Another substandard post by unqualified journo

He hasn’t quite spelt out which colleges we should go to, what subjects and courses we should take, in which language, or what pass-percentage is OK.

At least not yet.

But Press Council of India chairman Justice Markandey Katju‘s “order” on “some legal qualification” before one can enter the profession of journalism has been met with near-unanimous ridicule from mediapersons.

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In the Hindu, Outlook* chairman Vinod Mehta calls the move “absolute rubbish”:

“Some of the greatest journalists the world has produced have been without university degrees. I am a BA fail and was academically the most undistinguished student in school and college. And I haven’t done too badly.”

NDTV group editor Barkha Dutt, who has journalism degrees from Jamia Milia and Columbia school of journalism:

“The best training is on the field. While I can see the arguments about ‘declining standards and quality in journalists’, I do not believe the answer was in ‘more degrees’. (paraphrased)

Sashi Kumar of the Asian college of journalism:

“Most hard-nosed reporters who do unconventional beats, break scoops and exposes, are in the regional language press. And they are not necessarily MAs or PhDs. This is an ill-considered move and reflects Justice Katju’s ignorance about the field, and strikes at the root of freedom of expression.”

***

In a letter to the editor of The Hindu, the veteran sports correspondent Partab Ramchand writes:

“It might be relevant to mention that I am a matriculate (second class) and I joined the profession virtually straight from school nearly 45 years ago without any training whatsoever in journalism and with just a knowledge of sports which I followed closely from my school days.

“I never saw the portals of a college and have never felt any regret in this regard.

“I have worked in various leading newspaper groups, heading the sports department on a couple of occasions, have gone on international assignments and am an author of 10 books on cricket. I fully endorse Barkha Dutt’s view that the best training is on the field which is exactly what I went through.”

* Disclosures apply

Infographic: courtesy The Times of India

Also read: ‘I have a poor opinion of most media people’

Editors’ Guild of India takes on Press Council chief

TV news channel editors too blast PCI chief

Has Justice Katju been appointed by Josef Stalin?

Justice Katju ‘sorry’ for calling journos idiots

Bonus: How much is one divided by zero? Don’t ask

What sustains our ‘free’ media is government ads

The advertising share of television, radio and digital is growing, while it is shrinking rapidly for newspapers and magazines. That is the bottomline of these graphics from The Economic Times, partially explaining why the media is in its current shape.

Stunningly, the top advertising category in 2012, both in print and on TV, is “social advertisements”, in other words government advertisements extolling the virtues of one or the other social welfare scheme. In 2005, it used to be toilet soaps and two-wheelers.

Read the full story: Trends in ad world

How media slandered ‘terror-suspect’ journo

In the Indian Express magazine Eye, Muthi-ur-Rahman Siddiqui, the Deccan Herald reporter-cum-sub-editor who was arrested and jailed for six months on the charge of being involved in an alleged plot to kill a right-leaning editor and columnist, before being let off, recounts the discrimination he faced.

Siddiqui also dwells on how he was treated by the police in BJP-ruled Karnataka despite being a newspaper employee, and how the rest of the media treated one of their own after swallowing police “bullshit”.

# My first night in the cell was the longest night of my life. We kept pleading with the cops to not destroy our lives. During our 30 days in police custody, the cops abused us in every way they could. One policeman asked me, “So, you work for a Pakistani newspaper?”

# Even before I could get over the police hostilities I had endured, I was told about the the media onslaught during my time in jail. I had been dubbed the “mastermind” of the plot. Some of my former colleagues told me that a senior police officer, who was not even investigating the case, misled journalists that I had joined Deccan Herald with the sole purpose of blowing up the Metro station opposite my office. The media blindly, mindlessly, reproduced his words.

# Similarly, going by the police’s words, the media said “radical literature” was seized from my office computer. That computer had an Urdu poem about Republic Day, written by Sahir Ludhianvi, a Leftist ideologue, who was part of the Progressive Writer’s Association.

# A news channel “broke” the story about my father in Pakistan who “guided” me from there. My father died of a heart attack in 2006. I even have his death certificate. Can you imagine how it feels to deal with such bulls**t?

# Another news channel said I had Rs 50 crore in my bank. If I had so much money, I would certainly have owned a newspaper.

