Off beat track pays off to Gujarat journalist

Dilip Patel is among senior journalists covering secretariat for the last 13 years. But much of his writing is the reflection of his nose for the off beat. And it has paid him off well.
He wrote some articles about Gandhi. It was much before film Munnabhai revived interest of people in Gandhi and his ideology. This attracted the attention of a NGO promoting Gandhi and Dilip won a 22 day tour to South Africa in 2004.
He saw different places associated with Gandhi in South Africa and also participated in a 300 km long walk through Gandhian places. He and one other journalist were selected from media in this international tour.
Certainly, it is a great achievement from personal and professional point of view. For quite sometime Dilip is planning to write a book about his journey. But as usual pressing assignments are delaying his diary of South Africa. At a personal level, he witnessed the glory of an era that was Gandhi.
His writings about forest and environment and archaeological places attract reader's attention at the first sight. Many of his stories are picked up by the national media. He says political beat is his duty and off beat writing is his passion. During quarter century of his career he has worked with number of
Gujarat newspapers.
Dilip is a person who follows his convictions and conscience, something becoming rare in the journalism. At times, he is sticking to his views to give a feel of obstinate rigidity to others. He minces no words while expressing his dissent. His one liner dissents convey him well with the punch of brevity.
But if you know him, he is quite sensitive. One of his favorite pastimes is to produce Ayurvedic preparations to be distributed to friends. He has tested prescriptions for hair oil, tooth powder and chyawanprash. He himself prepares it and gives it to friends on no profit basis. Labour is free as love labour. He says that his preparations were becoming popular but time was a big constraint!!
This aspect of his personality has an interesting story. He was searching for some kind of preparation to be used as a stress buster. Something every journalist wishes. He tried many and found a hair oil preparation as the best. Since then, he is using it and preparing it for friends.
One day one of his relative wanted a video cassette of a swamiji about Pranayaam. He played the CD in his computer to test whether it is working or not. He was attracted by the Pranayaam techniques. This turned him towards Yoga and Pranayaam.
Recently, when Ahmedabad chapter of the Public Relations Society of India decided to introduce Journalist of the Year Award, Dilip attracted the jury for his convictions and off beat track. He was presented the first PRSI Journalist of the Year Award on Monday.
Dilip Patel is basically from Gujarati journalism. He is presently a senior staff of Ahmedabad Mirror of midloid clan of Times Group.

Cama is the new chairman of India section of CPU

Hormusji N Cama, Director, Bombay Samachar, and immediate Past President of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) has taken over as the new Chairman of the Indian Section of the Commonwealth Press Union (CPU) with immediate effect. He succeeds K. N. Shanth Kumar, Director of Deccan Herald Group of Newspapers, Bangalore. The Bombay Samachar is the oldest newspaper in Asia and has had a long relationship with the CPU.
Hormusji Cama is a Director of Press Trust of India (PTI). Press Council of India has recently re-nominated him for a second term as the President. He was the President of Indian Language Newspapers Association (ILNA), for one term.

In the blog powered land

Last week Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi had couple of non government engagements in Delhi. One of them was his felicitation by Gujarati Samaj. Our friend Nilesh Shukla who looks after Gujarat's media relations in Delhi for more than a decade asked Delhi media to cover the function.
However, at the venue it was chaos. No arrangement for media. Oraganisors checked media like sleuths. Confrontation was the natural outcome. Friends pulled all strings. Nilesh was at the airport. However, friends managed entry using BJP headquarters contacts.
Inside, trouble began afresh. Friends and fans of Modi began protesting the position of cameramen. They shouted and yelled. We do not want you, was the cry. Media persons looked around. Modi was very much settled on Dias.
They could not make out whether Modi was looking at them or he had a blank stare. They retreated in protest. But there was none to stop him. Certainly there could be no worse instance of humiliation of invited media.
All knew that there protests would meet the same fate in their own office. No one would take note of what happened with them. But Yashwant Singh who is associated with a blog Bhadas was prompt to put the matter on his blog in his own way within two hours of the incident. He also predicted that the protest issue would not appear anywhere.
The blog is a network of more than 250 media men. Daily, hundreds hits are registered on this blog. I also got to know about the incident from here only.
While surfing the same blog, I came across another post on the same day.
It was a resignation letter of a staffer of IANS Swatantra Mishra. It had outburst against the Executive Editor of the Hindi section of the IANS Arun Anand.
Some may find such an action improper. Here the merit of the case is not a point. But the power of blog is evident. It is a great leveler which has given power to anyone and everyone with connectivity. In a fast moving world this is a way to raise voice against those who are at higher platforms.

Newseum – The Museum Of News

In plain words it is the museum of News. It reopened in Washington last week. The new avatar of the Newseum is already being called one of the most technologically advanced museums in the world. Front pages of dozens of newspapers are on display out on the street. It is quite a sight, and definitely an attention-getter for pedestrians. Six years ago the original, smaller Newseum across the Potomac River in Arlington was closed.

