The Doon School Weekly


The Doon School Weekly is a student newspaper produced by and for the students of The Doon School. It was established in 1936, a year after the school's founding, by the first headmaster Arthur Foot. The Weekly is the oldest and flagship publication of the school, and the newspaper's constitution grants it editorial independence.
The paper, distributed every Saturday morning, carries a mix of reports on school activities, trips or expeditions, opinion pieces, critique of school policies, interviews of visiting speakers, student polls, crossword, cartoons, and creative writing, including short stories, poetry, satire or personal essays. The alumni keep up to date with the developments at school through the newspaper, which is also published online.
Notable alumni in the fields of literature, journalism, politics and academia have been former editors of the publication. The Weekly's sister publications at the school are Infinity, The Doon School Information Review, The Circle, and The Yearbook.

History

Founded by Arthur Foot in 1936, The Doon School Weekly is owned by Indian Public Schools' Society, the governing society of The Doon School. For the first three years of its existence, the newspaper was produced using a cyclostyle, and then moved to a printing press. A number of the Weekly's contributors or editors are today working as authors, journalists, academics or politicians. The list includes Booker Prize-nominee Amitav Ghosh ; playwright, poet and novelist Vikram Seth ; editors, reporters or columnists for The Economic Times, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Hindustan Times, The Washington Post and The New York Times; a number of staff writers for The Times of India newspaper such as Swaminathan Aiyar and veteran editor B G Verghese, including broadcaster Karan Thapar, historian Ramchandra Guha, and politician Mani Shankar Aiyar ; and Hindi language writer Vishvjit Singh ; Foreign Secretary Uma Shankar Bajpai ; Wajahat Habibullah and Inder Pal Khosla ; television-presenter Prannoy Roy and Tejeshwar Singh ; and Mahmood Farooqui. On April 14, 2018, the Weekly published its 2,500th edition, commemorating 82 years of its existence. The edition includes contributions from previous chief-editors such as Karan Thapar, Kanti Bajpai, Rahul Bhagat and Govind Dhar.

Structure and operations

The Weekly's editorial board is staffed by boys between year groups 9 and 12 at the school, with students in their final year leading the publication and taking key decisions. The selection process for the editorial board is competitive and consists of a written examination and personal interview with the board's leadership. The editor-in-chief, appointed by the school's administration, is the publication's chief executive and is responsible for content and day-to-day operations. He is assisted by the editors, the second-highest positions on the Editorial Board, who are also students in their final year of school. The length of a standard issue of the Weekly is 6-8 pages on legal-size ivory white paper. A special edition, released on the Saturday of the school's annual Founder's Day, is printed in the form of a magazine. The Weekly is accessible in print on the school's premises, and is also available online.

Notable former members