A superlative analysis of how digital technology is rapidly transforming content creation and distribution...

...in Bloomberg Businessweek by Commits alumnus David George (Class of 2005). David, who is based in Dubai, is deputy editor of the recently launched Middle East edition of Bloomberg Businessweek.

• The edition is not on the web yet, sorry. If you would like to read a PDF version, though, write to me and I can send it to you via e-mail. (Commits students can read the article by borrowing a copy of the magazine that has been placed in the library.)

How a Commits student became a Citizen Journalist on CNN-IBN

"THIS IS ANKITA SENGUPTA,
CITIZEN JOURNALIST"

Last month, Commitscion ANKITA SENGUPTA (Class of 2013) featured on CNN-IBN's special episode of the "Citizen Journalist" show. Here Ankita, who works with Deccan Herald in Bangalore, explains how it all happened and describes the experience:

When Commitscion Shylaja Varma (Class of 2012), who is a reporter with CNN-IBN in Bangalore, first asked me if I wanted to be a Citizen Journalist for the news channel, I was obviously thrilled but when she told me that she wanted to cover the molestation story that had appeared in print more than a year ago, my first thought was, "Oh dear. Are we really going to milk that cow again?" The story had been published in The Chronicle and also in Bangalore Mirror. Although I had received a lot of appreciation for the article, I felt it had outlived its importance and did not deserve any more attention.

However, Shy explained to me that to mark the anniversary of the Nirbhaya gang-rape, CNN-IBN was planning a series of shows concentrating on crimes against women and my report would be one of the segments. Now I remember practising my PTCs in front of the mirror when I was at Commits : "This is Ankita Sengupta, reporting for CNN-IBN," but after I opted to join the print media I never thought I would get the opportunity to do a PTC again. So when Shy came up with this offer, I pounced on it.

On the day of the shoot, Shy told me that she wanted the PTC to be conversational in tone so it would be better if I did not mug up my lines. We decided to improvise the "script" so that it felt like I was having a conversation with the camera.

ANKITA SENGUPTA DURING THE SHOOT.

Not having to learn any lines made it a little easier for me. As it is, for my first national television PTC, to be standing in a public space, being gawked at, with the sun in my face and a cameraman waiting to get the perfect shot, the pressure to perform was immense. I could not stare at the camera, ignore the heat and the onlookers, and try to remember what I was supposed to say next. Fortunately, we were able to wrap up the shoot within three hours and, thankfully, both Shy and the cameraman were happy with the day's work.

The next day Shy told me that the CJ team wanted me to be a part of an "online hangout" that would be streamed live on the news channel's website. As luck would have it, the microphone in my laptop had stopped working the previous day and since the hangout could not be postponed, I had to get my hands on another laptop. Desperate, I called up my roommate, rushed to her office to get her cupboard keys, and then, thanks to her laptop, finally managed to be part of the chat.

This particular CJ report was telecast through the week and when I was told that my PTC was quite good, I could not help but be a little smug about it. After all, I did practise it at Commits.

I was working the night shift at Deccan Herald, so a day dedicated to the shoot and another taken up by the hangout meant that I had had less than eight hours' sleep in two days. So I was exhausted but I was also elated. It was a great experience being a Citizen Journalist and being on television for CNN-IBN. And if I do continue to be a print journalist, I will always have this CJ report, my tiny contribution to the broadcast media, to cherish.

However, none of this would have happened had it not been for my dear senior, Shylaja Varma. She has been a "super senior" in every sense of the term. Again, thanks a million, Shy.

• Watch Ankita Sengupta's CJ report here: "Molested on the streets of Bangalore".

How to win an "Ad Pitch"

AVC student NATASHA REGO (Class of 2014), who was a co-editor of the college newspaper, looks back on an eventful semester at Commits that culminated in her group winning the Ad Pitch competition

Not too long after joining Commits one realises that there are two coveted prizes to be won in the second year. Fittingly, these two friendly competitions, which are an interesting way to evaluate our skill, are at the beginning and at the end of the third semester. How you fare in them, I believe, puts into perspective your growth as an audiovisual communication student at Commits.

The first is the contest that is part of Victor Mukherjee’s annual film-making workshop for the AVC students, which my team* (I was the producer, or group leader) lost. The second, for both the AVCs and the MMCs, is the Ad Pitch. This competition, my group** and I proudly won.

