The Times of India is a leading Indian English daily newspaper and online news media owned and run by The Times Group. It's the third- largest newspaper in the country by print circulation and biggest selling English-language newspaper in the world. It's also the most-visited English daily, with over half a million readers. The Indian Express or Indian News, published by the same company, is the fourth-most popular English daily.
The first issue of the Times of India published in English was on August 8th, 1838. It contained stories on the railroads, which were then still in their infancy in India. It included an account of the rail tragedy at Calcutta, on which the British East Coast Railway was halted for three days. The Indian Express carried the stories on the train as well. The Indian railway disaster was the first major disaster to mar the lucrative rail shipping industry in India.
The Indian Express carried stories from all over the country, but the main highlight was on the rail disasters in India. The next issue of the Times of India took place in Bhopal, on September 10th, 1839. It featured stories of pearls and other precious stone jewelry and jewelry from Bhopal. The Indian maharajas, who governed much of what now constitutes northern India, were especially perturbed by this turn of events.
Subsequently, the paper started publishing stories from the various provinces of the British Raj, which became the forerunner of the present Indian newspapers. It began publishing the Indian newspapers from sixteenth onwards, under the titles of maharajas, a newspaper for all the residents of the various princely states of the Delhi period. This changed gradually into the first scheduled Hindi newspaper, published exclusively for the inhabitants of the princely states, which we know today as the Indian newspaper called the Jain. The first issues did not mention anything about the government or the maharajas but merely gave recipes and tax information for the readers.
In the nineteenth century, the maharajas allowed for free trade and settlement of disputes with neighboring princely states, but they still limited the entry of goods from neighboring countries. This led to a lack of imported articles, especially textiles, which became an important export in later years. The Times of India, being largely a maharajah's newspaper, did not endorse the liberalization of the economy, or encourage the development of new industries or private trading. But, it did encourage the public, by publishing stories on subjects related to social welfare, agriculture, handicrafts, education, the law, and the customs and traditions of various regions of the country. The printing industry underwent various changes during the late nineteenth century: the introduction of the electric telegraph, and the printing press, and the growth of the telegrapher's trade.
It was the year 18 381 of the Charter of Free Trade that Mumbai emerged as the first city-state of India, and the first Editor-in-Chief of the Indian newspaper, first published in Bombay, was Akbar Hussain Kohli. Akbar Kohli is also credited with being the first Editor-in-chief of the newspaper Deccan Times. When he began the job as Editor-in-chief, he had limited resources and little encouragement and had to struggle to get . . . . . . his style and format adopted. However, he did manage to establish himself, and introduce a distinctively Indian flavor to the writing style of the paper.
