Print media is a key institution which transmits and diffuses information regarding several issues and publishes coverage on a wide range of topics from politics to culture. It is claimed that the valuation of cultural products and culture is showcased by the cultural section of the newspaper which is responsible for the dissemination, legitimization and production of aesthetical standards and cultural classifications (Janssen, 1999; Janssen et al., 2011). Previous studies showed that media organizations and cultural journalists are the tastemakers and gatekeepers of cultural journalism (Maguire & Matthews, 2014; Hovden & Knapskog, 2015). These journalists and media define and decide what appeared to be good taste and valuable culture specifically in time. Therefore, shifts and trends in cultural hierarchies could be noticeable in the cultural sections of newspapers (Jaakkola, 2015; Janssen, 1999; Verboord et al., 2015).

Nowadays the crisis of cultural journalism (news, reviews, essays and critiques about culture and arts i.e. film, theatre, music, architecture and literature) is a topical issue in many countries. Various studies report that the press seemingly focuses on Pop art, entertainment and news instead of serious art content. (Hellman & Jaakkola, 2011; Verboord & Janssen, 2017). Researchers have explored that priority has been given by the press to popular cultural forms i.e. film, television fiction and popular music over high traditional arts like theatre, classical music and literature (Janssen, 1999; Janssen, Kuipers & Verboord, 2011)—a phenomenon shows as a representation of decline of serious cultural journalism (Kristensen, 2010).

Literature, in specific is seen as a traditional high art form of culture. Tew (2007) argued that Literature and culture are deeply interrelated, and both have a strong relationship with each other, literature always embodied culture from a very old time. But Ironically Literature content is claimed to be declining in newspaper’s cultural coverage (Heilbrun, 1997; Janssen, 1999; Janssen, Kuipers & Verboord, 2011). This raises questions that which genre of literature content is deteriorating in the press and whether the decline would be taken as a decreased focus on the coverage of highly traditional art forms.

In recent decades cultural journalism has been studied from various angles (Jaakkola, 2015; Janssen, 1999; Kristensen, 2015) what has not been researched in detail is the coverage of literature content and its relation to the alleged crisis of cultural journalism. As Pakistan is a traditional country with having rich cultural and literary history (Sadeed, 1992). Hence examining newspapers and their section devoted to literature would be particularly an interesting study to chart trends and situations of cultural journalism. The present study examines the development of literature content coverage in Pakistan by charting how much space literary content is getting and which genre of literature obtain more journalistic attention in National Urdu newspapers during the last 6 years and how this literary content is reported, the objective of the study is to discover whether the claim is justified that the coverage of the forms of serious traditional high cultural journalism like literature is in decline.

The paper has four parts, first, it reviews the literature related to cultural journalism and art coverage. After that research methodology is presented and data analysis techniques are explained. The findings are discussed. At the end of the article implications of the study and its future directions are mentioned.

In this study, the literature is being reviewed on the crisis and paradigm shifts of cultural journalism in different parts of the world and the reasons behind the crisis are also discussed. Moreover, the importance and impact of literature in society are mentioned in the study while the rich history of literary journalism in Pakistan is also highlighted.

Literature is a true representative of a culture and a mirror of society. It also serves as an introduction to a new world of experience by penning downs the ideas of people in and very creative and imaginative way. It equally represents and motivates changes in society and hence it is a credible source for the representation of culture. Tew (2007) argued that Literature and culture are deeply interrelated, and both have a strong relationship with each other, literature always embodied culture from a very old time while Hanauer (2001) states that literature gives its personal interpretation of life through personal experiences thus It is a valuable source of cultural knowledge. Researchers have discovered a great impact of literature on society. Literature opens new opportunities for social, ethical and emotional endeavours moreover one could change accustomed forms of perception and action as literature possess exceptional capacity which make us aware of real truths (Mack, 2012). Similarly, in a study, Duhan (2015) states that literature and the theory of Reflection concluded that literature gives knowledge and information to readers. Thus, literature is an important entity of a society and its attention and coverage are essential for the safeguarding of culture from anonymity and the construction of a sensible society, especially a traditional and rich cultural heritage like Pakistan.