The Newseum is an appealing example of how a museum can both teach and entertain with clever use of images and interactive displays, and compact explanations that will repay serious reading while offering edutainment to the many school children expected to visit. Whether one is a news junkie, a history hunter or interested in digital interaction, all is available here. And, in no time at all, one's enthusiasm for the media — is contagious. With the museum's seven levels and 14 galleries, there's something always going on.

Additionally, there are 15 theatres, two television studios (ABC This Week with George Stephanopoulos will broadcast every Sunday from one), and a hand's-on master control center open for learning. There are also 48 interactive computer kiosks that allow one to immerse themselves in the news experience, as a reporter, photographer, or even a blogger.

Within the building are thousands of newspapers to read, hundreds of hours of news broadcasts to watch, and hundreds of Pulitzer Prizewinning photos to examine. All told, there are more than 6,000 news artifacts, ranging from a newspaper's first publication in 1545 to the door from the Watergate Hotel room, which led to the eventually downfall of President Nixon.

The Newseum also offers the first permanent exhibit devoted to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. There is also a memorial to more than the 1,700 journalists from around the world who have died on the job since the 1830s.One of the most popular sites, it's easy to predict, will be the Interactive Newsroom, which allows one to become a newspaper reporter or a photographer covering breaking news on a tight deadline. One can even file stories or photos and get feedback.

Another predictably fun site, for an additional $8 dollar fee, allows a visitor to stand before a camera and pretend to be an on-air reporter — teleprompter and all. Grab a microphone and take a stand-up shot in the location of your choice: in front of the White House, the Capitol or the Supreme Court.

Adults can devise their own script, and is allowed two practice runs, with a countdown of 13 seconds before going "on air." Children are given a script to read, and the teleprompter will run more slowly for them, too, than for adults.

Visitors then receive a souvenir photo of their "on air" experience, and can download their TV performances from a Newseum site the following day, which allows them to share the fun with family and friends.

Another site not to miss is the Ethics Table, where players compete by answering questions about the "right" thing to do as a reporter, and completing their team's newspaper page. Using motion-tracking technology, players select questions from avatars that appear on the table. Each correct answer fills in a blank on the team's page.

One of the most popular events being praised by young, aspiring reporters is the Annenberg Theater, which — through the use of special eyeglasses — offers a 4D, 13-minute presentation that is both fun and information. Don't forget to duck and mind your legs in this theatre. And yes, all the movies are free — all 100 of them within the Newseum.

The Newseum has $20 dollar entry fee. Now the question is that will people visit the Newseum with this fee. Competing with the Newseum are the Air and Space Museum, the National History Museum and the National Archives and the National Gallery of Art; it's also close to Ford's Theatre, where President Abraham Lincoln was shot.

One is impressed even before entering the building: Outside is a 74-foot-high, 50 ton Tennessee marble table on the front façade of the Newseum etched with the words of the First Amendment, written 217 years ago: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceable to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It has good quota of blunders made by the media. The Newseum has a copy of the 1948 Chicago Daily Tribune mistakenly announcing “Dewey Beats Truman” — just below the famous photograph of a victorious Truman holding the same paper. Only Mark Twain (who invented his share of journalistic hoaxes) had a plausible excuse: reporting, he said, “was awful slavery for a lazy man.” And there’s at least one sign that the Newseum knows when not to take itself too seriously: scattered tiles in the museum bathrooms are inscribed with journalistic gaffes and embarrassing corrections.

To see the daily struggle with accuracy and understanding, take a look at one of the most intriguing galleries at the Newseum, reproduced in sidewalk displays below. Every day some 80 front pages of newspapers from all over the world and from the 50 states are mounted, along with a touch screen offering scores more. Here the press can be seen for what it is: a noble, necessary and hopeless enterprise.

To see a beautiful slide presentation prepared by the New York Times (one of the contributors to the Newseum) click here

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/04/10/arts/0411-NEWS_index.html

