WHAT DOES IT ALL AD'd' UP TO... JOURNALISM???

Its 10 pm.
It’s crunch time in the life of every newspaper. The paper goes to bed in a couple of hours and the city reporters are restless, on the phone… or flinging themselves at the keyboard with the fury of a mackerel, just plucked from the water and dumped on to the boat deck.
The desk is berserk. They want their stories in fast and quick. They are obsessed with the computer screen right before them… Even if Mallika Sherawat were to dance to the Mehbooba Mehbooba song right alongside, they wouldn’t dare look at her. Unless they prefer the broadside from the editor, the next day for delaying the edition…
This the scene in every newspaper newsroom in the world… And our dear old Herald is not an exception. Except for this small interjection here…
Here’s what would happen in the Herald on most nightshifts…
Its 10 pm.
It’s crunch time in the life of every newspaper. The paper goes to bed in a couple of hours and the city reporters are restless, on the phone… or flinging themselves at the keyboard with the fury of a mackerel, just plucked from the water and dumped on to the boat deck.
The desk is berserk. They want their stories in fast and quick. They are obsessed with the computer screen right before them… Even if Mallika Sherawat were to dance to the Mehbooba Mehbooba song right alongside, they wouldn’t dare look at her. Unless they prefer the broadside from the editor, the next day for delaying the edition…
Suddenly the phone rings…
The deputy news editor Joel picks it up… ‘Hmm… ok send him here…’ ‘How many inches? (err… they are talking about size here, but it’s not what you are thinking man, hehehehe)’ ‘Ok, he has a photograph, right?’ ‘Ok… I am waiting.’
In a few minutes the deputy news editor steps down to the ground floor to meet his contact and the client… The client is a tired and saddened soul, who’s just lost a close relative… He’s brought along a picture to be advertised in the next day’s edition in an obit piece. The deceased relative had earlier gone to The Navhind Times, where he was poached by the peon Alex, Joel’s contact man…
Then at the height of editorial operations, Joel approaches the composing desk. There he gets the picture scanned and the obituary text composed. Once it’s done, Joel checks the text again for errors. In the meantime he has already collected the money from the relative in cash. He pays off his contact person… About half and hour later he resumes his duty as a deputy news editor…
So that effectively means, when a newspaper is at the height of its activity and where care and attention is needed the most to ensure that errors don’t crop in… the deputy news editor is actually chasing an advertising client and servicing him… Something completely alien to the responsibility of a Deputy News Editor.
Joel is one of the many other journo folk in Goa who double up as advertising men. Perhaps Joel is one of the seniormost folk in the profession to do this…
So why are we writing about this here? Why can’t we let him in peace… Here’s why…
This obviously doesn’t happen in isolation. When a deputy news editor or a senior reporter in a newspaper have commercial interests it is really not good news.
See for example… Joel (he runs a firm called DIGITAL ADVERTISING) resides in Nuvem. And he sources a majority of his ads from the Southern part of Goa. And during the election season and otherwise too he ropes in several political advertisements.
(here’s the really disturbing aspect) And guess who is one of his most prolific ad scout? The bearded sage of the Herald… Guilherme Almeida, its Margao reporter…
Imagine this, a senior reporter of a particular newspaper (the only full fledged editorial staffer in South Goa) sourcing ads from politicos and passing them on to a deputy news editor (obviously not for the love of God). Political ads mean big money in the Goa advertising scene.
In this scenario, how on earth is the newspaper going to ensure that editorial sanctity is not violated?
Gimme one politician in Goa who would not extract the worth of his weight in Gold for a Rs 40,000 odd for a half page ad? Especially when a senior reporter and a senior editorial person have earned money from his purse.
Not that these questions have never been raised amongst us in the local media. But there never has been a forum for us to raise it. The narrow minded newspaper owners (Herald included) do not mind this cause this means money coming into its coffers. With a senior, pampered reporter and a deputy news editor, none of the staffers can do a thing. And the reader… there’s no way a reader has anyway of knowing anything…
One of the other notorious partnerships in the Herald is that of a senior compositor Caitan and the very famous Milan Burman, a Congressman, who advertising firm has been blacklisted by many newspapers.
There’s not much we can do about this folks… but just let you know about this… This is not a very healthy trend… And if we can’t do much to stop it, we’d want you all to know that this happens. Perhaps when Joel looks up this blog later tonight, he may even feel a tinge of remorse… And perhaps when the phone rings again, he’d direct it to the news paper’s official advertising section, where Shailesh Madkaikar and Yakub are killing flies anyway. (joking)