ALL DRESSED UP FOR THE "COMPANY CREDENTIALS" FILM SHOOT FOR THE AD PITCH: NATASHA REGO, NEETHU GEORGE, PRAJNA G.R., SAUMYA IYER, AKHILA DAMODARAN, AND RISA MONICA KHARMUTEE. WATCH THE "COMPANY CREDENTIALS" FILM HERE.

The day we picked the chit that revealed our topic for the Ad Pitch, we were very disappointed. To us, it was a very “boring” topic: “You get the government you deserve. Vote”. It was immediately apparent that we had long days of research ahead of us.

In our opinion, the others had more interesting topics to work with. We were quite envious of the groups that got “Have sex. Responsibly”, and “Donate your organs. Why waste them!” We cribbed, but not for long.

Three weeks before D-Day, we began... lethargically. We’d meet every day for several days and tire our brains getting familiar with the Indian electoral system, understanding voting trends, and then formulating ideas to motivate the masses to get off their backsides and participate in this enormous democracy that we belong to. Group member and “Head of Research” Akhila Damodaran would spend time helping us understand relevant laws, challenges in the system, and similar campaigns run in the past. All of this was not an easy task.

The trick lay in figuring out our target audience and carefully defining them. For that, we picked people whom we could easily relate to. We picked ourselves: the youth… urban residents between 18 and 35 years of age. However, Sai Sir explained to us that you don’t talk to an 18-year-old who hasn’t yet begun to understand the magnitude of the right he’s just been handed the same way you would talk to a 35-year-old who has been working and who has had trysts with the system for several years. So with the help of group member and “Head of Client Servicing” Neethu George, we narrowed down our target audience to 18- to 25-year-old registered urban dwellers who are just too lazy to go out and vote (we arrived at this finding through our survey).

One week into preparing for the Ad Pitch, we AVC students had to complete another assignment: submit our “corporate films” for evaluation. Group Saraswathi travelled to Kodagu (Coorg) and spent two days there shooting at the offices of group member Prajna G.R.’s family newspaper, Shakthi, Kodagu’s first Kannada daily. After returning to Bangalore, we scripted, edited, and submitted the film, all in a span of four days. Soon after, we got back to the Ad Pitch, for such is life at Commits: exciting and always on the run.

TAKING A BREAK TO CHECK OUT THE SIGHTS IN KODAGU.

STILL IN KODAGU, HOPPING ON TO A PARKED TRUCK AFTER A LONG DAY'S WORK.

WATCH THE CORPORATE FILM ON SHAKTHI HERE:

All jazzed up from that trip to Kodagu, we decided to train our eyes away from our computer screens for extensive brainstorming sessions. Ideas would float above our heads like brilliantly coloured bubbles… but that was all they were, bubbles which burst almost as soon as they formed.

Eventually, we went from coming up with terribly complex ideas which Sai Sir would roll his eyes at, to ideas that seemed almost plausible. We were also so bad at making Sai Sir understand what we were trying to say, that we acted in and shot our ad films to show him a sample. If Sai Sir hadn't rejected idea after idea, with arguments that only an experienced marketer could come up with, we may never have reached our final concept.

The eventual plan for our ad campaign was not exactly the result of all the knowledge that we had accumulated thus far. It was just one of those bubbles that were floating above group member and “CEO” Saumya Iyer’s head. With little confidence she revealed the idea. At first listen, it was charming. It took me a second to realise the brilliance in its simplicity. And then, our hearts leapt with joy. This bubble did not burst! We had exactly a week by the time we ran it by Sai Sir and were ready to shoot.

Meanwhile, as “Creative Director”, I made the logos for our advertising company “IOTA” and for our ad campaign the “Young Voters Movement”, as well as the posters. Group member and fellow “Creative Director” Risa Monica Kharmutee shot our ad film and wrote our radio ad. And “Media Planner” Prajna gave us solid strategy, complete with teaser, message/tagline, reminder, and acknowledgement to get people out there to vote. We even shot ourselves a company-credentialsvideo.

We discussed almost everything and the results were sharp. And then we practised our pitch at least 20 times. But we were still worried. The MMC groups had a leg up on us with their ability to research and strategise. Plus there was no telling what would come out of the creativity of the other AVC groups.

