Journalist never retires!

Being a media person, BN Kumar, better known as BNK always loved taking risks. And that’s how he started his career independently with his own public relation (PR) consultancy, and even ran his own county newspaper out of Navi Mumbai.

He experimented with his newspaper Newsbank – first as a weekly, then daily and later as a magazine.  Newsbank played a major role in Navi Mumbai in connecting the planning authority CIDCO with the people even while raising issues of public interest. For instance, he wrote about the falciparum malaria that hits the patient’s brain when the local health officials denied its existence. As a journalist, Kumar had wokred for various media outfits, like Mid Day, Indian Express, UNI and has also written for the Times of India.

According to BNK, journalism is always associated with democracy. It was a great fun for him to start learning journalism during the Emergency of 1975. He entered the Osmania University at Hyderabad when Mrs Indira Gandhi declared emergency. BN Kumar used to read the newspapers, which he would often get in the afternoon, thanks to the censorship and censoring authorities delaying clearances. For those who are now unaware of the emergency, censorship meant editors would produce their newspapers for clearance to the Director General of Information and PR of the local state governments and wait. Newspapers would leave blank spaces for the news that was censored. 

BNK saw even blank editorial columns as editors were not allowed to say a word against the government. Mrs Gandhi immediately banned even this kind of ‘blank’ protest and asked newspapers to fill up those blank spaces with some other news. So, BNK had news from Timbaktu.  BNK started his career with a small Hyderabad newspaper called The Skyline. The advantage of working in a small newspaper was that even a cub-reporter would get to cover an Olympic Hockey match by carefully listening to radio commentary. BNK later moved to Mumbai to join the Free Press Journal (FPJ).

With the Janata Party coming to power, Samachar was dismantled and UNI and other agencies were allowed to resurrect themselves.  At the UNI, BNK had the freedom to write for other media as long as he did not compromise with the interests of UNI. At the same time, BNK was never disillusioned by media atmosphere. For, he did everything a reporter could do. But then he thought of trying something else and that is how he landed in PR and joined Reliance under the leadership of the great Dhirubhai Ambani.  A year on with Reliance, BNK joined the team that was setting up Ogilvy PR (then called O&M PR). Another great moment indeed, as BNK and his team members were making history by setting up the first ever PR arm of an ad agency. He later set up his own agency, the much known Concept PR. Although BNK misses the newsroom atmosphere, he reveals that he is happy to create a newsroom like atmosphere at Concept PR.