# The media has reacted in the extreme to me — extremely cruel when I was arrested, and now, extraordinarily supportive after my release. I am inundated with phone calls from journalists, asking for my side of the story. Even though I am disillusioned by the media, I have not lost faith in it. That faith comes from some truly fair reporting, specially in the print media. I want to return to work as a journalist.

# Journalism has always been close to my heart. But, I have become sceptical of reportage. I will always think twice before trusting a news story. I want to work on the desk and ensure the accuracy of a story.

Photograph: courtest Jyothy Karat

Read the full article: ‘I was discriminated against as I was a Muslim’

Also read: 9 lessons a ‘terror-suspect’ journo learnt in jail

’3 out of 4 women’s mags are bought by men’?

On international women’s day, the newspapers are replete with advertisements and supplements marking the occasion.

Rajya Sabha TV, however, takes the cake with an advertisement (above) in most newspapers that shows the faces of all 42 women employees of the channel, from peon to boss, from reporters to editors (and guest co-ordinators).

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In the Indian Express, Prasar Bharati Corporation chief Mrinal Pande (a former editor of the now-defunct Hindi magazine Vama and the Hindi daily Hindustan), writes :

“When I was about to launch a Hindi monthly for women, men in charge of the marketing section in a major publishing house explained to me between much clearing of throats and sideways glances that it was fine if I insisted my magazine would not promote Miss India contests but that a good and saleable women’s magazine must not give women disturbing notions about self-worth, etc.

“What women actually want from their magazines, they said, was readable and brightly illustrated material on food, child rearing, knitting, stitching and some romantic fiction. They also confirmed that since over three-quarters of women’s magazines were bought by men (they had better access to the vending joints and liked to vet what the mothers and sisters read at home), the faces on the covers must be fair and female.

“A cover story on rape experienced by girls in middle-class families was bitterly criticised as being fictional. These barbaric things, madam, I was told, happen only in the jhuggi-jhopris, not among people like us.”

Read the full article: Myth of bra-burning feminists

How Business World got its fortnightly look

Business World is out in a new avatar with a new periodicity.

In the first issue of the relaunched magazine, Fortune India art director Nilanjan Das and deputy art director Sanjay Piplani explain how they came up with the new design for the ABP group’s original business magazine.

The Grid: We live in an integrated world. We access content across media, platforms and screens. So we reassessed the grid — the intersecting lines that form the structure of a layout — to make the magazine a visual as well as literary delight, while maintaining fluidity across pages. Now, there is more white space, and images come out stronger and sharper.

The Fonts: A magazine’s character largely depends on typography. So we scoured 300 fonts to find the ones that were smart and elegant, so essential for a business publication. We selected 25 — 15 serif and 10 sans-serif fonts. Mixing and matching them on page, we cherry-picked three sans-serif and two serif fonts. And, we tried to challenge traditional styles of section heads and drop caps by making them bigger and bolder.

The Palette: Business persons are a dynamic herd. So should the media they engage with. There should be myriad colours; in all hues and tints. BW’s colour palette offers just that — a wide range of bright, warm, cool and elegant shades. We assembled the new palette with the intention of giving the pages a fresh, distinctive and powerful look, vis-à-vis our peers.

Also read: Business World to go fortnightly from weekly

Indian journalist ‘applies’ to be the next Pope

In the latest issue of Open magazine, its editor Manu Joseph sends in an application to be the 112th Pope, now that the 111th has put in his papers.

To

The Roman Curia, The Holy See, Rome

Reverends,

In the aftermath of the sudden resignation of Pope Benedict XVI due to his advanced age and fear of delirium, which is reasonable taking into account the fact that when he was believed to be mentally fit he had said that condoms spread AIDS, as you seek a Supreme Pontiff of sound mind from an eminent pool of sixty-to-seventy-year-old virgins, kindly consider this application for the job of Pope from me, Manu Joseph I, a member of the laity.

I am aware that you do not seek applications, but I apply because the Church is in a precarious state and it has to consider extraordinary solutions.

My CV, which is enclosed, may appear unremarkable at first glance, even pointless when the marital status is noted, but if observed carefully the applicant has merit.

For instance, the Church is surely wise enough to know that men in long faithful tropical marriages are indeed somewhat acquainted with celibacy. Also, I am a young male, though not so young that I will lead cardinals to sin; and, once on Indian national television I was accused of misogyny; and, through my writings and one Facebook post, I believe I have relentlessly advertised the Son of God though in the form of an endearing sub-culture, actually to be honest, in the form of a liquor found in Kerala, which is named Jesus Christ because after you drink it, you will rise only on the third day. But more important than all this is that I am a novelist, which none of the former Popes have been, even though Christianity has emerged from the Great Story.

