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