Tuesday 2 April 2019

Correspondent of English Daily Speaks. Still in Nellore.

The Kolkata - Kanyakumari highway gets hugely busy after dusk. Trucks, private buses and cars clog the road and most drive at top speed. Nellore town is just off this highway.

We cross the busy road and head to the town's fringe, to the local office of Deccan Chronicle, a longstanding English newspaper with multi editions.

The only correspondent here, Pathri Rajasekhar had suggested that I come by after 8 p.m. because his editors would sit on his head to get his day's copy.

DC, as this newspaper is know around here has a sprawling office - its printing press on the ground floor and offices on the first.

A few admin and advertising executives were still at their desks and the photographer was leaving office after submitting pictures of the day.
Rajasekhar walked to the reception desk, his eyes scanning the messages on his WhatsApp page on his handphone.

"At régional levels all journalists here are part of many WhatsApp groups, " he told me. "Groups of the political parties, of candidates and our local journalists."
Besides, people also send many messages which they believe the media may be interested in.
"So while we constantly have to check messages we also have to trash many of them."

Rajasekhar sticks to the old ways of filing stories - from his PC at his desk in the office. Rarely does he file stories using his hand device. Nor does he shoot visuals.

"Unless there is a news break at the midnight hour, I file from office," he told me.

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