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.