This blog is primarily for media aspirants as well as young journalists. My aim is to provide links to articles that will enhance their understanding of the media and help them to improve their writing skills, broaden their horizons, and expand their worldview. My hope is that The Reading Room will also help them to become good media professionals.
This was published in the first anniversary issue (February-March 2013) of Books & More magazine:
BOOKMARKS Quotes from books, quotes by writers... to inspire, influence, and induce a new way of thinking/RESEARCHED AND COMPILED BY RAMESH PRABHU
“To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries.”
— English philosopher A.C. Grayling, in a review in the Financial Times of A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel
* “A capacity and taste for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.”
— Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States
* “Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a dangerous enemy indeed.”
— Author Anne Rice in The Witching Hour
* “Wear the old coat and buy the new book.”
— Austin Phelps, American Congregational minister and educator
* “Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.”
— Gloria Jean Watkins (better known by her pen name Bell Hooks), American author, feminist, and social activist
* “You're the same today as you'll be in five years except for the people you meet and the books you read.”
— Author, speaker, and entrepreneur Charlie "Tremendous" Jones, who rose from the squalid poverty of the Great Depression to be hailed as one of the top twenty speakers of the 20th century
* “No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.”
— Confucius
* “Having your feet up is the first condition for enjoying a read.”
— Interior monologue of The Reader in Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveller
* “The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”
— Dr. Seuss in I Can Read With My Eyes Shut! Theodor Seuss Geisel was an American writer, poet, and cartoonist most widely known for his children's books written under the pen name Dr. Seuss.
* “If you can read this, thank a teacher.”
— Anonymous teacher
Commits alumnus Ajay Kurpad (Class of 2011) joined Saatchi&Saatchi Focus in Bangalore as a
copywriter last November. And he already has some sterling campaigns to
his credit. The most recent? Something he did for Bosch, the technology
and services company. Here Ajay explains how he went about his task:
AJAY KURPAD
THE BRIEF
Every year, during the first quarter of business, Bosch organises an
event called ‘Proteam’ for its employees from all over the country. This
three-day affair, which the company hosts in recognition of the
employees' hard work, is usually conducted in lavish style at a
spectacular location. This year was no different. Like every year there
was a theme around which the whole event would revolve.
THE TASK
The theme of Proteam 2011 was "Superheroes". So, as part of the
creatives, we at Saatchi were asked to design "standees". These standees
are posters which are mounted on stands and placed at crucial points
around the venue where they get maximum visibility. The standees had to
link the Bosch Automotive Aftermarket products to Superheroes.
THE PROCESS Step 1: The first step was to find the best superheroes to fit
each product. This involved hours of work and research in the world of
Marvel and DC. Finally we chose Flash, The Human Torch, Iceman, Black Bolt, Wolverine, Aquaman, The Green Lantern, Black Lightning, Jean Grey, Mr Fantastic, and Spiderman.
At the end of it, it took me a superhuman effort to actually like any
superhero any more. But all said and done, we did a good job. We then
put everything together as a PPT presentation and sent it to Bosch.
Fortunately, the company approved it in the first go.
Step 2: The copy had to
substantially prove why a certain product was like a particular
superhero. That was not hard, though. All I had to do was link the
superpower to the product’s USP. This is where the use of flowery
language and a talent for beating-round-the-bush came in handy.
In the meantime, P.P. Mani, my art director went about scouting for
images of all the shortlisted superheroes. Then, with the power of
Photoshop and Illustrator, he made them even more macho.
Step 3: With idea in place, copy in hand, and images ready, we
started the linking process. Initially we thought of just following
standard procedure of juxtaposing the product and the superhero.
However, the art director decided to take it to the next level. He
thought of incorporating the product in such a way that it would look
more visually appealing.
The end result:
The Flash, one of 11 superheroes used in the campaign.
Each artwork was 8
ft x 4 ft and was displayed along the corridors of The Leela, Kovalam,
during the event. People were actually posing next to them and clicking
photos. As you can imagine, a lot depended on the art and my art
director — who has been with Saatchi for almost 17 years — got
it spot on. Eventually, I ended up managing most of the campaign,
except for the film, for which I just about made some contributions at
the script level.
We all want to be liked. Especially at work, which is where we spend most of our productive waking hours, interacting with our colleagues and bosses and clients.
But what can we do right that will get everyone to like us? And what are we doing wrong that causes people around us to not like us?
My advice to my students, when they start out in the industry, is to first get their peers and their bosses to warm up to them. I tell them they can do this by making intelligent conversation, by asking questions, by being assertive in a nice way, by showing an active interest in what's happening around them, by being lively. Of course, I am taking for granted that they are also good workers.