Pulitzer Prizes

This week Pulitzer Prizes were announced. The Washington Post topped with six of the 14 Awards going to it. Pulitzer Prizes began in 1917 and it is regarded as the highest honour in Journalism.
The prize was established by Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian -American journalist and newspaper publisher. Pulitzer saw himself as a crusader on the side of people and a spokesman for democracy. He supported labor, attacked trusts and monopolies, and revealed political corruption. When journalism was not a respectable way of earning one's living, Pulitzer was committed to raising the standards of the profession.
Pulitzer left money to Columbia University upon his death in 1911. A portion of his bequest was used to found the University's Journalism School in 1912. The first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded on June 4, 1917, and they are now announced each April. Recipients are chosen by an independent board.
This year 'The Washington Post' has topped the list of prestigious Pulitzer journalism award winners this year bagging six out of 14 awards, including one for its coverage of Virginia Tech shooting.
In the Breaking News category, the award went to the staff of the 'Post' for its coverage of the deadly shooting at Virginia Tech.
In the International Reporting category, Post's Mr Steve Fainaru won for his reporting on private security contractors in Iraq who operate outside most of the laws governing American forces.
The New York Times won the award for Explanatory Reporting and shared with Chicago Tribune for Investigative Reporting. Pakistani-born and Bangkok-based photographer Adrees Latif won the Pulitzer for Reuters in the Breaking News Photography with his shout showing a Japanese videographer sprawled on the payment fatally wounded during a street demonstration in Myanmar.
No award was given for Editorial Writing but Mr Michael Ramirez of Investor's Business Daily won Pulitzer for Editorial Cartooning. The award for criticism went to Mr Mark Feeney of the Boston Globe and Mr Preston Gannaway of the Concord Monitor won for Feature Photography.

JOSEPH PULITZER

Joseph Pulitzer was born in Mako, Hungary on April 10, 1847, the son of a wealthy grain merchant of Magyar-Jewish origin and a German mother who was a devout Roman Catholic. His younger brother, Albert, was trained for the priesthood but never attained it. The elder Pulitzer retired in Budapest and Joseph grew up and was educated there in private schools and by tutors. Restive at the age of seventeen, the gangling 6'2" youth decided to become a soldier and tried in turn to enlist in the Austrian Army, Napoleon's Foreign Legion for duty in Mexico, and the British Army for service in India.

He was rebuffed because of weak eyesight and frail health, which were to plague him for the rest of his life. However, in Hamburg, Germany, he encountered a bounty recruiter for the U.S. Union Army and contracted to enlist as a substitute for a draftee, a procedure permitted under the Civil War draft system. At Boston he jumped ship and, as the legend goes, swam to shore, determined to keep the enlistment bounty for himself rather than leave it to the agent. Pulitzer collected the bounty by enlisting for a year in the Lincoln Cavalry, which suited him since there were many Germans in the unit. He was fluent in German and French but spoke very little English.

Later, he worked his way to St. Louis. While doing odd jobs there, such as muleteer, baggage handler, and waiter, he immersed himself in the city's Mercantile Library, studying English and the law. His great career opportunity came in a unique manner in the library's chess room. Observing the game of two habitues, he astutely critiqued a move and the players, impressed, engaged Pulitzer in conversation. The players were editors of the leading German language daily, Westliche Post, and a job offer followed.

Four years later, in 1872, the young Pulitzer, who had built a reputation as a tireless enterprising journalist, was offered a controlling interest in the paper by the nearly bankrupt owners. At age 25, Pulitzer became a publisher and there followed a series of shrewd business deals from which he emerged in 1878 as the owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and a rising figure on the journalistic scene. Earlier in the same year, he and Kate Davis, a socially prominent Washingtonian woman, were married in the Protestant Episcopal Church.

The Hungarian immigrant youth - once a vagrant on the slum streets of St. Louis and taunted as "Joey the Jew" - had been transformed. Now he was an American citizen and as speaker, writer, and editor had mastered English extraordinarily well. Elegantly dressed, wearing a handsome, reddish-brown beard and pince-nez glasses, he mixed easily with the social elite of St. Louis, enjoying dancing at fancy parties and horseback riding in the park. This lifestyle was abandoned abruptly when he came into the ownership of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

James Wyman Barrett, the last city editor of The New York World, records in his biography Joseph Pulitzer and His World how Pulitzer, in taking hold of the Post-Dispatch, "worked at his desk from early morning until midnight or later, interesting himself in every detail of the paper." Appealing to the public to accept that his paper was their champion, Pulitzer splashed investigative articles and editorials assailing government corruption, wealthy tax-dodgers, and gamblers. This populist appeal was effective, circulation mounted, and the paper prospered. Pulitzer would have been pleased to know that in the conduct of the Pulitzer Prize system which he later established, more awards in journalism would go to exposure of corruption than to any other subject.

Pulitzer paid a price for his unsparingly rigorous work at his newspaper. His health was undermined and, with his eyes failing, Pulitzer and his wife set out in 1883 for New York to board a ship on a doctor-ordered European vacation. Stubbornly, instead of boarding the steamer in New York, he met with Jay Gould, the financier, and negotiated the purchase of The New York World, which was in financial straits. Putting aside his serious health concerns, Pulitzer immersed himself in its direction, bringing about what Barrett describes as a "one-man revolution" in the editorial policy, content, and format of The World.

He employed some of the same techniques that had built up the circulation of the Post-Dispatch. He crusaded against public and private corruption, filled the news columns with a spate of sensationalized features, made the first extensive use of illustrations, and staged news stunts. In one of the most successful promotions, The World raised public subscriptions for the building of a pedestal at the entrance to the New York harbor so that the Statue of Liberty, which was stranded in France awaiting shipment, could be emplaced. The formula worked so well that in the next decade the circulation of The World in all its editions climbed to more than 600,000, and it reigned as the largest circulating newspaper in the country.

But unexpectedly Pulitzer himself became a victim of the battle for circulation when Charles Anderson Dana, publisher of The Sun, frustrated by the success of The World launched vicious personal attacks on him as "the Jew who had denied his race and religion." The unrelenting campaign was designed to alienate New York's Jewish community from The World. Pulitzer's health was fractured further during this ordeal and in 1890, at the age of 43, he withdrew from the editorship of The World and never returned to its newsroom. Virtually blind, having in his severe depression succumbed also to an illness that made him excruciatingly sensitive to noise, Pulitzer went abroad frantically seeking cures. He failed to find them, and the next two decades of his life he spent largely in soundproofed "vaults," as he referred to them, aboard his yacht, Liberty, in the "Tower of Silence" at his vacation retreat in Bar Harbor Maine, and at his New York mansion.

During those years, although he traveled very frequently, Pulitzer managed, nevertheless, to maintain the closest editorial and business direction of his newspapers. To ensure secrecy in his communications he relied on a code that filled a book containing some 20,000 names and terms. During the years 1896 to 1898 Pulitzer was drawn into a bitter circulation battle with William Randolph Hearst's Journal in which there were no apparent restraints on sensationalism or fabrication of news. When the Cubans rebelled against Spanish rule, Pulitzer and Hearst sought to outdo each other in whipping up outrage against the Spanish. Both called for war against Spain after the U.S. battleship Maine mysteriously blew up and sank in Havana harbor on February 16, 1898. Congress reacted to the outcry with a war resolution.

After the four-month war, Pulitzer withdrew from what had become known as "yellow journalism." The World became more restrained and served as the influential editorial voice on many issues of the Democratic Party. In the view of historians, Pulitzer's lapse into "yellow journalism" was outweighed by his public service achievements. He waged courageous and often successful crusades against corrupt practices in government and business. He was responsible to a large extent for passage of antitrust legislation and regulation of the insurance industry.

In 1909, The World exposed a fraudulent payment of $40 million by the United States to the French Panama Canal Company. The federal government lashed back at The World by indicting Pulitzer for criminally libeling President Theodore Roosevelt and the banker J.P. Morgan, among others. Pulitzer refused to retreat, and The World persisted in its investigation. When the courts dismissed the indictments, Pulitzer was applauded for a crucial victory on behalf of freedom of the press. In May 1904, writing in The North American Review in support of his proposal for the founding of a school of journalism, Pulitzer summarized his credo: "Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery.

A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations." In 1912, one year after Pulitzer's death aboard his yacht, the Columbia School of Journalism was founded, and the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded in 1917 under the supervision of the advisory board to which he had entrusted his mandate. Pulitzer envisioned an advisory board composed principally of newspaper publishers. Others would include the president of Columbia University and scholars, and "persons of distinction who are not journalists or editors." Today, the 19-member board is composed mainly of leading editors or news executives. Four academics also serve, including the president of Columbia University and the dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

The dean and the administrator of the prizes are nonvoting members. The chair rotates annually to the most senior member. The board is self-perpetuating in the election of members. Voting members may serve three terms of three years. In the selection of the members of the board and of the juries, close attention is given to professional excellence and affiliation, as well as diversity in terms of gender, ethnic background, geographical distribution and size of newspaper.

Pulitzer Prize over decades

The Pulitzer prizes have been announced. Like every year, it has some interesting stories. Over the years, the Prize has become a brand. Here is the story of the Prize over the decades.

In the latter years of the 19th century, Joseph Pulitzer stood out as the very embodiment of American journalism. Hungarian-born, an intense indomitable figure, Pulitzer was the most skillful of newspaper publishers, a passionate crusader against dishonest government, a fierce, hawk-like competitor who did not shrink from sensationalism in circulation struggles, and a visionary who richly endowed his profession. His innovative New York World and St. Louis Post-Dispatch reshaped newspaper journalism. Pulitzer was the first to call for the training of journalists at the university level in a school of journalism. And certainly, the lasting influence of the Pulitzer Prizes on journalism, literature, music, and drama is to be attributed to his visionary acumen.

In writing his 1904 will, which made provision for the establishment of the Pulitzer Prizes as an incentive to excellence, Pulitzer specified solely four awards in journalism, four in letters and drama, one for education, and four traveling scholarships. In letters, prizes were to go to an American novel, an original American play performed in New York, a book on the history of the United States, an American biography, and a history of public service by the press.

But, sensitive to the dynamic progression of his society Pulitzer made provision for broad changes in the system of awards. He established an overseer advisory board and willed it "power in its discretion to suspend or to change any subject or subjects, substituting, however, others in their places, if in the judgment of the board such suspension, changes, or substitutions shall be conducive to the public good or rendered advisable by public necessities, or by reason of change of time."

He also empowered the board to withhold any award where entries fell below its standards of excellence. The assignment of power to the board was such that it could also overrule the recommendations for awards made by the juries subsequently set up in each of the categories. Since the inception of the prizes in 1917, the board, later renamed the Pulitzer Prize Board, has increased the number of awards to 21 and introduced poetry, music, and photography as subjects, while adhering to the spirit of the founder's will and its intent. The board typically exercised its broad discretion in 1997, the 150th anniversary of Pulitzer's birth, in two fundamental respects. It took a significant step in recognition of the growing importance of work being done by newspapers in online journalism. Beginning with the 1999 competition, the board sanctioned the submission by newspapers of online presentations as supplements to print exhibits in the Public Service category.

The board left open the distinct possibility of further inclusions in the Pulitzer process of online journalism as the electronic medium developed. Thus, with the 2006 competition, the Board allowed online content in all 14 of its journalism categories and said it will continue to monitor the field. The other major change was in music, a category that was added to the plan of Award for prizes in 1943. The prize always had gone to composers of classical music. The definition and entry requirements of the music category beginning with the 1998 competition were broadened to attract a wider range of American music. In an indication of the trend toward bringing mainstream music into the Pulitzer process, the 1997 prize went to Wynton Marsalis's Blood on the Fields which has strong jazz elements, the first such award. In music, the board also took tacit note of the criticism leveled at its predecessors for failure to cite two of the country's foremost jazz composers. It bestowed a Special Citation on George Gershwin marking the 1998 centennial celebration of his birth and Duke Ellington on his 1999 centennial year.

In 2004, the Board further broadened the definition of the prize and the makeup of its music juries, resulting in a greater diversity of entries. In 2006, the Board also awarded a posthumous Special Citation to jazz composer Thelonious Monk. Over the years the Pulitzer board has at times been targeted by critics for awards made or not made. Controversies also have arisen over decisions made by the board counter to the advice of juries. Given the subjective nature of the award process, this was inevitable. The board has not been captive to popular inclinations. Many, if not most, of the honored books have not been on bestseller lists, and many of the winning plays have been staged off-Broadway or in regional theaters.

In journalism the major newspapers, such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, have harvested many of the awards, but the board also has often reached out to work done by small, little-known papers. The Public Service award in 1995 went to The Virgin Islands Daily News , St. Thomas, for its disclosure of the links between the region's rampant crime rate and corruption in the local criminal justice system. In 2005, the investigative reporting award went to Willamette Week , an alternative newspaper in Portland, Oregon, for its exposure of a former governor's long concealed sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old girl. In letters, the board has grown less conservative over the years in matters of taste. In 1963 the drama jury nominated Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but the board found the script insufficiently "uplifting," a complaint that related to arguments over sexual permissiveness and rough dialogue.

In 1993 the prize went to Tony Kushner's "Angels in America: Millennium Approaches," a play that dealt with problems of homosexuality and AIDS and whose script was replete with obscenities. On the same debated issue of taste, the board in 1941 denied the fiction prize to Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, but gave him the award in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea, a lesser work. Notwithstanding these contretemps, from its earliest days, the board has in general stood firmly by a policy of secrecy in its deliberations and refusal to publicly debate or defend its decisions. The challenges have not lessened the reputation of the Pulitzer Prizes as the country's most prestigious awards and as the most sought-after accolades in journalism, letters, and music.

The Prizes are perceived as a major incentive for high-quality journalism and have focused worldwide attention on American achievements in letters and music. The formal announcement of the prizes, made each April, states that the awards are made by the president of Columbia University on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize board. This formulation is derived from the Pulitzer will, which established Columbia as the seat of the administration of the prizes. Today, in fact, the independent board makes all the decisions relative to the prizes. In his will Pulitzer bestowed an endowment on Columbia of $2,000,000 for the establishment of a School of Journalism , one-fourth of which was to be "applied to prizes or scholarships for the encouragement of public, service, public morals, American literature, and the advancement of education."

In doing so, he stated: "I am deeply interested in the progress and elevation of journalism, having spent my life in that profession, regarding it as a noble profession and one of unequaled importance for its influence upon the minds and morals of the people. I desire to assist in attracting to this profession young men of character and ability, also to help those already engaged in the profession to acquire the highest moral and intellectual training." In his ascent to the summit of American journalism, Pulitzer himself received little or no assistance. He prided himself on being a self-made man, but it may have been his struggles as a young journalist that imbued him with the desire to foster professional training.

