Daily Express

When Lakson Group decided to launch daily Express in 1998, its headquarters were set up in Lahore, not in Karachi where most other large newspapers have been based till then. The move was premised on the assumption that Punjab province, of which Lahore is capital, had more readers of Urdu newspapers than those in Karachi. The assumption turned out to be true as daily Express found a ready audience in that part of the country. The second radical decision that the newspaper’s publishers made was to publish its editions not just from the main metros of Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi/Islamabad but also from some second string cities – particularly in Punjab – such as Multan, Sargodha, Gujranwala, Faisalabad and Rahim Yar Khan. This also proved to be a smart decision as a large number of readers in these places dumped newspapers coming from distant metros in the favor of the one that gave them local news which metered to them the most. The third strategy employed to attract readers was to offer fat salaries to newspaper columnists who had large loyal audiences. Many of them indeed left older newspapers, including daily Jang and daily Nawa-i-Waqt, and joined daily Express, bringing many of their readers with them. Daily Express was also launched at an opportune time, coinciding with a confrontation between Jang Group, Pakistan’s oldest and largest group of newspapers, and the government of prime minister Nawaz Sharif in the late 1990s. As a result of that clash, daily Jang, the single largest selling newspaper in the country, faced many financial and other restrictions that made it cut its pages and curtail its news coverage. Daily Express took full advantage of this situation and all but supplanted daily Jang as the most read newspaper in Punjab in the early 2000s though some of these gains were soon reversed. Daily Express has a middle of the road market-friendly editorial policy and never hesitates from mixing entertainment with current affairs. It has a conservative political and social stance and a supportive ethos towards the security and intelligence agencies. Sometimes these two factors result in the contents of the newspaper, as well as those of its sister publication, Express Tribune, being heavily censored within their newsrooms. This censorship is done under the direct supervision of Sultan Ali Lakhani who is known to micro-manage editorial contents particularly in order to ensure that he does not fall on the wrong side of the powers that be and the religious establishment. Even the international edition of the New York Times, distributed to local audiences along with Express Tribune, undergoes the same censorship regime. Sometimes entire articles, news reports and even images are removed from it as they are seen to be either harming the national security or hurting religious sensibilities. ownership data is easily available from other sources, e. g. public registries etc. Daily Express is owned by Express Publications Private Limited, 99.8% shares of which are owned by Sultan Ali Lakhani. Its remaining shares are owned by Bilal Ali Lakhani (0.02%) and Aijaz-ul-Haque (0.18%) who is the managing editor of daily Express and the chief operating officer of its news website. born in 1948 in Gondia, a town in what is now India’s Maharashtra state. His family subsequently moved to Karachi where his father Hassanali Karabhai set up a business in 1954. Over time, this business would expand and become Lakson Group which is now one of the largest commercial and industrial conglomerates in Pakistan. Sultan Ali Lakhani worked as the group’s chairman till 1988 and is serving as its advisor presently. He is also the chief executive officer of Express Media Group which is wholly owned by Lakson Group and includes Television Media Network Private Limited (that owns and runs some television channels including Express News and Express Entertainment), Express Publications Private Limited (which owns and runs Urdu language daily Expr