Now here's Jeff Haden writing in Inc. magazine about how you can make a good impression and how you can get people to genuinely like you. Haden has compiled a list of things that highly likeable people do and suggests you learn from them.
Haden says remarkably likeable people...
...lose the power pose (see picture below and read up about it in Haden's column)
Speaking of time-management, here's a pertinent post by author and former Wall Street Journal coulmnist Alexandra Levit: "5 Work Habits to Break Today", including "being 10 minutes late for everything".
Here, in an excerpt from the interview, is a delightful exchange between the couple:
Rajdeep and Sagarika met for the first time in 1986 in Jamshedpur, now in Jharkhand, where they had gone for an interview with Russi Mody, former chairman of Tata Steel, for The Rhodes Scholarships. “She got it. I did not. I am still trying to get back,” says Rajdeep. Sagarika says: “In those days, Rajdeep was extremely laid-back; in fact, he was so laid-back that he was horizontal. I remember when the results were being announced he was sleeping somewhere up there in his room.” Rajdeep tries to defend himself but ends up muttering while Sagarika ploughs on: “I remember thinking to myself ‘Does this guy really care about the scholarship?’” But now, Sagarika says, “Rajdeep is a workaholic, a newsaholic, a journoaholic. Thank God he is not an alcoholic.” Sagarika feels that as editor-in-chief, Rajdeep should not be taking so many decisions. “He is obsessed with what’s on the ticker, the top bands. This way the people who are doing the work are not empowered because they keep trying to second-guess him. In fact, my team is obsessed with Rajdeep. I delegate much more and believe if you empower people, things run on their own and you get fresher ideas.” Rajdeep interjects: “I have a resolution — to leave office by 6pm on Friday. I have left office early for the last few Fridays.”
POWER COUPLE: Sagarika and Rajdeep photographed for Mint by Priyanka Parashar
Read the feature by Seema Chowdhry in its entirety here: "Airing both sides".
That is the question posed in a thought-provoking column by senior journalist Kelly McBride on Poynter. She wrote her piece after freelance journalist Nate Thayer wrote on his blog about how The Atlantic magazine tried to get him to write for free.
McBride says the internet has totally messed up a simple pay scale. She explains:
Back in the day, freelancers got paid roughly by the word. Sometimes it was as low as 10 cents a word. Everyone was shooting for $1 a word, and some people got more than that. Hotshots might get $10,000-$20,000 for a fabulous magazine piece. There was a lot of variation, but there was also a standard rate that people were shooting for.
Now, trying to pin down how much a writer should be paid is an impossible task. It’s simply unknowable.
Here are seven helpful tips provided by Mark Nichol, editor of the Daily Writing Tips blog:
Look up the definition of an unfamiliar word and be sure you understand the meaning before you use it.
Search a thesaurus or a synonym finder for the precise meaning, taking care to notice the different connotations of similar words.
Keep your writing clear and coherent, and avoid pretentious or overly formal language.
Select the strongest nouns and verbs before you select adjectives and adverbs.
Seek opportunities to use repetition for rhetorical effect while, at the same time, you watch for careless redundancy.
Read your draft aloud to help you refine grammar and usage. If something doesn’t sound right to you, it probably doesn’t read right to your audience, either.
Ask someone else to read your writing and critique it.
The number of poorly written emails, resumes and blog posts I come across each month is both staggering and saddening. Their grammar is awful. There are dozens of misspellings. Language is much wordier or more complex than necessary. Some things I read literally make no sense at all to me.
DAVE KERPEN
I can imagine my students thinking, "There goes RP Sir, riding his favourite hobby horse again." But those thoughts up there have been expressed by an American CEO, no less, who is also a New York Times best-selling author and keynote speaker.
Dave Kerpen's post on why you should become a better writer if you want to be taken seriously first came to my notice when I checked my LinkedIn account the other day. In the same way his arguments resonated with me, they appear to have struck a chord with many others because this post, as of today, has been tweeted about by more than 3,000 people, shared on LinkedIn by more than 18,000 users, and has attracted more than 8,000 "likes".
Kerpen does not talk down to his readers, as is obvious from a point he makes in his post:
It's not just you who must become a better writer — it’s all of us. I'll be the first to admit, I too have had to learn to become a better writer.
Kerpen then elaborates on the methods he used to become a better writer over the past several years. Here are the bullet points:
Practice, practice, practice.
Say it out loud.
Make it more concise.
Work on your headlines.
Read.