Finally, D-Day arrived: Saturday, December 7, 2013. With almost a hundred pairs of eyes trained on us, including those of the esteemed judges, we made our pitches.

THE JUDGES PAY RAPT ATTENTION TO THE AD PITCHES AND TO THE "COLLATERAL".

"IOTA" WAITING TO HEAR WHAT THE JUDGES HAD TO SAY... IT WAS ALL GOOD.

The first team to be called was “Pointed Curves” with the topic: “Have sex. Responsibly.” Their pitch had many elements that ours didn’t. We watched, and shivered with fear, as they presented their plans for consumer contact and merchandise. We, on the other hand, hadn’t gone past the basics. Had we not done enough work? At the end of the presentation, though, the judges identified the loopholes in the pitch and picked on them. The group was grilled. The judges were brutal. We watched helplessly.

We happened to be the next group to be called. We strode into the spotlight and made our pitch. When Prajna finished with the final slide, we all gathered together facing the judges, ready to have our pitch shredded to bits. Except, they said we had made quite a “wholesome” presentation and they had no questions. We were stunned. 

We walked quietly out of the auditorium and into the computer lab next door, where we had spent many a day working out this pitch, and screamed, and jumped, and hugged each other.

Even though we knew we had nailed it, we watched on nervously as the remaining six groups made their presentations to the judges. The pitches were elaborate and well thought out. But each groups had to face some tough questions. The judges pointed out the good and bad elements in each pitch.

When the results were announced, frankly, it was no surprise that we had won. I’m not being full of myself by saying this. I’m just proud of the five talented girls I got to work with on this project. It’s because we worked on so many projects together through this semester, each one of us contributing our two cents, making up for one another when emergencies called for it, and becoming best friends at the end of it all, that we were as good as we could be when we made our Ad Pitch.

Sticking to the basics made us the first AVC group in Commits’ history to win the Ad Pitch. And we won by a LARGE margin. So remember, Junior AVCs, you now hold bragging rights for a year, until next year when it’s time for you to make your own pitch. AVCs or MMCs, whether you think you stand a chance or not, give it better than your best.

*Team Turquoise was one of the three teams formed exclusively for Victor's workshop

**Group Saraswathi was one of eight teams that worked together on all the group projects in the third semester

• Read Bilal Hasan's report on the Ad Pitch (and the PR Pitch) here: "PITCH PERFECT".

• ADDITIONAL READING: "What creative advertising really means" (a series by Commits alumni)

The best argument I have read for staying away from social media

Avid reader and seasoned journalist Aakar Patel, writing in the year-end issue of Mint Lounge, says social media is for those looking to be distracted by an inexhaustible supply of material — and not those for whom reading is a serious affair.

I don't agree with him entirely, but a couple of points he has made are right on the button:

As a writer, I personally find social media off-putting and not useful.
 
Writers must be insulated from feedback, particularly of the immediate kind. One has no option but to be exposed to this on Facebook and on Twitter, and such things always carry the expectation of a response. ... [The comments section] is meant to be a conversation, and I accept that at times it is an intelligent one. But having comments on your work published alongside it is the equivalent of talking from atop a soapbox at Hyde Park.

The hooting and the cheers and the heckling is all on display, and apparently for the benefit of the writer. All of this is fine, and legitimate I suppose, and certainly it adds to the reader’s experience. But why subject yourself as a writer to it? Unless the idea is to bask in your popularity or infamy, there is little point.

And here is the other important (and just as valid) point:

[Comments by Indians] tend to be tangential, personal, often abusive and mostly irrelevant. I must also say that the quality of the comment is poor and that of the writing poorer. This is an anecdotal observation, but you know what I mean. It infects the other strain of social media, which is user-generated reviews. I don’t think it is wise to pick a restaurant here through what people have written about it on the Internet.

Read the column in its entirety here: "Why I’m not on social media".

• To know more about Aakar Patel, go here.

You have heard about the Curse of the Mummy. Now read about the Curse of the "Mummyji"

Trust the Economist to provide the most intelligent and fact-filled yet engagingly written feature I have ever read on India's vexed saas-bahu relationship.

The headline is perfect: "Curse of the mummyji".

The intro is brilliant:

TIHAR jail in Delhi has a special wing just for her. Young women fear and revere her; their husbands seem crushed by her embrace. On television she is a sari-clad battle-axe. Books about her offer advice including: “Run, she is trying to kill you.”