Flat Earth News -naked truth of media

Flat Earth News is a book by Nick Davies, Special Correspondent of The Guardian. Nick Davies has been named Journalist of the Year, Reporter of the Year and Feature Writer of the Year for his investigations into crime, drugs, poverty and other social issues. Hundreds of journalists have attended his masterclass on the techniques of investigative reporting. He has been a journalist since 1976 and is currently a freelance, working regularly as special correspondent for The Guardian.
The title itself gives the idea of the book. No one believes that earth is flat. And no one believes that news is the truth. His book gives plenty of examples to establish that the news is a plant. It is the interplay of various forces from intelligence agencies to PR agencies and media plays into the hands of these and other market forces. This is true of media everywhere. Here is an extract from the book which has sparked off a debate in Britain.

The Bug That Ate the World

December 31 1999. Millennium Eve. Most of the adults in the western world are out in search of alcohol and hectic self-indulgence, and almost certainly most of the journalists are out there with them, but a few have stayed back in their newsrooms. Along with the police and the doctors and the fire brigade, the journalists have a job which is too important to drop just because everybody else is out at a party. And this holds some consolation, because millennium eve looks like being a good night to be a journalist on a late shift. This is the night when a very big story is going to break, all around the world.
All it needs is for the sun to move across the planet, hauling the darkness behind it, for midnight to strike, and, hour by hour, country by country, computers will die. And with them may die the world's electricity grids, its telecommunications, its water supplies, its defence networks: the entire corpus of veins which carries the lifeblood of an electronic society faces sudden death from the technological equivalent of a cardiac arrest. The journalists know it is going to happen, because they themselves have written the stories which have predicted it. The millennium bug is finally coming.
This is a story with the finest of journalistic pedigrees. It has been running for years at great length, not only in the tabloids but also in the most prestigious newspapers and magazines which are published in the world's most sophisticated communications systems. In Britain, they have explained: "Life-saving hospital equipment and 999 services in London face total breakdown on January 1 2000." (London Evening Standard)... "National Health Service patients could die because insufficient time and thought have been devoted to the millennium bug." (Daily Telegraph).... "Banks could collapse if they fail to eradicate the millennium bug from their computer systems." (Guardian)...... "Riots, terrorism and a health crisis could follow a millennium bug meltdown" (Sunday Mirror)... "All trace of pension contributions could be wiped out in businesses failing to cope with the millennium bug." (Independent). The threat is not merely that systems will fail and cause chaos in the organisations which rely on them, but that some of those systems will carry on working and choose their own terrifying new course. "The millennium bug could cause prison security doors and cell doors operated by computer to open," according to the Independent on Sunday, while the Times has told its readers of a "Nato alert over Russian missile millennium bug" and reported "alliance fears of an attack from the East by rogue nuclear weapons systems".
In the United States, in the same way, the best newspapers in the land have joined the coverage: "The millennium bug looms." (New York Times)... "Year 2000 - a ticket to disaster." (San Francisco Chronicle)... "The computer time bomb." (Seattle Times)... "A date with disaster." (Washington Post)... "Countdown to 'Y2K meltdown'." (Chicago Daily Herald)... "The day the world crashes." (Newsweek). Stories have gone beyond merely describing the threat. Some American journalists have pointed accusatory fingers at the rest of the world, with a sequence of stories such as one in the Chicago Tribune in March 1999, headlined "Many nations are unwilling or unable to fix possible computer woes, leaving the US in peril." The LA Times, in August 1999, revealed that the solution to the threat was itself under threat: "Some fear sabotage by Y2K consultants; foreign contractors in particular may be infecting programs as they fix 2000 bugs, US security experts warn."
As it turned out, we know very little of what really happened on that long-awaited night. That is, in part, of course, because very little did happen.
In Britain, a tide gauge in Portsmouth harbour failed. A desk-top computer in a weather station in Aberdeen froze. The government minister responsible for dealing with the bug volunteered that these incidents were 'too trivial to mention'. There was also a businessman in Swansea who reported that his computer had more or less blown up on millennium eve, but then discovered that he was suffering from a mouse with loose bowels which had made a mess of his circuit board.
Later that night, in the United States, where the finest newspapers had joined the lowliest television networks and supermarket magazines in relaying the scale of the Y2K threat, John Koskinen, the chairman of President Clinton's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, declared: "At this point we are not aware of anything that is broken as a result of Y2K." Bruce McConnell, director of the International Year 2000 Co-operation Center, agreed: "From an infrastructure standpoint, we expect a continuation of the non-event."
Across the world, it was the same non-story. No planes fell out of the sky. No power stations melted down. And the great non-event struck not only those countries which had spent years defending themselves against the bug, but also those which had done little or nothing to prepare for it. There was no story in China and India where, the world's press had warned, governments had been so lax that the bug would disable their power grids and their communication systems with the possibility of riots as the social infrastructure collapsed. There was nothing, too, from Russia and Belarus and Moldova and Ukraine, countries where the threat had been so recklessly ignored that, as millennium eve approached, the US State Department had issued formal travel advisories to alert American citizens to the risk to their health and safety if they were to go there.
There is a second reason why we know so little about what really happened that night: most of those journalists who worked late in search of the promised catastrophe, wrote nothing at all about the great non-story. No Millennium Bug? No global crash? No crash even in those countries which had failed to protect themselves? No truth at all in hundreds of thousands of news reports and background features and confident comment which had run through just about every newspaper and broadcasting outlet in every country on the planet, stories which had been running for years and which were still running only 24 hours before the great night finally arrived? No truth in the mass media? Well, there's no story there. So it never got written.
Encouraged by these stories, some governments had spent fortunes in public money (and secured no better result than those who spent next to nothing). Journalists reported that the British government had spent £396 million on Y2K protection. They also reported that it had spent £430 million. And that it had spent £788 million. The American government had spent far more, they said - $100 billion, or $200 billion, or $320 billion, or $600 billion, or $858 billion, depending on which journalist you were reading. Anyway, it was a lot. Beyond that, the private sector had spawned a mini-industry of companies selling millennium bug kits, while publishers turned out bug books and bug videos, and estate agents sold bug-resistant homes, and a few families sold their houses and fled to remote cabins in order to give themselves a chance to survive the coming bug-related chaos. But this was not a story.
The sun rose on January 1 2000 like the lights coming on at an orgy. Everybody who had been so busy - the journalists, the governments, the bug-related businesses and the computer experts - all picked themselves up, hoped nobody was looking and quietly tip-toed away.
You could argue that every profession has its defining value. For carpenters, it might be accuracy: a carpenter who isn't accurate shouldn't be a carpenter. For diplomats, it might be loyalty: they can lie and spy and cheat and pull all sorts of dirty tricks, and as long as they are loyal to their government, they are doing their job. For journalists, the defining value is honesty - the attempt to tell the truth. That is our primary purpose. All that we do - and all that is said about us - must flow from the single source of truth-telling.
So, millennium eve turned out to be a terrifying night for journalists. It was in itself a stunning example of a failure in truth-telling by the global media. Whatever the truth was about the possible threat to computers that night, the world's journalists clearly had gone a long way beyond it. It was symbolic too: the new millennium arriving in darkness; the truth lost; and the truth about the losing of that truth then lost as well. The millennium bug is only one example of a systemic weakness which quietly has overwhelmed the communications media, leaving governments all over the planet and their billions of citizens embarking on a new era in which they continue to pour time and energy and money into frantic activity which frequently proves to be built out of untruth.
This is Flat Earth news. A story appears to be true. It is widely accepted as true. It becomes a heresy to suggest that it is not true - even if it is riddled with falsehood, distortion and propaganda.