You can see for yourself what he has to say about each of the first four points here. Since I consider "good" reading to be essential for good writing, here's Kerpen's last point in full:
Besides practicing writing, the number one way to improve your writing skills is to read great work. I read at least one book per month, at least 20 articles per week, and countless tweets, Facebook posts and emails per day. I know we all have limited time, but truly the best way to become a better writer is to become a better reader [emphasis mine].
I now "follow" Dave Kerpen on LinkedIn. You may want to do the same.
EXTERNAL READING: Simon Kuper, writing in the Financial Times, argues that texts, blogs, e-mails, and Facebook posts are affecting other kinds of writing — mostly for the good. Read his column here: "How social media improved writing". I am obliged to Apar Dham (Class of 2011) for the alert. Apar wrote in an e-mail to me today: "Some food for thought at the beginning of the week? I remember you always cringing at the language youngsters use for texting, Twitter, Facebook, etc. So I thought that this article might make for some interesting reading." It sure did, Apar!
I admire Amish (who prefers to go by one name) and Chetan Bhagat. Not for the quality of the writing in their books, but for writing books that have got young people reading them and enjoying them and starting conversations about them.
Just today I met five young women who had come to Bangalore from Coimbatore to write the Commits entrance exam — in the essay section of the test, all of them chose to write about either The Immortals of Meluha or The Secret of the Nagas, the phenomenally popular books that form part of Amish's Shiva trilogy. Each student is now looking forward to reading the final installment, The Oath of the Vayuputras, which Commits alumnus Harish Agarwal (Class of 2004) has already read and proclaimed, on Facebook, to be a must-read. "What an awesome one-night stand it was," he wrote earlier today.
Amish, who was also in the news recently for receiving an advance of Rs. 5 crore for his next series, may not score a lot of points with purists or with those who prefer their books to be a little more, let's say, literary. But he has created, along with Chetan Bhagat, a new market for fiction and fully deserves his success.
GOD IS IN THE DETAILS: AMISH IS AT THE TOP OF HIS GAME TODAY.
Tehelka last monthpublished a long interview-based feature on Amish; he is also the subject of the cover story in Mint Lounge today.
Here is Sunaina Kumar writing in Tehelka about Amish's readership:
Amish found a gap between the scholarly versions of the epics, the middlebrow (Devdutt Pattanaik) and the square (Ashok Banker), writing in cliffhangers, making up plot details, including battle scenes, a tender love story, and a hero who seems to have walked right out of American popular culture. Amish’s racy, slangy prose is not above the sort of jarring scene in which Shiva says things like, “Dammit Sati! I can’t figure it out.”
Later Kumar discusses his writing:
[In] the hands of a more able craftsman, the narrative would have soared. There are ideas in Amish’s novels — new concepts, action underpinned by philosophy, relatively radical notions of a caste-less society (he has dropped Tripathi, his caste-based surname) in which women lead from the front, and a clever twist to the good-versus-evil debate. Many of his ideas deserve to be expressed better. It is Amish’s writing that lets down his storytelling, his ideas. For instance, his characters talk in a peculiar, pedestrian English, mixing generous helpings of slang with words like “gargantuan” and “plethora”. Or they talk in all caps that end in a blur of exclamation points.
Amish’s answer to critics, Kumar says, is that he writes in a style that does not talk down to a vast majority of Indians:
“I write the way I think ya… I believe in one thing ki boss I am gonna be who I am. Some people will like it, some people will not, that’s cool, but I am clear I am not going to change.”
How can you not want to know more about this unassuming millionaire author? Read the feature in its entirety here: "The Pied Piper of Meluha".
Now here's Mayank Austen Soofi writing in Mint Lounge after speaking to the author himself and also to readers and publishers in an attempt to understand the reasons for Amish's remarkable popularity:
Some novelists at least have moved into the category of fast-moving consumer goods.
And here are some relevant quotes from the article:
“The series gives me a different take on Shiva, and Amish’s writing is
wonderfully colloquial. His Shiva uses everyday words like ‘dammit’ and
‘bloody’!”—Vanita Ganesh, a college student in Gurgaon, who has already finished reading all 565 pages of The Oath of the Vayuputras
“Amish’s story is beautifully crafted and written in the language of the common man, and that’s why everyone is reading him.” —Amish's literary agent Anuj Bahri, the owner of the landmark Bahri Sons Booksellers in Khan Market, New Delhi
“His books don’t interest me much, neither the content nor the style.... I like to be challenged and surprised by the books I read. Buying them is an effort to know more about spaces, places, ideas and people which/whom I know little about. We are anyway surrounded by the mundane, and too much of our own language.” —Arpita Das, publisher of the Delhi-based Yoda Press
PS:I have ordered The Shiva Trilogy from Flipkart to see for myself what the hoo-ha is all about. Afterwards, all three books will be placed in the Commits library for the reading pleasure of our students. UPDATE (March 24, 2013): Commitscion Ankita Sengupta (Class of 2013), who now works with Deccan Herald in Bangalore, interviewed Amish for the newspaper's website when he visited the city earlier this week. You can watch it on YouTube:
Shereen Bhan has been a CNBC anchor for more than a dozen years now and she has a host of journalistic achievements to her credit. In an interview with Rediff.com, Bhan has discussed a few aspects of life as a television journalist, which TV hopefuls will find enlightening. (This interview was conducted in 2007. No matter. Given the fierce competition among our news channels and the consequent unrelenting pressure on television journalists, what she has to say is even more applicable today.)
