“Angrez apna lagaan aur Newslaundry apna hafta kabhi nahi chhodte” was a corny line we came up with while recording one of the Haftas, probably not the first. And it stuck. Our subscribers love it, as do we. The Hafta kind of evolved and became what it is now and hopefully will become something else as we grow and learn and stumble and succeed. Something more exciting and different.

For those wondering what I’m talking about, Hafta is our weekly podcast. Listen to it here if you haven’t already.

What Hafta allows over an hour (and sometimes up to two) with the Newslaundry team sitting around in a freewheeling chat is not possible in five, 10 or 30-minute, scripted shows. It has a sense of intimacy and honesty because it is real and unscripted. Many now listen to the Hafta to get the news or analysis of the week, but that is not why we started the Hafta.

The idea of Hafta was transparency. We’re big on that, transparency. It was not a podcast aimed at news delivery or analysis at all. It was to get the Newslaundry team to sit together and chat about what made news that week and listening to each of our views so that the Newslaundry consumer could see what our politics are, along with our biases or prejudices (if any), what is the worldview each of us have – and so, when you read a piece by any of us, you can compensate for that worldview and see the piece is coming from. It was easy enough to do because the Newslaundry editorial team was just six people. Also, it was important that we showed that we don’t have a “Newslaundry view” on current issues. We have individual views and an organisation’s view (or line) is a relic of legacy media that, in my view, has no place in the new digital age. This led to many fun debates and disputes between us. Most importantly, it demonstrated that Newslaundry will never have one take or “line”.

With time Hafta became really popular and allow me to brag a bit – it is the only Indian podcast that consistently makes it to the top 50 in Soundcloud’s News and Politics listing every week (other than one other Indian podcast making it above us every now and then but we won’t hold that against Narendra Modi since we think that people should listen to the Mann Ki Baat of their Prime Minister before they listen to what we have to say about it.)

The first episode of Hafta went live on February 9, 2015. It was recorded by keeping one Zoom recorder H4n at the centre of our very sad-looking, secondhand dining table. Everyone sat around and talked. No luxury of individual mics and all. The audio quality was shitty. Then we went a step up and started using three lapel mikes – not pinned on our lapels, but kept on the table for two of us to share one. The audio quality was better, but still not great. People were listening, but clearly not happy with the quality of audio (the quality of content was received well). On one particularly bad day of recording, when one mic failed, we received a barrage of emails and tweets complaining about how horrible our audio was. During the following week’s Hafta, I, in my impatient way, half-seriously said that instead of complaining why don’t listeners send us audio equipment? In 10 days, we had four new Sennheiser SM58 microphones and 1 Zoom H6 recorder, put together with contributions from five of our listeners. We have not forgotten each of you guys and just so you know if you are reading this, what that did was not just improve our audio quality, but also our morale.

It also made our resolve stronger that we can create a model of news where we do not have to depend on the advertiser at all. The conventional wisdom that people will not contribute for news was just that – conventional. And Hafta, us and our listeners are anything but conventional. So thank you all, for everything. For making Hafta a success and for all the mail we get. Feedback that criticises us, encourages us, mocks us and appreciates us. We go through it all. We don’t read all of it out on the show, but we do discuss your inputs in office. Some of your inputs are really shitty, but the fact that you write in makes us love you for it. Just like some of our content is probably shitty (usually mine), but you tolerate it because there is awesome stuff here too with Madhu, Anand, Manisha, Deepanjana and the rest of our wonderful young team. Our listeners are our strength and that’s not just a slogan or cliché because quite literally, we will sink if they don’t support us.

Thanks Sapan and Anil, for all those days you‘ve sat recording with below average equipment and put up with my impatience and still performed. Thanks dear subscriber and Hafta listeners, for making it all worth it. Do tune into #NLhafta100 and be a part of it if you can. And if we get the support that we have been getting, we will be bringing you the Hafta for years to come. And thank you, most importantly, Kartik, our wonderful producer who come hell or high water, will not let a single week pass without Hafta being online because he takes it very seriously when we say that, chahe aandhi aaye, toofan aaye, sar kate ya mundi ude – Angrez apna lagaan and Newslaundry apna Hafta kabhi nahi chhodte.