System
Two further commitments in the founding statement give the charter its practical edge. The paper promised attention to construction work for rural communication — the roads and links that connect villages to markets, hospitals and administrative centres. In a state regularly tested by cyclones and floods along its coast, the state of rural connectivity is not an abstraction; it decides how quickly relief, produce and people can move. The paper also promised to highlight especially the public distribution system of rural Orissa — the ration network through which subsidised food reaches poorer households. Coverage of the PDS is unglamorous, detailed work: allocations, leakages, dealer conduct, beneficiary lists. It is also among the most consequential beats a regional newspaper can keep, because failures in that system are felt immediately at the household level. Orissa Today's decision to name it at founding signals an accountability instinct directed at the delivery end of government.
The Voice of the Village Elder
One of the most unusual lines in the paper's founding statement concerns older people. The elderly in their villages, the paper says, retain an importance there, and the newspaper seeks their advice and shares their experiences for the management of a better society. It is a small declaration, but a revealing one. Orissa Today presents journalism not only as reporting on a community but as listening to it — treating the memory and judgement of village elders as a resource for public life. That orientation helps explain the paper's tone: it is a community-minded daily, closer in spirit to the older tradition of the Indian regional newspaper as a local institution than to the detached metropolitan model. The founder closed the statement by expressing the hope that readers, writers and journalists — "the Orissa Today family" — would agree with those words, framing the paper as a shared enterprise among the three groups.
Publication, E-Paper and Daily Routine
Orissa Today publishes as a daily newspaper from Bhubaneswar, and its digital presence is built around the e-paper: the paper's website organises its electronic edition by date under the Bhubaneswar edition, with daily issues continuing to appear in sequence. The e-paper format matters for a paper of this kind. Its natural readers include the large Odia diaspora and the many Odias working outside the state, for whom a replica of the printed Bhubaneswar edition is the most direct connection to home-state news in English. Digital magazine platforms have also carried issues of Orissa Today, extending its availability beyond its own site. The continuity of the archive — day after day of dated editions — is itself evidence of the paper's survival: a daily founded as a small, anxious initiative in 2005 is still meeting its daily deadline more than twenty years on, which business listings reflect in describing it as over two decades in business.
Place in Odisha's Media Landscape
To understand Orissa Today's place, it helps to see the market it works in. Odisha's newspaper readers are served first by powerful Odia dailies, several of them among India's largest regional-language papers, and by the Odisha editions of national English newspapers. Between those two tiers sits a small band of home-grown English titles, of which Orissa Today is one of the longest-running. Media research on Odisha has repeatedly found that development subjects — health, agriculture, employment, the livelihoods of weavers and fishermen — struggle for space in the state's press, and that English dailies have historically devoted even less attention to social development than their Odia counterparts. Orissa Today's founding charter reads almost as a direct answer to that criticism: here is an English daily that promised, before anything else, rural news, school problems, employment obstructions and the ration system. Whether measured against the big Odia titles or the national English editions, that promise remains its defining feature.
Reading Orissa Today Today
For readers, Orissa Today offers something specific: the state of Odisha reported in English by a Bhubaneswar newsroom whose declared sympathies lie with the countryside. Its coverage is at its most characteristic when it follows the subjects named in 2005 — a rural school struggling for facilities, a road project meant to connect villages, the working of food distribution, the experience of older residents whose knowledge anchors village life. The paper's endurance is part of its story. English dailies founded by individuals, without corporate backing, rarely survive two decades of rising print costs and digital disruption; Orissa Today has, and it has done so while keeping the identity it announced on its first day, during the Car Festival of Sri Jagannath in 2005. In a directory of Indian newspapers, it stands as Odisha's rural-first English daily — small in scale, but clear and consistent about whom it publishes for.