If you're not extremely ambitious and if you're not willing to work extremely hard, any other skills you have may prove to be unhelpful in the rush-hour-at-all-times world of television news. Given below are excerpts from the interview, chosen especially to give television journalism aspirants an insight into what it means to work with one of India's top TV news organisations.
What is a typical workday like?
My day start at 9 am and wraps at 11 pm — so it is long! Mornings are spent with reporters as I head the bureau. Some days I have interviews and events. Afternoons are spent editing scripts and planning. Later, 8 pm to 10.30 pm is time spent in the studio for CNN-IBN and CNBC.
You are one of the most recognised faces of Indian news today, what do you credit for your success?
Hard work, commitment and perseverance. I have very rarely said no. I have worked for almost every channel on Network 18. CNBC, Awaaz, CNN-IBN, South Asia World. I have tried to be as versatile as possible. So business, politics, feature programming, I have done it all. I have also stayed away from positioning myself only as an anchor. I have always produced my shows and I will continue to do so. I have also tried to be a nurturing team leader and take people along, which help our shows look better.
That one needs to be outgoing for a career in television goes without saying. What are the other personality traits you think an aspiring TV journalist needs?
The ability to handle pressure is a must. It is a tough job, both physically and mentally taxing. You have to be on your feet for long hours and mentally alert every second. Operating in a live environment means reacting to news as it breaks, making sense of it in a few seconds and adding value in a couple of minutes.
Good communication skills, comprehensive knowledge of current affairs, writing are important as well. What advice would you have for aspiring TV journalists?
Don't do it for the glamour. There is nothing glamorous about it. A large chunk of a TV journalist's job is donkey's work. Standing around for hours to get a 20-second sound bite is about perseverance not glamour.
Be prepared to say goodbye to your social life and get ready to be on call 24x7. Ignite a fire inside you, not just to do big stories and interviews but also to do good quality work, that's fair and honest consistently. What do you think is the most common mistake newcomers make? What advice do you have to give them in this regard?
Wanting to taste success without doing the time — you have to be patient. You have to get your hands dirty. Don't box yourself into roles and responsibilities. Learn to multi-task. Learn to work in a team. TV is all about teamwork.
And so does Poynter guru Roy Peter Clark, whose post on the subject I re-discovered when I was going through old e-mails.
Clark is a superlative journalist who writes with felicity and fluency. And he's extremely well-read to boot. Read the post I'm referring to, as well as his other columns on the Poynter website, to better appreciate what I'm talking about.
But to return to "Charles's book" vs "Charles' book". Here's an excerpt from Clark's post:
Professor Strunk tells us to add apostrophe plus s no matter the final consonant in the noun and cites as examples “Charles’s friend” and “Burns’s poems.”
This makes great sense to me because it echoes the way we would speak the word aloud. So it puzzles me that the “Associated Press Stylebook,” an influential work for journalists, argues that a simple apostrophe suffices after proper nouns ending in s, as in Agnes’ book and Jules’ seat. I don’t know about you, but when I read those aloud, the missing s hurts my ears, and on the page it hurts my eyes. I would say Agnes’s book and Jules’s seat.
Read the post in its entirety here and you will no longer wonder about the so-called extra s in Bridget Jones's Diary.
I have more than 20 years' experience (1981 to 2003) as a journalist in India and Dubai, specializing in selecting and editing news reports and features. From 2003 to 2019, I taught journalism and writing skills to master’s students at Commits, a media college in Bangalore.
I joined Cactus Communications ("Serving Science Worldwide") as a copyediting freelancer on October 1, 2019. From the very beginning, I have enjoyed the challenge of working on a new assignment each day. I like to think of every article as a daily crossword puzzle that I need to solve by examining the clues closely. And, finally, when I submit the article that I have tended, I like to think, with love and care, I feel deeply satisfied.