The history of Pakistani literary journalism is very rich. A large quantity of literary content was published after independence which served literary and journalistic needs. According to Sadeed (1992) before 1947 the centres of literary magazines were in Lahore, Delhi, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Bombay and Bhopal. When Pakistan came into being only Lahore was the centre of production of literary magazines, due to this reason a gap was generated for a short period of time in the publication of literary magazines but soon some exceptional literary magazines were started throughout the country. These magazines got fame in masses and help in the mental grooming of readers. The book (Sadeed, 1992) also states that Maulana Chiragh Hassan Hasrat is known as the pioneer of literary editions in daily newspapers of Pakistan. With the downfall of literary magazines in Pakistan, Chiragh Hassan decided to dispatch literature to the public through dailies. He started a literary page in Daily Imroz with constant bases. After that many different newspapers followed the footsteps of Imroz and Maulana Chiragh Hassan Hasrat.

With the passage of time and technological advancement art and cultural journalism in general and literary journalism in specific is in crisis and decline and could not get the coverage and attention it used to get. Khan (2001) compiled and recorded all the details of literary content published in 96 different magazines. The study (Khan, 2001) shows that Pakistani print media especially magazine journalism is rich in Urdu literature published content moreover, Intellectuals and literary figures like Chiragh Hassan Hasrat, Qateel Shifai, Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi, Hajra Mastoor, Maulana Salahuddin Ahmad played a significant role in the popularity of Magazines but now literary magazines losing their worth, many literary magazines are ceasing their publication. According to Siddiqi (1974) after independence, several influential and standard literary magazines and newspapers continued publishing which enhances the importance of literary journalism. In the Mid-nineties people eagerly wait for the new arrival of literary magazines like Naqoosh, Fanoon, Seep and Urdu and also discusses it in teahouses but with the popularity of electronic media especially television and computer, print media lose its place. Many literary magazines and newspapers stopped publication and with the invention of social media, the situation has become worst(Siddiqi, 1974).

As the world is evolving, a new trend also affecting media attention towards a paradigm shift. Art journalism and cultural journalism are no more focus of attention for media outlets. Researchers found that the pages of broadsheet newspapers and literary journals like ABR and Meanjin reduced their coverage towards art in the mid-1990s due to the neo-liberal marketplace and business-oriented information producers (Davis, 2006). Along with globalization many other factors also resulted in the shrinking of art-related coverage. Findings show that journalistification, Commercialization, Elitization, popularization and professional apathy cause a decline in art coverage (Jaakkola, 2015). Researchers also mentioned and listed the historical art, cultural and literary coverage in different parts of the world. Almost 50 per cent of arts and cultural coverage space is given to movie and television showtimes (Janeway & Szanto, 2003).

Therefore, change shifts as in press give more priority to popular culture as compared to the arts is seen (Kersten, 2016). Moreover, ?erce competition in the media industry in the past decades due to commercialization has drawn away the audiences from newspapers to online outlets (Kersten, 2016). Thus, audiences also look reluctant to art and culture coverage as findings show that news values are directly related to audience attention and audience attention is directly related to media coverage (Lee, 2009).

Consequently, the decline in the coverage of art and cultural content is based on deliberate media agenda and set priorities. Previous studies by Maguire and Matthews (2014) and Hovden and Knapskog (2015) showed that media organizations and cultural journalists are the tastemakers and gatekeepers of cultural journalism. The media persons define and decide what appeared to be good taste and valuable culture specifically at that time. Therefore, shifts and trends in cultural hierarchies could be noticeable in the cultural sections of newspapers (Jaakkola, 2015; Janssen, 1999; Verboord et al., 2015). Newspapers of Singapore Straits Times and Lianhe Zaobao were taken as a sample between 1999 to 2008 for two continuous weeks. According to the findings of 10 years analysis, reporting of popular commercial art forms varied in the period and showed a small increase compared to cultural arts while reporting of cultural arts showed a decline (Freeman, 2016). According to Hartsock (2000), ambivalence from both scholars of literature and journalism was the base for the exclusionary of American literary journalism as a recognizable discourse. Moreover, news authorities were more focused towards objective and hard news due to which in nineteenth-century literary coverage has received relatively little acknowledgement. In the book by Hartsock (2000), it is demonstrated that in the 19th century, literary journalism first appeared and attained critical recognition from the audience but in the twentieth century the sensationalistic "yellow press" and muckraking marginalized the coverage of literary items. Hartsock (2000) quotes many examples and arguments regarding literary journalism that will be illustrious for its scope and exacting scholarship.

