In Kerala's ghats: the newspaper still holds prime space

Election posters in Wayanad, Kerala

I am headed to the ghats. Western Ghats. Our destination for the night is Kozhikode ( Calicut) but I'd like to stop at Kalpetta, the district headquarters of Wayanad in Kerala.

Wayanad rose to the top on the election news agenda after Congress president Rahul Gandhi decided to contest from a second constituency and chose Wayanad, the hill country in south India.

The dry, sun-burnt landscape of Bandipur borders Kerala. This is a busy tourist destination but recently, a intense forest fire did considerable damage. As we drive through the forest zone we see Fire Service teams posted at a few places off the main road.

Colour posters of Rahul Gandhi and the Congress symbol greet us on the border and there are dozens of them all along the main road as we motor into town. The posters of the CPI(M) challenger here are few and far between. But they get our attention.

Evening isn't the best time to catch journalists. That too at election time. On my tour, I have had to gatecrash into newsrooms or corner local reporters or stringers. Because this is more of a road trip and I am happy to meet and talk to any journalist on my topic.

Kalpetta office of 'Mathrubhumi' newspaper

A. K. Sujit heads the Wayanad bureau of 'Mathrubhumi', one of Kerala's leading Malayalam newspapers. He is busy in an editorial meeting when I call. And minutes later, he is off on an assignment. Ever since Rahul Gandhi formally announced his intention to contest from Wayanad, newspeople here have much on their hands. There is more to report at every turn.

Sujit is kind: he puts me on to his colleague Neenu Mohan. So we head to the Mathrubhuni office located on the Kalpetta main road. On the first floor, in one single room are a few terminals on the desk where people are at work. A TV fixed to the wall is on silent mode: Mathrubhumi's TV channel is 'live', reporting the election scenario from across the state that evening. ( www.tv.mathrubhumi.com).

Neenu Mohan has lots to file but takes a break to talk to me.  She says that bureau teams like this one in Kalpetta are busy all the time since they are based in district headquarters and because the dailies have editions from every zone of the state. So print is demanding, and that demand increases at election time. She says the Internet Desk seeks inputs when a story breaks locally and the bureau can provide additional details on the run.

Clearly, in a state where people consume news a lot and are said to read more than one newspaper, in a state where people debate and discuss politics hard and long, print journalists continue to pay a lot of attention to stories they file for the daily. 

The newspaper is as important as the daily's web site and its TV channel.

In Mysuru: BJP smarties are way ahead in the social media game

Laiqh Khan of The Hindu in Mysuru

I drive out of Bengaluru, and am headed to Mysuru. On many at-dawn drives out of town I have noticed that you hardly see newspaper circulation boys on their rounds. Nor do I see shops that open at dawn and have a clutch of the day's dailies to sell.

This confirms what I have been hearing for over a year. One, there is a drop in English newspaper sales ( though many dailies claim increased readership) and that newspaper circulation agents find it really hard to get boys to circulate dailies. 

In Goa, if you want to read a daily you must go across to the area's store that stocks them and pick them up - regulars have their copies packed and ready!

So it takes us some time to spot a hawker shop in Bengaluru to get our daily dose - and since the lady here sells all the brands, we pick a bunch of them.

Laiqh Khan is The Hindu's correspondent in Mysuru. He has worked here, then had stints in Bengaluru and has come back to his home town. Laiqh isn't keeping well but I coax him to talk to me; he obliges.

Laiqh says every reporter in town has at least 40/50 WhatsApp groups on his/her smart phone - from the local police chief and MLAs and MP, to the panchayat heads, prominent politicians, civic bodies, police and educational campuses.

Many bodies now communicate via social media - so news streams in 24x7.

The WhatsApp groups increase at election time. "The BJP at all levels has one of best social media teams around. They know their job and they are at round the clock, be it sharing stuff from their headquarters or on local campaigns and candidates and responses to issues raised by the opposition," Laiqh tells me. "The Congress guys need to be pushed while the BJP teams are well motivated."

Laiqh then shows me a simple software he uses to record phone interviews. "I switch it on when I interview important people. It comes in handy especially at election time when there are possibilities of politicians denying they said something," Laiqh tells me. 

And he plays me a recording of a chat he had with a senior official of the local university on a controversial development recently.

Laiqh says that his experience at the regional edition office of The Hindu has helped to understand what works and what doesn't for his newspaper and so, he tailors his work accordingly. 

If he thinks shooting a video clip of an event is important, he does this and shares it with his team. The same applies to shooting pictures - and all this he does on his smart phone.

While Laiqh's video content has been used off and on, I can make out that The Hindu is yet to encourage all its reporters / correspondents to shoot photos and videos and be multi-taskers yet though the journalists are capable of doing this. 

And The Hindu's Karnataka section on its website
( www.thehindu.com), in its Multi-media section carries a video on the fire that broke out in Bandipur forest, a destination for wildlife enthusiast. 

The videos are few and far between. And hardly any video reportage on Elections 2019.

Bengaluru: how and why print news can be king

The display board at the office of Deccan Herald in Bengaluru

It is a Sunday afternoon and cricket fans are pouring into the Chinnaswamy Stadium in the heart of Bengaluru; to watch a India Premier league match that stars the home side, Royal Challengers which hasn't had a good run this season.

