There is some disquiet in the newspaper world. The Afternoon folded up suddenly two weeks ago after owner Kamal Morarka pulled the plug on CEO-editor Farzana Contractor. Many, like this writer, had stopped reading it over the years; but the flurry of accusations and charges was a sad epitaph for a once popular eveninger.

The Afternoon was started in dramatic circumstances in 1985 by Behram Contractor after he split with the owners of Midday. The ‘quiet’ journalist came to the centrestage earlier when he left ToI’s Evening News to start Midday with the financial support of a consortium led by Kamal Morarka. Leveraging his ‘Busybee’ brand to build a popular city evening paper, Behram became one of the early, successful editor-entrepreneurs.

The Afternoon story began to sour much before Behram died in 2001, but after his death the daily eveninger went to seed. The newspaper had no reporters and re-runs of the Busybee column was hardly the stuff that could hold reader’s interest.

Evening News and the Free Press Bulletin were the first to shut shop. And now Mumbai Mirror has slowly eaten into the circulation and advertising of Midday, the only true blooded English eveninger left in the city. The flip side is that Mirror’s on-sale, afternoon edition never got going. Is there room for an evening paper after all the morning carpet bombing?

Meanwhile, there was some more consternation in media circles after Indian Express closed some of its desk operations. Was this a precursor to a closure of a few editions? Enquiries with a senior Express hand revealed that it was a case of undue panic. Some desk operations have been shut as Delhi becomes the central desk. Cost cutting, sure; but no closures, we have been assured. In fact, new editions are soon to be launched in Jaipur, Indore and Patna. There is no new investment coming, but Chairman Viveck Goenka has managed to sell his prime, four-acre estate in Mumbai’s Lalbaug for a few hundred crores. As Express staffers prepare to shift from Lalbaug back to Nariman Point’s Express Towers, there is money again in the company.

Yet, the danger signals are there for all to see. Indian Express’ national readership fell precipitously from 750,000 in 2003 to 361,000 this year. However, it should be mentioned that all newspapers recorded declines over the past year. ToI’s readership fell from 7.29 million to 6.78 million, and even the No. 1 Dainik Jagran saw erosion from 19.17 million to 18.19 million. No wonder, everybody is in knots waiting for the results of the latest IRS round.