The word in Bangalore three days ago was that the City’s oldest English newspaper was up for sale and that the possible buyer was a listed newspaper company looking to come to Bangalore. NDTV Profit quickly put the news on the air, and then faced with denials from the company, equally quickly pulled it off.…
Monthly Archives: November 2006
Journalists v Academics
Should journalists be generalists—writing about all and sundry but giving readers a snapshot of the world without boring the pants out of them? Or should they be like academics, specialising in one or two subjects and writing with gravitas and authority even if the readers gets lost in the thickets of cliches and jargon and?…
If you thought the paper had typos…
After days of using a 16-page newspaper as their visiting card, the reporters now have reasonably smartly designed business cards. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the new cards beat the newspaper in the number of typographical errors per “square centimetre”. Vicky Nanjappa‘s email ID vicky_nanjappa.com has been printed as vick_ynanjappa@vijaytimes.com. Jarda…
A question of answers
Question: Why did Nirad Mudur not apply for a job in West Bengal? Answer: For the same reason, Kwality did not launch Wall’s in Calcutta.
Writing is like sex. Yes, sex.
A familiar question that comes up in a newspaper is, how can we get our reporters and correspondents to write well, and how can we get our sub-editors to chop and change poorly written stuff into something more readable, acceptable? The answer is, “there is no one single way”. Scientists and researchers may announce the…
Why you should go for a hair cut during office hours
In news just coming in, Daniel Craig has said he refused to dye his blonde hair for the James Bond film Casino Royale. “I was asked to dye my hair brown to play the role but it was out question. I suggested instead that I could cut my hair really short to create a more…
Should we print only letters that praise us?
Should newspapers publish letters critical of what they do, letters critical of stands they take, letters telling reporters and subs and correspondents and the editor to go take a bloody hike? The answer is obvious: of course, we should. That’s the whole point of good journalism: to give the view, the opposite view and the…
Good enough is not
Not too many in journalism—not too many in Indian journalism anyway—like to turn the binoculars at themselves and look at what is happening in their profession in a different way. Tim Porter at First Draft does just that with aplomb, often surprising you with how much of what he says makes sense, in spite of…
How well do you know your alphabets?
Namrata Joshi sends us the new revised alphabets, and journalists—or at least some of us who are socially conscious—should really be ashamed if we do not know them by heart. For reasons of journalistic fairness, and to not make any one feel left out, this item is not being dedicated to any one in particular,…
Who said this about newspapers?
“A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.”
From Deep Point to Third Slip
We are at that stage when we are looking for a new name for the operation. At yesterday’s morning meeting we spent a full two hours discussing some possiblities and we ended up with a list of 50-plus. There were the usual (Newsline, Newstimes, News Horizon, News Echo), the cliched (Silicon Times, Chip City), the…
DEEP THROAT: The sentimental sub
Who was the sentimental desk man whose eyes welled up on reading a news item of a father who fell from a roof and fell on his son, who was standing below, killing both of them on the spot?
Check out cyberjournalist.net
Late night—after we have put the first edition to bed, and after the tinkering for the city edition is still to be done while senior design consultant P S Ramesha has a long leisurely smoke—is a great time to spend on the internet. To visit chosen websites (not all of them intellectual, mind you), to…
And the winner is G Vishwanatha…
“We Are The Best” is pleased to announce the winner of its first quiz contest. It is “senior design consultant” G Vishwanatha. There were more half a dozen all-correct entries, and the winner was picked by a draw of lots conducted at the evening meeting today. The honour of picking the winner went to “Critic”…
Why print it when we can read it at home?
As we wound up last night, news came in of The Economist naming India as one of the flawed democracies (remember John Kenneth Galbraith‘s famous label, functioning democracy). The desk was quickly alerted. The idea was to sneak in a brief. The desk head, smart chap, took a print out of the long story as…
Please do not read this item. It’s offensive.
A reasonably old trick the pranksters—and who doesn’t know who they are—play in the office is to ask bespectacled people the power of their testicles. Almost to a man, everybody seems to mishear the question. It happened today with Eapen Panicker. Immediately, the hand went up to the specs and he said “Oh, I don’t…
To break the rule, you must first know the rule
Here’s a fine journalism tool for subs, reporters and editors interested in honing their language skills even sharper. http://www.cjr.org/tools/lc/
Faiza, Burude Mama and Basava
Those of the old school in jouralism would like to think that the reader gets hot and het up about Hu Jintao’s visit. But we would be surprised at what really moves and motivates a reader. The first SMS that came this morning was curt and to the point: “Platform ticket… it is old story.…
No wonder we are the best
MARKS CARD Kannada: 82 out of 125 English: 71 out of 100 Hindi: 66 out of 100 Mathematics: 51 out of 100 Science: 44 out of 100 Social Studies: 67 out of 100 Total: 381 out of 625. First class: whoever can accuse us of being uneducated?
If Bhimsen Joshi does it, why can’t you?
So you are stuck. Is in fact two words or one? Is it its or it’s? Theirs or their’s? Don’t worry all of us get into that jam. Like we did for a story on page 7 today, when nobody could properly spell physicist, and Bhanu who was sitting next to a dictionary couldn’t even…
IJR 