An undated picture of a hamlet showing thatch roofed houses.

Kashmir Life has completed two years of uninterrupted publication. This issue that you have in your hands marks the beginning of the third year.

In the last two years, we at KL have done every effort to offer a kind of journalism that is not rare but new to Kashmir – the journalism of detail, a mix of knowledge and news. The efforts have been acknowledged by the society, especially the thinking lot and the men and women of opinion in different disciplines and facets of life.

The in-depth research continues to remain our focus. Managing a balanced coverage of the entire society across regions and sub-regions remains a priority. It did, however, suffer a bit at the peak of summer unrest in 2010 when most of our staff writers could barely move around.

The journalism of detail does have a universal acceptance. The efforts were recognized even by the academic institutions. Three of our staff writers got international fellowships to study journalism in some of the best American universities. In the newsroom they were replaced by a group of young, talented and committed reporters who are keen to report the under-reported.

We are highly encouraged by the emergence of KL as a source of information to tens of thousands of the people interested in Kashmir worldwide. In fact during the second year of the publication witnessed impressive growth in the number of readers who ensure landing at our site regularly.  All these developments took place at a time when the Kashmir market remained seriously impacted by the situation that emerged during early summer.

Print media did suffer immense loss during the year initially because of the restrictions and later owing to loss of huge revenue as advertisement dried up. KL was not an exception. Even for professional reasons, KL did encounter problems that led us to courtrooms as well.  We do publish a number of special issues in a year but we have the tradition of starting a new year of publication with a thematic issue. Last year, we dedicated the first issue to the newsmen who fell on the call the duty. It continues to be the last reference on the issue.

This year, however, the KL newsroom decided to dedicate one complete issued to a totally off-beat idea – the loss of inheritance. Our writers, editors and reporters identified a number of things – from different activities of life – that have vanished for good or bad.

We tried to keep the ‘loss’ on record. We do not see it as the ultimate list of the extinctions from the valley and would appreciate if the readers help us trace many more which our reporters can tackle in the subsequent issues. We thank Nostalgia Kashmir for providing us rare photographs from their collection.
As we start our third year, we at KL reiterate our commitment to objectivity, professionalism and impartiality. Let the readers help us identify the grey areas and suggest spheres that remained under-reported.

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