The direct quotes are kept to a minimum, both in number and in length (unlike the long and often pointless quotes we skip in most Indian publications). Here's a sample:

An elderly woman in north India, laughing ruefully, recalls how, after her rural wedding, it took “three days to work out which man in the new family was my husband”.

By tradition, a wife accepted her saas’s tyranny. The life of Renubala, now an elderly woman, is typical. Married at “12 or 13”, she moved in with her husband’s farming family in Tripura, in north-east India. For three years she shared a bed not with him but with his widowed mother. “I was very scared of my mother-in-law, even when she was nice,” she remembers. “I would call her ‘ma-goshai’ [Godmother].”

Mrs Venugopal sees sex and shame behind such obsessive control. Mothers-in-law, she says, “don’t trust [daughters-in-law] to be faithful”, so they try to desexualise them, locking them up, fattening them up, phoning several times a day.

The transitions are smooth, which is the hallmark of good writing and, also, the hallmark of Economist writing. There's an easy flow to the whole three-page feature, and in no time at all, before you even realise it, you arrive at the concluding paragraph, which you have to admire for its ingenuity because it says so much about the saas-bahu relationship without saying too much.

Read the article in its entirety here to soak up the brilliance and to learn a few things, as I did, about Indian mothers-in-law.

PS: You will be shocked to read what happened to Renubala, the mother-in-law worshipper.

• Photograph courtesy: The Economist

MORE FROM THE ECONOMIST:

• "NOBEL CALLING": Brilliant idea for a feature, brilliantly executed

•  How PSY and "Gangnam Style" conquered the world

• Apologies, Economist-style 

• Corporate role models: Mother Teresa and (gasp!) Lady Gaga  

One of the most courageous young women I know. Certainly, the most courageous young mother I know.

Why I am proud of Commitscion ANN THOMAS (Class of 2005):

Life. Parenting. The Works.: Hate me. Love me. Judge me.

mommysuitup.blogspot.com

I speak up after few years of silence. In the hope that others are out there-like me, beaten, not by the law, but by institutions and the system. Not willing to give up or be defeated.

Goodreads tells me I have read 107 books so far this year. Only 107?

My Year in Books! What I Read in 2013

www.goodreads.com

Ramesh Prabhu read 107 books in 2013. See the full list on Goodreads, the world's largest site for readers and book recommendations!

Like · · Share · Stop Notifications · See books

• Sheela Bhat, Ankita Maurya, Ashok Kamath and 4 others like this.
• 

  Pooja Garg Singh That's an average of a book every three days. Impressive

  Yesterday at 10:41am via mobile · Like
• 

  Teresa Asha Alexander I've read far far less but on the plus side, it's like the light in the reading part of my brain has been turned back on.
  
  Ps: I loved 'we need new names' and 'a tale for the time being'. 'The Luminaries' is my Christmas vacation read.

  Yesterday at 10:44am via mobile · Edited · Like
• 

  Tia Raina That's still more than twice of what I managed - a mere 47! Hats off to you!

  Yesterday at 11:03am · Like
• 

  Avinash Kumai Show off old man!

  Yesterday at 11:49am · Like
• 

  Sherry M Jacob-Phillips 107 books? And, you are cribbing, sir? I haven't even touched 50 books this year. So, plz don't rub it in.

  Yesterday at 12:53pm · Like
• 

  G Ganesh Pareek My Score is 39

  Yesterday at 2:57pm · Like
• 

  Rigved Sarkar You're slipping!

  Yesterday at 3:32pm · Like
• 

  Theo Rozario Voracious reader I reckon.

  Yesterday at 7:06pm · Like

What is "tabloid journalism"?

Here, in the form of an article in Mint, is a fine explanation of tabloid journalism by Aakar Patel, a senior journalist whose writings I admire and who uses the Tarun Tejpal story to make his point:

At one end of the news spectrum is the report on one individual and one incident. The more famous the person is, the smaller the incident required to qualify it as news (Sachin Tendulkar retires, Shah Rukh Khan and Gauri have a surrogate baby, Tejpal accused of rape). These stories are usually of no concern to the reader and do not affect the world at large.
 

However, this is a legitimate space for reportage, and media that focuses purely on this sort of journalism on one person and one event is what is called “tabloid”.
 
