Wired's Scott Carney's turned in a killer piece on one of the world's last hand-lettered newspapers, The Musalman, a daily liberal Muslim paper published in Chennai, India. Local calligraphers letter the Urdu stories, then the paper is run on an American surplus offset printer salvaged in the 1950s. Don't miss the gallery of photos of the paper and its producers.
The newspaper's content is not exactly hard-hitting. It covers the basics of local politics and the writers translate stories from English papers into Urdu. Still, the paper is widely read and appreciated by Muslims in Tripplicane and Chennai where the paper has a circulation of 20,000.
While the Musalman is a Muslim newspaper, it is a hub of South Asian liberalism, employing both women and non-Muslims. Half the katibs are women and the chief reporter is Hindu. Staff members say that Indira Gandhi, former prime minister of India, once called the business the epitome of what modern India should be.
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