Brand building Mudra Ishtyle

This week there were several stories on internet and in print about Mudra getting advertising account of Tourism Corporation of Gujarat Limited. Such a publicity blitz is rare. One thing was clear from the stories that the focus was Mudra getting business. How these articles helped TCGL is a mystery. From the articles it appeared that TCGL business was so great that by getting the account Mudra proved its greatness.
People in the advertising world were quite surprised when these articles gave names of other competing advertising agencies to prove the worth of Mudra. Probably Mudra needs such a filip when it is confronted with the growing problem of sagging business! And it used its client TCGL to rebuild its own image. Poor Tourism Minister Jai Narayan Vyas and his team of Atanu Chakravarti and PD Vaghela must be wondering who is doing whose publicity.
If Mudra had done this PR work in the newspapers and on the internet, it would have certainly been a good case of its PR skills. But, it retained Hammer and Partner to do this job! Chief Minister Narendra Modi's global mask Jai Narayan Vyas, a man with great oratory skills , could have done better by retaining Hammer and Partner with much lower package! Even otherwise quite media savvy Vyas himself would have done a better job. Those who have seen him organising a high fee seminar of Journalists and his CD about powerful communication would vouch for Vyas's media skills.
Chandan Nath of Mudra must be expecting a windfall by selling Mudra through TCGL!!!!

Jargon, Journalese And Slang

Friends Jargon, Journalese and slang are the words we should avoid. Many international publications have their style guide which tells journalists about publication's stand about different aspects of language to be used. Here is style guide of Economist about these three very important aspects of language which reporters and writers generally tend to ignore.

Jargon

Avoid it. You may have to think harder if you are not to use jargon, but you can still be precise. Technical terms should be used in their proper context; do not use them out of it. In many instances simple words can do the job of exponential (try fast), interface (frontier or border) and so on. If you find yourself tempted to write about affirmative action or corporate governance, you will have to explain what it is; with luck, you will then not have to use the actual expression.