There is a class bias here. Such news is aimed at and consumed by the lower classes, who are not very educated and interested in popular rather than high culture. It is the blue-collar masses who subscribe to tabloids such as The Sun in London, which are the best exponents of such journalism.

What lies at the other end of the (media) spectrum? Read on: "When every newspaper becomes a tabloid".

• To know more about Aakar Patel, go here.

• Also, read up on the demise of The News of the World, the one-time tabloid champ: "The best coverage of the News of the World scandal".

Font memories

Blogger gives me a choice of seven fonts:

• Arial
• Courier
• Georgia
• Helvetica
• Times
• Trebuchet 
• Verdana

I don't care for either Arial or Courier, the former because it is ubiquitous and the latter because it looks ugly. Our college newspaper, The Chronicle, uses Georgia; Helvetica and Times, like Arial, are commonplace, while Verdana leaves me cold.

Which leaves me with Trebuchet, the font that, as it turns out, is perfect for blogging. Here's why:

This "humanist sans serif typeface" was designed by Vincent Connare, according to a note on Wikipedia, "for the Microsoft Corporation in 1996. It is named after the trebuchet, a medieval siege engine. The name was inspired by a puzzle question that Connare heard at Microsoft headquarters: 'Can you make a trebuchet that could launch a person from main campus to the new consumer campus about a mile away? Mathematically, is it possible and how?' Connare 'thought that would be a great name for a font that launches words across the Internet'."

Isn't that a great story?

STEVE JOBS KNEW HIS FONTS.

To move on: I may be a huge fan of Trebuchet, but I learnt recently after reading an article in Bloomberg Businessweek that there are "Helvetica men", too, and Richard Turley is one of them. In his piece about Apple iOS 7's "design problem", Turley spends a lot of time discussing the font chosen by Apple while explaining why Tim Cook & Co. should have used a particular variant of Helvetica.

If I have a single criticism of Apple’s font, it’s that the designers didn’t go back to the source. The desire for the purity of essence and obsessive detail on which Apple prides itself should have led the company to Christian Schwartz’s recut of Helvetica... Schwartz went back to the original forms of Max Miedinger’s Neue Haas Grotesk, before it evolved through various compromises and mutated into Helvetica. That’s even before you get to Neue Helvetica, a further mutation, which Apple is using here. More weights, more rational, more square, designed by committee, and even less like the original. So. You make a big play of spending every waking hour committed to perfection, Apple? Not in my book.

Read the piece in its entirety here: "Apple iOS 7's Biggest Design Problem".

• Back in June 2011, The Atlantic had published a full-fledged feature on the very same Christian Schwartz's restoration of what the magazine refers to as the world's most famous sans serif font. Read it here: "The Real Helvetica: A Designer Restores the Original Font".

• There is also a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design, and global visual culture. Titled (what else?) Helvetica, it "looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which celebrated its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives". To learn more, go to "Helvetica: A Documentary Film by Gary Hustwit".

• Also read: "You used to be my type!"

UPDATE (January 10, 2014): Searching for something about the origins of the ampersand, I discovered this very interesting page on typography on the Adobe website. And that's how I learnt that the symbol & is derived from the ligature of ET or et, which is the Latin word for "and". Learn more about the ampersand here and then go on to the Type Topics page.

What we can and should learn from the scientist who coined the term "continuous partial attention"

We may think that kids have a natural fascination with phones. Really, children have a fascination with whatever Mom and Dad find fascinating. If they are fascinated by the flowers coming up in the yard, that’s what the children are going to find fascinating. And if Mom and Dad can’t put down the device with the screen, the child is going to think, That’s where it’s all at, that’s where I need to be! 

I interviewed kids between the ages of 7 and 12 about this. They said things like “My mom should make eye contact with me when she talks to me” and “I used to watch TV with my dad, but now he has his iPad, and I watch by myself.”

Kids learn empathy in part through eye contact and gaze. If kids are learning empathy through eye contact, and our eye contact is with devices, they will miss out on empathy.

Wise words indeed from LINDA STONE, who worked on emerging technologies at Apple and then Microsoft Research in the 1980s and ’90s. Stone was being interviewed by James Fallows for The Atlantic magazine. Read the full text of the interview here: "The Art of Staying Focused in a Distracting World".

• ALSO READ: "Brain fog. Continuous partial attention. Who doesn't suffer from these two maladies nowadays?"