Former Editor and Managing Director of Kasturi and Sons Limited G Kasturi breathed last on Friday morning at his home. He was 87.
Kasturi was the longest serving editor of the national newspaper - "The Hindu" - and played an imperative role in the modernization and the reformation of the newspaper. He joined the publication in 1944 and since then continued to make it a classic national daily of India.
"Earlier and more clearly and determinedly than most of his media contemporaries and fellow Editors, he saw the need for the newspaper industry and journalism to embrace new and state-of-the-art technology and adapt it to our conditions while preserving the core values of journalism. Many a leap in newspaper technology - offset printing, facsimile transmission of whole newspaper pages, photocomposition, full-page pagination, color scanning - found its first Indian champion in my uncle, who was always hands-on, side by side with the technical experts," N Ram, former Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, said in a tribute.
Kasturi was born on Dec 17, 1924, and graduated from Presidency College, Madras. He was also in the director on the board of Press Trust of India till 1990, reported PTI.
Kasturi passed away on a day after the newspaper celebrated its 134th anniversary. In the death note released by The Hindu, the paper said "He presided over, and led from the front, the newspaper's rapid expansion and innovative modernization and growth on the editorial-technology-logistics fronts through the 1960s and on to the cusp of the 1990s".
He was survived by his wife Kamala Kasturi, sons K. Balaji and K. Venugopal, daughter Lakshmi Srinath.