I have an appointment with two journalists at the local edition of 'Times of India' whose office is just off M. G. Road, that iconic city space which many old-time Bengalureans feel has been marred by the Metro Rail structures.

B. V. Shivshankar is Assistant Editor at the Times, with long experience in TV as well as Kannada journalism. He tells me that even as a youth he devoured news on politics, from the newspapers he read daily without fail; this came in handy when he finally chose journalism as a career. 

He recalls the days of political stars of the state like Ramakrishna Hedge and Gundu Rao, the rise of the BJP, the era of T. N. Seshan as the 'bull dog' Election Commissioner and of many an electoral battle in Karnataka.

"We didn't need Google or use a smartphone then. It was all here," he says, his finger pointing to his forehead.

Shivshankar believes that today, young journalists' dependence on online resources can be traced to their limited or shallow knowledge of the subjects they cover/write on.

"Today, we compete with people who themselves report stuff that happens," he says. Information, factual or otherwise is in the public space every other minute. So is its propagation. So he believes the reporter and writer of this age must approach journalism differently.

And this is where his/her knowledge of politics, politicians, processes and elections comes to play when one is called to report/write on an election like Elections 2019.

Shivashankar says that TV and news websites and social media provides spot coverage. And that a lot is unsaid and not reported. "We aren't information providers any more. That the electronic media does."

So his approach in the age of technology is to dig into the background and context the report with the current.

"In print you don't have to be afraid of wary of online," he tells me in the office canteen. "Print has a different job to do in today's context. We have to give ourselves time to see how best to do that."

Shivshankar's colleague Chetan, who reports on defense and science in Bengaluru but is game to write on elections as he does this season, nods in support of Shivshankar's argument. 

He says 90% of stuff on social media comes from media houses or from state agencies; that people are not reporting news. "They do not get factual news."

"Television sets the agenda for print journalists, " says Chetan."And so their work is tough and often borders on speculation."

Chetan's premise is that communication in India's print media has not changed despite advances in new technology. 

"You tell readers what they cannot find online. People are not all that smart yet and they turn to newspapers to tell them the news," he says.

Chetan says he has based his journalism extensively on data that is available online and off and the result has borne good fruit. 

He gives me the example of looking at the data of votes polled by various parties across India in the last general elections and indicates that neither the Congress nor the BJP can be called national parties because they did not get a huge number of votes and didn't do so across the country.

He too admits that the 24x7 coverage of elections by TV channels is impacting much on print journalists - in choice of stories and in coverage.

Roadside newspaper stall in Bengaluru

'Shillong Times' finds it difficult to attract the tech-savvy to journalism

Shillong Times office

Patricia Mukhim invites me to visit the office of 'Shillong Times', the newspaper she edits. But I have two hours free on my hands. I locate Madras Cafe in the heart of a bustling shopping-bus station centre of the city where I treat myself to masala dosa and coffee even as a big group of people, obviously from Tamil Nadu chit-chat and gossip loudly, in Thamizh. 

Madras Cafe must be the first destination of travelers from the southern end of the country. I then zip across to what is commonly called Don Bosco Museum - a fantastic work by the Salesians religious where the focus is on the North East's indigenous people, customs, histories, life, art and craft.

You need at least 90 minutes to quickly explore this grand space.

That done we drive across the city, and into what seems to be a Cantonment zone; we negotiate winding roads on the hillside and spot what looks like an independent bungalow.

It isn't.

I am at 'Shillong Times'.

I must take the stairs that leads to the underground offices - the pre-press room is on one side, the printing press on the other and further down, the editorial offices. Only then do I realise all over again that I am in hill country.

A page designer at work

Patricia is at her desk and she takes me to the News Room. The hall is empty save for one designer who is working on a page of the group's Garo newspaper, 'Salantini Janera'.

In a small cabin here, three young women are at work. Two of them edit copy and are about to wind up for the day.

The Desk; sub-editors at work

The third, Nabamita Mitra handles the Sunday magazine pages of the Times. The current issue has a front page feature on the state of Khasi musicians and explores if traditional music is losing out to Western music - which has a huge following in the North-East.

Nabamita is from Kolkata and on a whim, chose to leave behind the Kolkata phase of her career in journalism and get adventurous; that is how she landed in Shillong. In that small, partitioned space for Nabamita and her two colleagues, we spend some time talking about a journalist's job in this state.

They tell me that many people, especially the youths are reticent when it comes to speaking their mind or sharing their views considering the sensitive and fluid atmosphere that has existed in this region. "Nobody would like to go on record or even be seen in a photo," they tell me.

Meghalaya's youths are fixed to their phones and access and use social media a lot but they seem to be less interested in news developments and more keen to get employment. "They banked a lot on jobs in the state sector but that having failed them they now look to go outside to get employed," they tell me.

Patricia tells me that it has been extremely difficult to get young people to work for the newspaper. Nobody wants a desk job and few are keen to invest time and energy in serious journalism. And this does tell on local newspapers like 'Shillong Times'.

Save for posting the daily edition online ( the English and the Garo one) as E-papers, the Times has a very basic website (www.theshillongtimes.com); it has not tapped technology to advance its publishing. The reason - it does not attract tech-savvy people who wish to work at a newspaper.