Subsequently, Janssen (2008) explores the internationalization of arts and culture in European countries in the coverage of art and culture in four countries i.e. France, Germany, the U.S. and the Netherlands from 1955 to 2005 through content analysis. Moreover, findings of the two largest paid circulated newspapers from all four countries show a complete shift in the attention of newspapers towards arts and culture coverage from the traditional form of art that contains literature, classical music and theatre to popular forms of art which include pop music, films and TV fiction in all four countries (Janssen, Kuipers, & Verboord, 2011). Media audience fragmentation and declining readership of print media resulted in efficient news production and shifted trends to service journalism or lifestyle (Eide & Knight 1999; Kristensen & From, 2012). Press seemingly focuses on Pop art, entertainment and news instead of serious art content that causes a rising presence of journalistic approach in art journalism despite the aesthetic approach (Hellman & Jaakkola, 2011). It is relatable to professional trends of cultural journalism because youth is entering the profession through media and journalism studies degree programmes instead of studying in humanities (Hovden & Knapskog, 2015). Thus, in order to construct modern news globalized society, media organizations are bombarding audiences with non-literary information which causes a lack of interest in literature reading as an inability for literature to fit into the current pop culture scene (Hellman & Jaakkola, 2011; Verboord & Janssen, 2015).

From the above studies, it could be concluded that the importance and impact of literature in society is crucial. Historical popularity and admiration of literary content in Pakistan are also discussed. Researchers also throw light on the constant decline and downfall of art and cultural journalism around the globe with the passage of time moreover researchers only explained development in the coverage of popular cultural forms in cultural journalism like film which produces a gap and enable researchers to conduct study about the actual situation of traditional high art forms of cultural journalism i.e. literature. Also, they only focus on the technological and commercial effects on art coverage due to the existing processes of commercialization, professionalization, digitalization, and globalization have reduced and ignored the role of cultural journalism and its coverage in society (Kristensen, 2015).

In recent decades studies have been conducted on cultural journalism from several angles (Jaakkola, 2015; Janssen, 1999; Kristensen, 2010) what has not been researched in detail is the coverage of literature content and its relations to the alleged crisis of cultural journalism. This article addresses the phenomenon in light of data to know whether there is any evidence for the crisis of cultural journalism and the shift of art coverage to popular culture forms in the national newspapers of Pakistan. The guideline for the analysis is motivated by studies on the crisis of cultural journalism (Berger, 1998; Carroll, 2009; Elkins, 2003; McDonald, 2007) could be formulated. The hypothesis for the study is that the media agendas of national Urdu newspapers of Pakistan cause a shrinking in literary coverage while literary prose is given more space as compared to poetry. As in Pakistan large media monopolies and agenda setters always try to influence and persuade audience interest and set agendas to increase their circulation.

This article extensively analyses the coverage of literature content in National Urdu newspapers of Pakistan in the last 6 years. The study aims to explore how much space literary content gets and how it appeared in cultural journalism by looking at the space and genre of literature reported and in which manner it is done.

The nature of the study is explanatory as it aims to understand the situation of cultural journalism in Pakistan. Among the research methodologies, the quantitative method is used to collect the data on literary content published in the Daily National Urdu newspapers of Pakistan. According to Berelson (1952), “Content analysis is a research technique for the objective, systematic, and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication” (p. 18). The quantitative content analysis approach is used in compiling numeric calculations, and measurements of coverage, size and space given to literary content.

