Even though Aurora’s scope was marketing, advertising, media and related aspects, its sum was always more than its parts. The state of the world in general and of South Asia in particular also influenced, openly or obliquely, its evolution and content. Conditions specific to Pakistan were obviously the most directly relevant. But the holistic context in which the journal conducted its journey for 27 years remains central to how one views that segment of time.

In 1998 and 1999, the internet and the dotcom age began to extend rapidly. This signalled both the advent of entirely new communication technologies and the early signs of the decline of conventional modes. Speculative over-investment in the West in dotcom start-ups led to a crash in 2001, but basic changes in speed and forms of connectivity and their impact kept unfolding. A few years after the disintegration of the USSR and of Yugoslavia in 1991-92, US intervention by President Clinton to stop the genocide by Serbia of Muslims in Bosnia stemmed some of the new uncertainties – an intervention made all the more redeeming of Western apathy because the same American president was impeached by Congress for the Monica Lewinsky scandal – while continuing unscathed to wield power bolstered by sustained public popularity!

When India exploded five nuclear devices in May 1998, Pakistan went one up with six tests a couple of weeks later. A new power dynamic was created. Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee’s visit to Lahore in February 1999 was followed by the Kargil conflict in May-July 1999, and then by the exit of the Nawaz Sharif government and the inception of the General Musharraf tenure of October 1999 to August 2008. While that phase saw the emergence of global phenomena like Google and YouTube, that period had a special significance for mass media in Pakistan, including specialist print journals like Aurora. Fuelled by the government’s promotion of easy credit to boost consumerism, and by the post 9/11 spill-over from Afghanistan into our country of American billions along with bountiful aid for Pakistan’s own role in the War on Terror, and most visibly perhaps by the military led government’s radical new media policy of permitting the launch of private TV channels and FM radio stations in March 2002, the subjects covered by Aurora became fertile sources for observation, study of new data, intense competition, analysis and sharing of experiences.

Gradually, over the next 15 years, the conventional structures of advertising witnessed fundamental alterations. With the roles of advertisers and media buying houses assuming a new primacy, and the recasting of the position of advertising agencies, and later with the emergence of social media platforms there began the decline in print media’s use as advertising fora, and later (and still ongoing), even of TV channels and FM stations as new media steadily expanded their reach. By the time of Aurora’s silver jubilee in 2023, even as political instability and economic uncertainty prevailed (between 1998 and 2023 there were about 12 changes of government – including caretakers – in 25 years), intrinsic changes in the communications realm foretold imminent grim closures to come.

Yet Aurora’s record over two and-a-half decades plus – in which there has been enormous volatility and variety in the world, the region and in Pakistan – is a veritable treasure of perseverance and achievement in specialised journalism. Featuring contributions from a wide range of professionals, some of them veterans, many of them new practitioners, from the corporate sector, from advertising agencies and from the conventional media and new media, Aurora presented a distinctive new array of perspectives on virtually all dimensions pertinent to its defined areas of coverage, be they brand competition or state regulation or human resource training. Using a graphic design style that was also different from conventional approaches – and a physical size that this writer always had difficulty adjusting to! – the journal brought forth every two months a refreshing assembly of hard facts and subjective opinions, always informative, often educative, sometimes obscure, reassuringly accessible.

This writer has the privilege of knowing the founding editor, Mariam Ali Baig well before she assumed the mantle of her responsibilities at Aurora. Commencing her writing in the advertising sector, she remained an exceptionally quiet, self effacing, disciplined member of the creative team at MNJ Communications for several memorable years, with other equally remarkable women such as Zohra Yusuf and the late, much missed Saneeya Hussain. With an understated demeanour and with cool, calm capability Mariam nurtured Aurora through its early phases, then through its flowering and maturity, through the diverse times of growth and success, and now into its unfortunate forthcoming closure due to factors entirely beyond her control. There is comfort to be derived from the fact that print journals across the world with once-spectacularly large sales and circulation, as well as periodicals in Pakistan, notably the Herald and Newsline, she and others have had to conclude their tenures due to the impact of new subversive technologies and trends. But through this painful climatic phase, Mariam’s able editorial leadership and her personal qualities of undue modesty have remained consistent and unchanged.

Supporting her with unusual, undemonstrative yet very competent abilities have been talented team members like Mamun M. Adil and Marylou McCormack, and other colleagues, both in the textual and the design teams, full-time or as freelancers. In the last category, as the back page columnist par excellence, Faraz Maqsood Hamidi has proved to be prolifically thoughtful, provocatively outspoken and always readable. Together, the Aurora team has made a salutary contribution to accurately documenting and vividly portraying a crucial and substantive part of the history of commercial communication in Pakistan.

By introducing this journal, and by sustaining its regular publication for over a quarter century, Pakistan Herald Publications rendered a stellar role in advancing and developing new frontiers in specialised journalism. Advertisers did provide some vital support. But, for the record, one is obliged to state that the corporate sector of Pakistan, otherwise so helpful to multiple worthy causes in the public interest and social welfare, should have/could have, in and beyond 2025, done far more to ensure the continuity of Aurora as a most deserving recipient of regular advertising and of financial stability through the application of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) resources, because Aurora’s value as a credible critic of its canvas should have been seen as far more than the narrow measure of ROI because as machine intelligence and AI have opened up utterly new heights as well as dark chasms whose implications for media Aurora would have probed so well, and finally because Aurora sincerely was, should be, and will be, regarded as far more than only the sum of its parts.

Javed Jabbar is the recipient of the first Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the Pakistan Advertisers’ Society in 2017 and the first Pakistani advertising practitioner admitted to the Hall of Fame of the Asian Federation of Advertising Associations in 2019.
javedjabbar.2@gmail.com