If his application is accepted, Pope Manohar could be the last to oversee the exercise of the Petrine ministry.

The 12th century clairvoyant St Malachy said there would be only 112 Popes and that during the tenure of the 112th, Rome—and the Church—would be wiped out.

In St Malachy’s own words:

“The City of Seven Hills shall be destroyed and the dreadful Judge shall judge the people.”

Read the full application: I am the man

‘Businessworld’ to go fortnightly from weekly

What goes around, comes around. Fourteen years after it went weekly, India’s second oldest business magazine, Businessworld from the Anand Bazaar Patrika group, is reverting to a fortnightly.

In a note to readers in the last issue of its weekly avatar, editor Prosenjit Datta explains why:

In 1999, when we had turned weekly, there was a very clear need to do so.

Twitter did not exist, and the Internet contained largely static content when it came to news. There was just one business news channel and it focused mostly on stocks. Most of the newspapers concentrated on news, and not analysis.

There was a great need for a business newsweekly…. a weekly publication that could analyse in detail the implications of the events taking place.

Over time though, the world changed and so did BW’s core content. As the Internet matured, and more dedicated business channels were born, they took over the primary role of disseminating news…. News became an increasingly small portion of what BW offered.

Now we are carrying those changes to the next logical step. We are stepping out of the news genre to focus entirely on issues, events and trends that will affect your business and the economy in the future.

Link via N.M. Upadhyay

Read the full note: Dear Readers

Also read: ‘Business journalists deserve credit for reforms’

What an NYT writer learnt by reading an IT issue

Tyler Cowen, a New York Times contributor, has pored through the 37th anniversary issue of India Today*, and writes about what he learned by reading “every last word” published by the magazine.

“The most striking feature of a late December issue of India Today is its aspirational tone and near-relentless gloss and promotional fervor. An article about the ‘Indians of Tomorrow’ describes them as ‘Dreamers and Doers’….

5. There is much more talk about the relations across the generations than you would find in a comparable Western magazine….

12. Ashok Mitra opines that “The Left is the only hope for the country, the rest are all scum.” This quote is pulled out for display, which struck me as odd for such a culturally conservative magazine….

“I fear that a more consistently mainstream editor eventually will make this periodical much less interesting, so in the meantime I am glad that the editor is the daughter of the owner.”

* Disclosures apply

Read the full column: What I learned from reading every word of IT

‘Journalists are longest, unauthorised squatters’

The Pioneer and the Hindustan Times on the legal news of the day that may not necessarily have spread cheer among newsroom squatters.

Also read: ‘Media houses are sitting on plots leased at Re 1′

Bangalore journos named in site allotment scam

A town shuts down to protest media corruption!

Should media corruption come under Lok Pal?

Free speech gets a major boost (in the a**)

So, young Indians cannot tell their friends in what they like on Facebook, without being “pre-screened” by Harvard types (or hauled into a police station by Shiv Sena goons). So, bloggers cannot publish their “online private diaries” without the sword of 66(A) hanging over their heads.

So, tweeters can be blocked and Savita bhabhi‘s enviable lifestyle is subject to some faceless babu’s sense of humour (or voyeurism). So, the Mahatma‘s life is beyond scrutiny in the land of you-know-who. So (oh!), Aamir Khan‘s film will miraculously not be screened, also in the land of you-know-who.

Or his TV show.

So, TV stations cannot show protests without threatened by the information and broadcasting ministry (or corporate titans). So, newspapers cannot report what their reporters see without being told that the tap of government advertisements could be turned off.

So, M.F. Husain cannot die in his own country. So, A.K. Ramanujam‘s interpretation of the Ramayana hurts somebody.

So, Ashis Nandy cannot drop his pearls on corruption without offending Dalits, tribals and OBCs. So, Salman Rushdie cannot go to a lit-fest in Jaipur (or Calcutta) without offending Islamist fundoos. So, Shah Rukh Khan cannot write what’s in his heart without offending.

So, Kamal Hassan‘s new film can be banned by a government run by a former film actor.

Sometimes, you do have to remind yourself it is a free country, don’t you?

Image: courtesy R. Prasad/ Mail Today