Avoid, above all, the kind of jargon that tries either to dignify nonsense with seriousness (The appointee...should have a proven track record of operating at a senior level within a multi-site international business, preferably within a service- or brand-oriented environment, declared an advertisement for a financial controller for The Economist Group) or to obscure the truth (We shall not launch the ground offensive until we have attrited the Republican Guard to the point when they no longer have an effective offensive capacity—the Pentagon's way of saying that the allies would not fight on the ground until they had killed so many Iraqis that the others would not attack). What was meant by the Israeli defence ministry when it issued the following press release remains unclear: The United States and Israel now possess the capability to conduct real-time simulations with man in the loop for full-scale theatre missile defence architectures for the Middle East.

Try not to use foreign words and phrases unless there is no English alternative, which is unusual (so a year or per year, not per annum; a person or per person, not per capita; beyond one's authority, not ultra vires; and so on).

Journalese and slang

Do not be too free with slang (eg, He really hit the big time in 1994). Slang, like metaphors, should be used only occasionally if it is to have effect. Avoid expressions used only by journalists, such as giving people the thumbs up, the thumbs down or the green light. Stay clear of gravy trains and salami tactics. Do not use the likes of. And avoid words and expressions that are ugly or overused, such as the bottom line, high profile, caring (as an adjective), carers, guesstimate (use guess), schizophrenic (unless the context is medical), crisis, key, major (unless something else nearby is minor), massive (as in massive inflation), meaningful, perceptions, prestigious and significant.

Politicians are often said to be highly visible, when conspicuous would be more appropriate. Regulations are sometimes said to be designed to create transparency, which presumably means openness. Governance usually means government. Elections described as too close to call are usually just close.

Try not to be predictable, especially predictably jocular. Spare your readers any mention of mandarins when writing about the civil service, of their lordships when discussing the House of Lords, and of comrades when analysing communist parties. Must all lawns be manicured? Are drug traffickers inevitably barons?

In general, try to make your writing fresh. It will seem stale if it reads like hackneyed journalese. One weakness of journalists, who on daily newspapers may plead that they have little time to search for the apposite word, is a love of the ready-made, seventh-hand phrase. Lazy journalists are always at home in oil-rich country A, ruled by ailing President B, the long-serving strongman, who is, according to the chattering classes, a wily political operator—hence the present uneasy peace—but, after his recent watershed (or landmark or sea-change) decision to arrest his prime minister (the honeymoon is over), will soon face a bloody uprising in the breakaway south. Similarly, lazy business journalists always enjoy describing the problems of troubled company C, a victim of the revolution in the gimbal-pin industry (change is always revolutionary in such industries), which, well-placed insiders predict, will be riven by a make-or-break strike unless one of the major players makes an 11th-hour (or last-ditch) intervention in a marathon negotiating session.

Prose such as this is freighted with codewords (respected is applied to someone the writer approves of, militant someone he disapproves of, prestigious something you won't have heard of). The story can usually start with the words, First the good news, inevitably to be followed in due course by Now the bad news. A quote will then be inserted, attributed to one (never an) industry analyst, and often the words If, and it's a big if... Towards the end, after an admission that the author has no idea what is going on, there is always room for One thing is certain, before rounding off the article with As one wag put it...

Perhaps even more wearying for the reader is the trendy journalist's fondness of vogue words and expressions. Some of these are deliberately chosen (bridges too far; empires striking back; kinder, gentler; F-words; flavours of the month; Generation X; hearts and minds;$64,000 questions; southern discomfort; back to the future; thirty-somethings; windows of opportunity; where's the beef?), usually from a film or television, or perhaps a politician. Others come into use less wittingly, often from social scientists. If you find yourself using any of the following words, you should stop and ask yourself whether (a) it is the best word for the job (b) you would have used it in the same context five or ten years ago, and if not why not:

address (questions can be answered, issues discussed, problems solved, difficulties dealt with)

care for and all caring expressions (how about look after?)

environment (in a writing environment you may want to make use of your Tipp-Ex, rubber or delete button)

famously (usually redundant, nearly always irritating)

focus (all the world's a stage, not a lens)

individual (fine in some contexts, but increasingly used as a longer synonym for man, woman or person)

overseas (increasingly used, and often wrongly, to mean abroad or foreign)

participate in (take part in—more words but fewer syllables)

partner (“Take your partners for the Gay Gordons!” by all means, but dancing together does not necessarily mean sleeping together—just as a sleeping partner is not necessarily a lover)

process (a word properly applied to the Arab-Israeli peace affair, because it was meant to be evolutionary, but now often used in place of talks)

relationship (relations can nearly always do the job)

resources (especially human resources, which may be personnel, staff or just people)

skills (these are turning up all over the place—in learning skills, thinking skills, teaching skills—instead of the ability to. He has the skills probably means He can)

supportive (helpful?)

target (if you are tempted to target your efforts, try to direct them instead)

transparency (openness?)

Such words are not wrong, but if you find yourself using them only because you hear others using them, not because they are the most appropriate ones in the context, you should avoid them. Overused words and off-the-shelf expressions make for stale prose.