ON Koul—a Journalist, Editor & Media Advisor

(By: Dr. Rajesh Bhat)

Very few young journalists in Jammu and Kashmir know about Mr  O. N. Koul, one of the most respected journalists who had a mastery over Economics and knew well his job of both reporting and editing. The first elected President of Press Club of Jammu and the former Media Advisor to Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister, Mr O. N. Koul was a witness to most of the post-partition history and had sounded about the initial outbreak of militancy before it had actually  raised its ugly head in Kashmir.

Born on January 6, 1937 at Rainawari, Srinagar, Mr O N Koul   died on May 8, 2011 at the age of 74 in New Delhi. With a bachelor’s degree in Arts from University of Jammu & Kashmir, Mr Koul had later   joined Delhi School of Economics for his post-graduation. He was appointed a lecturer in a college at Jaipur, Rajasthan but he shortly returned to Srinagar to pursue journalism as his career.

Best Editor

Those who have worked with Mr O N Koul know how brilliant he was in the art of editing and writing editorials on Kashmir affairs. He would never waste words.  He had a mastery over length and contents of the text and would ensure that the news item was in the right style for the intended audience.

His initial job in 1960 was sub-editing Kashmir Post that Mr Ved Bhasin was editing. After Ved Bhasin’s resignation in 1963, Mr Koul had replaced him. In October 1964, in a swift turn of events,  when the then Chief Minister Ghulam  Mohd  Sadiq arrested Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed and also banned Kashmir Post,  Mr  Koul too was arrested and kept behind the bars for three months.

After that, Mr Koul worked for a number of newspapers and news agencies, including United News of India (UNI). However, having Economics as his background, The Economic Times had become his identity.

During the same period and when militancy was at its peak, Mr O N Koul first worked for Daily Excelsior and later for Kashmir Times and Himalayan Mail  as Executive Editor.

This author too had an opportunity to work under him as a Cub Reporter in 1989-90 at Daily Excelsior where Mr Koul baptized and ensured his colleagues to know the distinction between a comment, an analysis and a news and rarely permitted anybody to create a cocktail of the three. He would often say that Journalists should learn from a “Pansari’’, who sells things in “Chattak’’ or “Chattang’’ and not in “Seer’’ or kilograms.

Considered as one of the finest editors, Mr Koul, who was heading Daily Excelsior’s newsroom when Kashmir was boiling, never permitted anything un-newsy to become a news. In March 1989, when Mr Koul was in Srinagar, he had an inkling about militancy. He, like others in Srinagar, had received the threatening phone calls.

Media Advisor

When Dr Farooq Abdullah was Chief Minister during the period from 1996 to 2002, Mr Koul was chosen his Media Adviser for a period of two years. It was after this assignment that he suffered a paralytic stroke in Jammu in 2002 from which he could not recover fully. Later, he was shifted to Delhi for treatment where he breathed his last on May 8, 2011.