The best of journalistic virtues:

A.
Courage

Campaigning

Toughness

Compassion

Humour

Irreverence

B.

A serious engagement with serious things

C.

A sense of fairness

D.

An eye for injustice

E.

A passion for explaining

F.

Knowing how to achieve impact

G.

A connection with readers

• From Alan Rusbridger's essay, "Does Journalism Exist?", in a wonderful and fascinating book, Page One: Inside The New York Times and the Future of Journalism (edited by David Folkenflik), which puts journalism and one of the world's greatest newspapers front and centre. I have already placed a copy of the book in the Commits library. (Alan Rusbridger is the editor of the highly respected Guardian newspaper.)

• I have now ordered the documentary on which the book is based. Take a look at the list of awards and award nominations for the documentary here. And here is a riveting feature from Slate on David Carr, "the star of Page One", the documentary. (Carr has also contributed an essay, "Print Is Dead. Long Live The New York Times", to Page One, the book.)

• ALSO READ: "If you want to understand what journalism should be..."

A savvy, must-watch documentary on the peerless P. Sainath

For three decades, he has written about the impact of "development" on the rural poor. In 2007, he won the Magsaysay Award. And he is currently the Rural Affairs Editor of The Hindu.

Now he is also the subject of a new documentary Nero's Guests produced by his former student, who has been filming him since 2004.

Here's an excerpt from an interview in Time Out Bengaluru with the documentary maker, Deepa Bhatia:

P. Sainath is notoriously averse to being filmed. How did you manage to make a documentary about him?

Finnish documentary commissioning editor Iikka Vehkalahti has known Sainath for a very long time and he has been trying to get Sainath to be a part of a film for years, but Sainath consistently refused. I met Iikka and I told him, let’s start filming Sainath and see where it goes. Sainath was reporting very aggressively at that time on the agrarian crisis. He would go to the countryside and I would shoot him or get him filmed. I shot sporadically, without any intent of making a film or knowing what it would be about.

• Find out more about Nero's Guests here.
• Mint's Lounge supplement has also published a brief article on the documentary.
• I have bought a copy of the DVD for the college — among the many important reasons for our AVC students to watch it: learn how to make a documentary on a public figure tacking a public crisis.
• Photo courtesy: Time Out Bengaluru

Shivram Sujir (Class of 2011) watched the documentary a few days ago. Here's his take on Nero's Guests:

This is one of those documentaries that every so-called 'educated' citizen in India should watch. The one who thinks India is all about information technology. The one who takes pride in the fact that our GDP growth is the highest. The one who feels great that we are one of the fastest growing economies of the world and is enthralled by the idea of globalisation.

Magsaysay award winner P. Sainath, whose work is the subject of this documentary, may come across as a grumpy, angry, and frustrated man but what else can you expect of a warrior who has been fighting a lone battle for three decades watching his countrymen fall one by one to the arrows of corporatisation and industrialisation? His account of how our definition of development has caused complete devastation in the lives of farmers and led to the agrarian crisis is like a tête-à-tête with the real India and the slow death she is dying at the hands of Nero's guests.

Wonder who Nero's guests are? Watch the documentary. You'll be surprised.

• Nero's Guests is now available on YouTube; watch it here.