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.
Dr. Navpreet Sahsi, an emergency room physician from Toronto, on his daily rounds in an MSF camp in South Sudan. Dr. Nav, as he is known, features prominently in the podcast discussed below. Photo courtesy: NPR/David Gilkey
But what does it take to volunteer for a mission with one of the world's leading humanitarian organisations? And how will we, siting in the comfort of our homes, know what it means to be an MSF doctor if we didn't have journalists who risk their lives too by travelling to these dangerous areas to report on the work being done there by these amazing, brave, big-hearted men and women? If you want to know more, and I'm sure you do, click on this link: Embedded for Five Days and Five Nights with Doctors Without Borders.
When you get to the page, click on the "play" icon to listen to the podcast.
When listening to the podcast, pay attention to the journalistic values — how similar is this podcast to a news feature in a newspaper?
Also pay attention to the following:
1. Pronunciation
2. Voice modulation
3. Use of music
4. Use of silences
This is a great example of "radio journalism".
Also, it's a great example of a human interest story.
Who else but journalists can bring us such stories?
NPR is a wonderful source of some gripping podcasts, as is Longform. Here are some of my favourites:
...but there are not many people out there who are capable of doing so. Lisa Lepki of Ragan Communications understands that and she wants to help. So she has compiled a list of six common problems to fix "before your editor gets out the red pen":
1. Replace adverbs with strong verbs.
2. Fix repetitive use of initial pronouns.
3. Get rid of clichés.
4. Declutter your writing by cutting redundancies.
Afterwards, download this free white paper, "10 ways to improve your writing today".
"Whether you're composing a press release, a blog post, a script, or executive talking points, these techniques," Ragan claims, "will enhance your communication." Get the white paper here.
Yes, you will be judged on whether you are punctual, whether you arrive in time for class, for a date, for a meeting. But did you know you will also be judged on how you treat waiters? And where you look when you drink out of a cup?
Business Insider India has helpfully made a list of eight small things we do that people use to judge us. Here's the list:
1. Your handshake
2. Whether you show up on time
3. How you treat restaurant staff
4. Where you look when you drink out of a cup
5. Whether you bite your nails
6. Your handwriting
7. How often you check your phone
8. Whether you make eye contact
You can read this topical feature in its entirety here.
What makes a journalism professor tick? This short video perhaps provides the answer:
This profile was produced by Commitscions Shristi Thapliyal, Shreesha Ghosh, Meghana Khare, Dona Dey, Soumya Matham, Sneha Rudra, and Sudeshna Bardhan (Class of 2017).
"...we all require devotion to something more than ourselves for our lives to be endurable. Without it, we have only our desires to guide us, and they are fleeting, capricious, and insatiable. They provide, ultimately, only torment."
~ Harvard philosopher Josiah Royce, quoted in a fascinating book I bought for myself recently, Atul Gawande's Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
Want to know more about the book? Check out this review.
There are many young people out there who are sure to benefit from reading this first-person piece:
"So much of life is dictated by what others will think of us. In fact, we spend more time wondering what people will think rather than trying to accomplish things that will get them thinking about us in the first place."
Watch this clip from my days as the host of a TV show on TMG Enter, the technology channel launched by the company I joined back in 1999 in Bangalore.
Keep in mind that I have done a fair amount of research to be able to ask my guest relevant questions about a topic I am not an expert on. He is the expert. I am also listening to the answers so that I can ask follow-up questions.
Keep in mind, too, that this chat is meant for an audience comprising technology enthusiasts and people from the tech industry.
I hope watching this video will give Audiovisual Communication students some insight into how they can prepare for and produce their own chat programme for their TV news shows.
"You may say you’re not a writer. But if you have a job that requires communicating with others, you are. If you keep a to-do list, that’s writing. If you draft a project plan, report, or meeting agenda, that’s writing. And, if you’re like most writers, you want to be more skilled at using your words."
Poorvi Kothari (Class of 2014) wrote this piece for The Commits Chronicle in June 2016:
Before I joined Commits I had no idea that a role like media planning even existed. But thanks to our classes with Mala Ma’am (Malavika Harita, CEO of Saatchi Focus), I not only learnt a lot about advertising but I also got introduced to some great roles, like those of media planners.
And that’s the beauty of Commits. You can come in without even knowing what you want to do or what you are capable of, but one thing is for sure, you’ll leave with a vision, direction, and goal in life.
POORVI AT HER DESK AT THE GROUPM OFFICE IN BENGALURU.
So what exactly is media planning? When I say I work as a media planner, people usually get a little excited and ask, oh, so you are in the TV industry? To which I politely say no. Then they jump to the next possibility: Oh, so then you are a journalist? To which I again say no. As I start explaining how the advertising world works, they become impatient and ask, oh, so you make ads? I say no, I just plan them. By then, even though they haven’t understood what “plan” means in this context they give up and say, oh, okay, that sounds good.
So, yes, “media planner” is not a profession that everyone gets right away, like “journalist” or “copywriter”. Let me, therefore, try to put it in simple terms: Imagine a mind-blowing advertisement that never reaches its target audience. What good is the ad then? Media planners ensure that a brand’s ad is served up to the right audience. We are like distributors.
After an ad is created, media planners think of the best ways to reach out to the brand’s target audience (be it print, TV, radio, or digital). This involves a lot of statistical analysis as well as number-crunching. Media budgets are huge, typically in crores of rupees. Using this money to effectively reach out to a million consumers in the target audience is a big challenge.
I could go on about everything that happens in media planning, or at work, or at client meetings where we are grilled for explanations about why we are spending this much on a particular medium/channel/programme/website/newspaper, etc., or what the rationale is behind a particular strategy. We are talking big bucks here so, often, we play the role of lawyers, accountants, strategists, and investment bankers.
POORVI WITH HER TEAM MEMBER, COMMITSCION REYA DUTTA (CLASS OF 2015).
To sum up, media planning is the business side of advertising. It is not all about numbers, though. To me, media planning is a good mix of creativity and ingenuity combined with a knack for identifying key insights about what we refer to as media consumption. What I really love is how beautifully numbers can tell us stories, and the best part is when you are trying to sell a story and your job becomes so much easier because you can do so on the back of some powerful data.
Creative agencies feel proud when their TV commercials are seen on air, but for us it’s satisfying when people say, Hey, did you see that ad? It’s all over the place, man! That’s when I know, okay, I did a decent job there.
Here are three ads whose media plans were prepared by Poorvi and her team:
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.