Sampling

The population of the research is daily national Urdu newspapers of Pakistan. The aim of the study is to give insight into how the daily national Urdu newspapers give space and coverage to literary content. The researcher chose two highly circulated daily national Urdu newspapers of Pakistan i.e. Jang and Nawa i Waqt. The time frame of the study is the last 6 years i.e. 2013 – 2019 as Islamabad Literary Festival was started in 2013. According to Stewart (2010), Literary festivals are significant sites of contemporary public culture. Writers’ festivals claim to be both popular and important sites of public discussion and debate. Moreover, the topics discussed at the Festival are those typically produced and circulated in the media. therefore, the researcher focused on the literary pages published in the month of February. (Islamabad Literary Festivals organizes in February each year).

The sample size for the study is 48 issues of daily Urdu newspapers “Jang” and “Nawa i Waqt”. Moreover, In the research, samples were chosen through a purposive sampling technique to analyze 4 issues of each mentioned two dallies published in the month of February. The literary page will be the unit of analysis. The objective of this study is to chart out the coverage and space of literary content in daily Urdu newspapers of Pakistan and this can be achieved by focusing on the space of content given on the literary page every week on Wednesday and Tuesday in daily Nawa i Waqt and daily Jang respectively.

Data

The literary content of mentioned newspapers can be classified into five main categories of data i.e. “Personality Profile” which includes Informatory articles published about ideologies, artworks, achievements and contributions of literary figures. Another category of literary content is “Literary Prose”, this portion consists of essays, short stories (Afsana), book reviews, articles, quotations, jokes about literary persons and excerpts. Similarly, “Poetry” is also considered to be an important category of literary content that includes Odes (Ghazals), Poems (Nazm) and Coupletswritten by different renowned poets. “News Records” of different meetings and activities of literary organizations happening in literary circles, information about upcoming literary events and death or birth anniversary is also a significant category. Moreover, “Images” also covered considerable space on the page. These images contain portrait pictures of literary figures, group photos of writers & poets and a look at the front and back covers of literary books.

Measures

Due to the digitization of the media industry, the number of datasets getting larger and larger, therefore the popularity and importance of automated content analysis (ACA) have increased although in Communication Sciences one of the main methods that is still used mostly is Manual content analysis(e.g., Lacy, Watson, Riffe, & Lovejoy, 2015). According to Lynch & Peer (2002), manual content analysis of newspaper coverage through a ruler is a reliable measurement tool which examines that what information and news is appearing in a newspaper and also determine in what proportions it is appearing. In the present study, the researcher measure the space and coverage given to literary content in selected samples with the help of a standard ruler.

A sample size of 48 issues of two daily Urdu national newspapers Jang and Nawa i Waqt between six years (2013-2018) was analyzed to measure the amount of coverage given to literary content.

Figure 1

Coverage of literary content in national Urdu newspapers in last six years (2013 – 2018)

The study aims to measure the amount of coverage literature content is getting in national Urdu newspapers of Pakistan and also determines the diversity of literature genres published in daily national newspapers in order to shed light on the approach of Urdu print media towards the coverage of literary content which is based on their ideological & political alliances and set agendas that as a result can be used intermittently to shifting cultural trends and influence the masses. For this purpose, quantitative content analysis was conducted of literary editions/pages published by Daily Jang and Daily Nawa i Waqt during the time frame of 2013 – 2018. Researchers found that the coverage of literary content decreased by 37% during the last six years (2013 – 2018) whereas the literary edition/pages in newspapers are mostly complied of different diverse genres/categories of literature content i.e. Personality Profile; including Informatory articles about ideologies, artworks, achievements and contributions of literary figures, Literary Prose that consist of essays, short stories (Afsana), articles, quotations, jokes about literary persons and excerpts, Poetry that consist of Odes (Ghazals), Poems (Nazm), Couplets written by different renowned poets. Similarly, Literary News and records of different meetings, activities, events of literary organizations happening in literary circles, information about upcoming literary events and death or birth anniversary were also an important part of the literary edition/page. Moreover, the page also consists of Images; portrait pictures of literary figures, group photos of writers & poets and front and back covers of literary books, Books Reviews and Letters to the Editor. Thus, the data failed to reject the hypothesis of the study.

The present research’s first hypothesis that – the media agendas of national Urdu newspapers of Pakistan cause a shrinking in literary coverage – was supported by the research data as a huge decline in literary coverage is analyzed in the last 6 years (2013 – 2018) shown in fig 1. Moreover, in 2016 & 2017 full page coverage was given to the developmental project of Govt instead of the Literary page by Jang Newspaper whereas during the mentioned time period political party of Pakistan Muslim League Noon (PMLN) was in the Govt. while Ayesha and Ahlam (2018) states that Jang media group is a big supporter of PMLN hence set preferences, priorities and agendas of news organizations literary content is not getting the space which it used to get. (Davis, 2006). Thus, in order to propagate their ideological & political stance, media organizations are bombarding audiences with non-literary information which causes a lack of interest in literature reading as an inability for literature to fit into the current agenda-based news globalized world (Hellman & Jaakkola, 2011; Verboord & Janssen, 2015).

The second hypothesis of the study that – Literary Prose gets more coverage and attention than poetry in daily Urdu newspapers – was also supported by the data shown in Figure 3. According to the finding Poetry was given 1/3 of space and coverage as compared to literary prose which shows a clear shift in the literature taste as Poetry used to be a prominent genre of Urdu literature (Asif, 2014). The study findings coincide with previous research of Maguire & Matthews (2014) and Hovden & Knapskog (2015) which states that media organizations and cultural journalists are the tastemakers and gatekeepers of cultural journalism. Moreover, media persons define and decide what appeared to be good taste and valuable culture specifically at that time. Therefore, shifts and trends in cultural hierarchies could be noticeable in the cultural sections of the newspaper (Jaakkola, 2015; Janssen, 1999; Verboord et al., 2015) similarly press seemingly focuses on Pop art genres like literary prose instead of serious traditional art forms like poetry that shows a shift towards a journalistic approach in cultural journalism despite aesthetic approach (Hellman and Jaakkola, 2011).

The study attempted to fill the research gap by analyzing the unexplored coverage dynamics of cultural form i.e. literature. The researcher also validated several reasons for the decline of literary content coverage. Findings show that in the last six years (2013 – 2018) a significant amount of coverage was given to Literary records and news stories about the activities and events of literary circles within the literary page. Moreover, local news and crime reports were published in newspapers in place of literary coverage that shows the journalist's fiction of content. This finding is consistent with a recent study (Jaakkola, 2015) that shows journalistification, Elitization, popularization and professional apathy cause a decline in art coverage. In addition to journalistification, commercialization is also an important factor which causes the downfall in the coverage of literary content. The findings of the present study showed that advertisements were given preference over literary content which supports previous research (Kristensen, 2015) that commercial effects on art coverage due to the existing processes of commercialization, economic factors, digitalization, and globalization have reduced and ignored the role of cultural journalism and particularly the coverage of literary content in the society.

The comprehensive present study about the coverage devoted to literature in national Urdu newspapers of Pakistan gives insight into the declining situation of highly traditional forms of culture. The study is helpful in understanding the shift and changes in cultural and literary trends in a traditional country like Pakistan which has a rich history of cultural heritage and literary legacy. Furthermore, the study also highlights the media priorities, preferences, newspaper’s economic & commercial pressures; urge for advertisements and set agendas that affect the coverage of culture and literature. Therefore, the study could play a key role in reviving the cultural and literature crisis in Pakistan.

The present study analyzed the content of newspapers only for 6 years, instead of the whole time period of culture’s trend shift in Pakistan which is spread over a time span of several decades. So, the present study is just focusing on the newspaper’s coverage of the last six years (starting of literary festivals) instead of the whole time period of Culture’s trend transformation is the main limitation of the study. However, follow-up research could be conducted on the comparison of cultural coverage in the newspapers of different languages and locality that could be an interesting study to know the approach and orientation of diverse media organizations toward cultural coverage.