Hot Off the Press

Deccan Herald editor Sitharaman Shankar recently penned down a longish full-page piece on the workings of a newspaper after shadowing his own daily right from the printing press to the reader’s doorstep.

It evoked mixed reactions with some marveling at the coordinated efforts and hard work that go behind the production of a newspaper, while a select few dismissed it as an ego trip or marketing gimmick.

For those who have worked in the newspaper offices, this will strike a special chord. For someone like me who spent a good part of my working life at the newspaper desk, reading this piece was a mix of nostalgia and spotting some discerning changes that have crept in over the years.

One of the things that Shankar missed out on was the physical parting of the printing press from the newspaper office.

When I started out, many newspapers had presses located on the same premises, and the relationship between the two departments used to be frictional. 

The press superintendent will often drop in for a chat with the news editor and politely recount how the previous day’s edition could not reach certain places because the desk released the paper late. We used to look at his entry into the newsroom with a degree of hostility.

When there was some inordinate delay in the release of pages he would either walk in or call the shift in charge on the phone to enquire.

Many times an alert sub-editor may spot a mistake in a page that got released earlier in the day. A frantic call to the press will be made as a last-ditch effort to rectify the error. If lucky, the error gets fixed, or they will say the 'plates' have been made and nothing can be done. So the error gets a safe passage to the next day’s edition in cold print. 

The dressing down that follows the next day remains etched for many weeks to come, and sometimes becomes the recurring motif of nightmares.

Our interaction with the press staff used to be minimal as they get active after the newspaper is 'put to bed', and for us it is time to leave for home. It was mainly confined to a nod or a smile while bumping into them in the canteen. 

There was also a class barrier – while the editorial and marketing staff were mostly university-educated, the press staff came from more humble backgrounds with ITI certifications and diplomas. They were, however, more active in workers’ unions and in organizing strikes. 

Sometime after 2000, due to real estate constraints and the advancement of technology, most newspapers began relocating their presses to the city outskirts. 

This also brought to an end the era of open confrontation between the two departments. 

Nowadays, I guess, the press superintendent might be using phone or video-conferencing to raise his concerns.

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Those were pre-internet days and newsrooms used to be overrun by papers, with every table having some pile or the other and lots of paper strewn on the floor. 

The ever-rattling teleprinter machines dish out paper despatches from various news wires throughout the day. It was the job of the attenders to neatly cut each dispatch and leave the pile at the desk in-charge’s table.

Once the desk in-charge arrives, he/she goes through the pile and sorts news according to their importance and what pages they are meant to be carried – Page 1, city, state, nation, world, business and sports. Around 90 per cent gets dumped in a bin.

Even though boxy first-generation computers with black and white display monitors had made their entry into the newsrooms, the shift in charge used to be more comfortable in handing out ‘hard copies’ to sub-editors. The subs had to spot the story on the computer based on the time or serial number in the wire feed.

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Those were pre-social media days and once the shift gets over, one could choose to remain cut off from the news cycle till the next evening.

There was no internet or mobile phone to intrude into your day-to-day activities.

With smartphones being our constant companions, no such luxury exists.

Also Read: Bangalore Short Takes  

Return of The Prodigal

First it was the hoardings, then the front page advertisements in newspapers of a well known bespectacled and smug face. For the first time I noticed he has a mole on his forehead. 

After a hiatus of six months, post-truth icon Arnab Goswami was coming back to TV screens, and his fans began feeling giddy and delirious. With their echo chamber bereft of its favourite nightingale, they were battling cold turkey conditions all these months.

After all how long can one make do with cheap imitations like Gaurav Sawant! Even during his earnest display of machismo (being clad in battle fatigues at newsroom) Gaurav seemed like Ben Stiller trying to pass off as Rambo Sylvester Stallone. 

Now the fans wanted to make up for the lost opportunities of the inimitable Arnab fix that transports them to a feel good delirium. His force multiplier vocal cords, which he uses to decimate Pakistani panelists, were sorely missed while the country was going through tumultuous events such as surgical strikes, demonetisation and UP elections.

As the launch date of the Republic TV channel approached the hype was gradually built up. His fans regrouped under various hashtag battle formation across all social media platforms, ready to blow Republic's trumpet and pounce on detractors in a manner which would make even Goebbels blush.

True to the hype he began from where he left off. For fans and worshippers their echo chamber was once again vibrant with the hyper-ventilating jingoism they were addicted to. The template continues to be same: Find an 'other' and attack him or her in a pack, never allow them to put their views across. What amazes me is how some of the panellists, especially the Pakistanis, even agree to appear for the show considering its pointlessness.

So finally it is achche din for the fans, with onerous tasks like trolling the detractors (go wild on keyboards, issue murder and rape threats) and play cheerleader to their beloved anchor. For them he remains the minstrel of utmost happiness!

Also Read: Bangalore Beat

B. G. Verghese: An Embodiment of a More Dignified Era

While TV talking heads were recently splitting hairs over the appropriateness of timing of Dhoni's retirement, a famous journalist of yesteryears quietly 'passed away' causing a minor blip in the media's radar - a mere mention in the ticker of some TV channels and 'briefly' column in the inside pages of newspapers. For many even in the media it was B.G. Verghese who?
 
It may be upsetting to some, but not very surprising as the type of journalism Verghese and his peers practised is now a lost genre. It was far more nuanced, sober and shorn of present day narcissism and shrillness of 24/7 media. News reports were free from editorialising (it was strictly the domain of edit pages), glib packaging and of course paid news.
 
While in the mid 1970s journalism was subjected to a litmus test under Emergency, Verghese was one of the few honourable exceptions who did not 'crawl when asked to bend'. As Hindustan Times editor he was given marching orders for criticising Emergency. In fact for the HT management it was the proverbial last straw – they were itching to do so after he had earlier criticised India’s annexation of Sikkim. 
 
In the early eighties when I started exploring newspapers beyond cricket scores and comic strips to its far more rarefied spaces like edit and op ed pages, Verghese happened to be the editor of Indian Express. For India 1984 was a nightmare year starting with Operation Bluestar, Indira Gandhi's assassination and Bhopal gas tragedy. During anti-Sikh riots it was Indian Express which brought to limelight the infamous Trilokpuri massacre, thanks to some intrepid reporting by Rahul Bedi and Joseph Maliakan,  with Verghese backing them to the hilt.
 
After Verghese retired from Indian Express in 1986 he continued to be very active with his columns appearing in various publications and he was associated with Centre for Policy Research. He also penned some books and figured as member of various committees constituted by the government - probably the last notable one being the one to review Kargil war.
 
Though he always championed the cause of downtrodden his support for big dams raised many eyebrows. He had opposed the Narmada dam agitation spearheaded by Medha Patkar and even got into a long drawn but dignified debate with Arundhati Roy. He felt that despite displacement of population dams were beneficial in the long run.
 
With his demise and that of Kushwant Singh and M. V. Kamath recently, an era is drawing to a close. Kuldip Nayar and T J S George are probably the only notables of that generation who are still alive.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat