Copying and pasting. And an apology — of sorts — from India Today.

An apology from none less than Aroon Purie.

Here is the opening paragraph of his "From the editor-in-chief" column in the latest issue of India Today (Oct. 25):

Jet lag is clearly injurious to the health of journalism. I was in America and still a bit bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived when we took an unusual decision: to split the cover. This is jargon for changing the cover for some editions; so while the content of the magazine remained the same worldwide, the cover that went to our readers in South India displayed the phenomenal Rajinikanth while our other readers saw Omar Abdullah on the cover. This meant writing two versions of 'Letter from the Editor'. Not being an acknowledged expert on the delightful southern superstar, I asked Delhi for some inputs. Unfortunately a couple of sentences lifted from another article were sent to me. An excuse is not an explanation. So, without any reservations, mea culpa. Apologies.

Now here's the opening paragraph from Purie's piece in the Oct. 18 issue:

Jackie Chan is the highest-paid actor in Asia, and that makes sense. Besides producing, directing, and starring in his own action movies since 1980, he's earned millions in Hollywood with blockbusters like Rush Hour and The Karate Kid. But the No. 2 spot goes to someone who doesn't make any sense at all. The second-highest-paid actor in Asia is a balding, middle-aged man with a paunch, hailing from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and sporting the kind of moustache that went out of style in 1986. This is Rajinikanth, and he is no mere actor—he is a force of nature. If a tiger had sex with a tornado and then their tiger-nado baby got married to an earthquake, their offspring would be Rajinikanth. Or, as his films are contractually obligated to credit him, "SUPERSTAR Rajinikanth!" If you haven't heard of Rajinikanth before, you will when you watch his latest movie Endhiran: The Robot which has just opened in movie theatres around the world. It's the most expensive Indian movie of all time. It's getting the widest global opening of any Indian film ever made, with 2,000 prints exploding onto screens simultaneously. Yuen Wo-ping (The Matrix) did the action, Stan Winston Studios (Jurassic Park) did creature designs, George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic did the effects, and Academy Award-winning composer A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire) wrote the music. It's a massive investment, but the producers fully expect to recoup that, because this isn't just some film they're releasing; this is a Rajinikanth film.

FROM INDIA TODAY (SOUTHERN EDITION), OCT. 18

And here are the opening two paragraphs from an article written by Grady Hendrix for the online magazine Slate:

Jackie Chan is the highest-paid actor in Asia, and that makes sense. Besides producing, directing, and starring in his own action movies since 1980, he's earned millions in Hollywood with blockbusters like Rush Hour and The Karate Kid. But the No. 2 spot goes to someone who doesn't make any sense at all. The second-highest-paid actor in Asia is a balding, middle-aged man with a paunch, hailing from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and sporting the kind of moustache that went out of style in 1986. This is Rajinikanth, and he is no mere actor—he is a force of nature. If a tiger had sex with a tornado and then their tiger-nado baby got married to an earthquake, their offspring would be Rajinikanth. Or, as his films are contractually obligated to credit him, "SUPERSTAR Rajinikanth!"

If you haven't heard of Rajinikanth before, you will on Oct. 1, when his movie Enthiran (The Robot) opens around the world. It's the most expensive Indian movie of all time. It's getting the widest global opening of any Indian film ever made, with 2,000 prints exploding onto screens simultaneously. Yuen Wo-ping (The Matrix) did the action, Stan Winston Studios (Jurassic Park) did creature designs, George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic did the effects, and Academy Award-winning composer A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire) wrote the music. It's a massive investment, but the producers fully expect to recoup that, because this isn't just some film they're releasing; this is a Rajinikanth film.

So, that's not just "a couple of sentences" that were lifted. That's almost all of the first two PARAGRAPHS. About 250 words were copied and pasted.

Three questions come to mind now:

1. Even if the "inputs" were sent by "Delhi", did they have to be reproduced word for word?

2. Is the person who sent the "inputs" still an employee of India Today?

3. Does Aroon Purie really write the "letter from the editor" column week after week after week?

PS: As is to be expected, Purie has got hell from the writer whose work was plagiarised. "Any man can apologize," Grady Hendrix wrote yesterday in an article for Slate titled Great Writers Steal, "but only the millionaire CEO of a multiplatform media company who is also editor-in-chief of a major news magazine can write an apology that is defiantly nonapologetic."

There's more in the same vein:

This official apology blamed jetlag for the theft, and if that's the case then my heart does go out to Mr. Purie's staff. If this is a man suffering from a narco-klepto disorder (also known as "sleep stealing") then he must be watched vigilantly. Every yawn is a signal to lock up your laptops, every announced nap is a sign that your wallet could suddenly go missing. But the jetlag apology wasn't meant to be taken as a serious statement, it was more of an old school attempt to make the problem go away with a silly, "Whoops, I'm tired!" shrug. Only with the new media, problems like this don't go away. While print journalists in India are said to be unlikely to report on the infractions of their colleagues, the Internet knows no loyalty, and all over India online writers are still tweeting and blogging for a better explanation. 

Hendrix also reproduces the letters Purie wrote to him and to the editor of Slate. And he says at the end, "...as far as I'm concerned this is a satisfactory close to the matter".

But is it? Plagiarism is the bane of journalism and it is unlikely that either his competitors or his readers will forgive Aroon Purie — precisely because he's the editor-in-chief of India's first major English news magazine and the largest-selling — for this blatant transgression.

***
'She copied my article and it was sent back to my magazine as her feature!'

Shagorika Easwar, editor of the Toronto-based Desi News and CanadaBound Immigrant comments: You know, recently, I received an article on heart health from Maharaja Features. It seemed strangely familiar. The more I read, the more it seemed like I had read it before. And then it dawned. It was an article I had written on the subject a few years ago! Their feature writer lifted it word for word, with just two changes. Where I had written about spotting people jogging along Lakeshore Boulevard, she 'saw' them on Bandra Bandstand. She also changed the name of one of the people quoted in the article. Other than that, it was exactly as is. Including the intro para that began with now that heart-shaped candy boxes had been put away, it was time to get serious about heart health. That made sense in March, the month we ran it, after Valentine's Day. They sent the article in August, when  you have to wonder which heart-shaped candy boxes were being put away.

I wrote to Mr KRN Swamy of MF and he responded with something about how they would never use the lady's articles again. And that was that. (I should clarify here that I don't think Mr Swamy knew. His own articles on history and travel are meticulously researched with due credit given to sources. This was one of his feature writers and if it took me a few minutes to make the connection, I can hardly expect him to have remembered an article we carried a few years ago. He gets a copy of Desi News each month as we carry some of their features and she might have seen it there and tucked it away for future use!)

I thought that was bad enough, but this India Today case is shocking. And the man has the gall to try and shrug it off with a half-hearted apology that is more along the lines of "I'm sorry I got caught, BUT... " We all know that politicians have speech writers, that more often than not, the brave, inspiring words they spout were written by someone else. After seeing this, I begin to wonder if editors have ghost writers! Such a shame.

***
'This episode highlights the problems we all face today — delegation'

R. Umesh, partner in a Bangalore-based chartered accountancy firm, comments: A monumental gaffe indeed. But tell me, I don’t know how this works — how would one identify plagiarism anyway? I feel the only way this could have been avoided was for Aroon Purie to write the editorial himself (which is what I presume he should be doing in the first place), right?

This episode also highlights the problems that we all face today — delegation. Just to what extent can you delegate your work? If you cannot, then how do you handle workloads? I have no idea about Aroon Purie's workloads, but I am sure it must be high. This is why we become donkeys at work — because reliability today comes at a premium. This is what I refer to in office as the CR factor (C for capability and R for reliability).  I always say — If I were to choose between two chartered accountants for a job at our office, I would surely go for the one who is more reliable though less capable (even if that means I have to put in extra time).  Generally, you never find a person with the right combination.  In other words, this is the classic conundrum at many offices today. I sure don’t want to land up in Purie’s unenviable position.

***
'Is Indian media indifferent to plagiarism?'

Here is veteran journalist Bala Murali Krishna's take on the issue: "India Today’s plagiarism scandal".

Bala, who is now associate editor with The New Indian Express in Chennai and who taught journalism at Commits as guest faculty when he lived in Bangalore, makes an important point when he writes that the Purie "apology that is a non-apology, the unwillingness to explain the real circumstances of the incident and an unwillingness, over the years, to address other similar allegations, suggest a pattern of indifference at India Today that, embarrassingly, might be a proxy to the entire Indian media".

He then makes a comparison with American media:

The Washington Post stripped [Janet] Cooke of the Pulitzer, The New York Times ordered a complete audit of each and every word written by [Jayson] Blair and published in its editions, and made a determination of the extent of plagiarism and/or unethical practice. It also fired the blogger Zachery Kouwe, who had copied from the Wall Street Journal’s blogs. The Boston Globe, USA Today and others have responded in similar fashion, firing editors, writers and reporters found plagiarizing or indulging in unethical practices.

***
Now I think the only way Aroon Purie can redeem himself and salvage the reputation of India Today is by stepping down as editor-in-chief. But I am not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

• Also read: Why does plagiarism continue? And what can writers and editors do about it?

• And the DNA column that says plagiarism is okay because it is "the ultimate form of flattery" and it has "real (positive) spinoffs".

•  Aditya Sinha, the editor-in-chief of The New Indian Express, was the first media honcho to write about the Purie scandal. An excerpt:

The buck stops at the top... and it will take time for Purie to live down this stupid-mistake-by-stupider-underlings. But that’s good, in a way, if it occasions some introspection and forces some self-regulation. India Today has been charged with plagiarism too many times lately; just ask Canada-based blogger Niranjana Iyer or Anshuman Rane of the UK digiterati. It’s not a coincidence that these victims were foreign-based and that their work appeared online. It seems Indian journalists think that they are immune given a blogger’s distance from an Indian court and the fact the cyber-universe is so vast that the readership of a particular online article is often limited. No apologies have ever been offered to either of these two, by the way, and the culprits roam free to plagiarise again. Similarly, the Times of India film critic, Nikhat Kazmi, lifted from the legendary Roger Ebert for her review of Shark Tale, yet she remains at work for India’s largest media company.

Read the no-punches-pulled column here: "Plagiarise and be damned".

• Mitali Saran, who wrote a weekly column, Stet (Commitscions know what this means now), for Business Standard, dedicated her October 30 post to the Aroon Purie plagiarism scandal — but BS refused to print it. Now Saran has terminated her agreement with the newspaper. What did Saran write? And why did BS refuse to print the column? Read all about it here: "The case of the missing attribution".

• Niranjana Iyer, a writer and book critic based in Ontario, Canada, says India Today plagiarised her blog post and refused to respond.

• And India Today gets more flak, this time for its Goa cover story (November 6), from Vivek Menezes, the founding editor of "an online review of art, culture, news and opinion relating to Goa" — Tambdimati.com: "Another low for Aroon Purie".

Do those e-mail forwards annoy you?

The ones that come with the subject line: "Hilarious!!! You MUST read this!!!!!", or something similar? And where the body of the email contains a gazillion e-mail addresses through which you have to wade IF you want to read the substance of the e-mail?

These forwards are the bane of e-mail users and I, for one, have found a simple way to deal with them. I don't even open these e-mails. I just hit the DELETE key now. And yesterday I discovered there are others like me. Mala Bhargava, for instance, who devoted her column in the latest Businessworld to explain why she hates forwards.

Here is an excerpt:

"... e-mail savvy hasn’t increased much.

"The one thing that has remained an annoyance is the tsunami of 'forwards' that crisscross cyberspace everyday. The well-intentioned individuals who indulge in the pastime of sending their friends jokes, chain mail, presentations, videos, pictures, and more, are convinced they’ve done their altruistic bit for the day. They’re always surprised and more than a little hurt when you tell them you don’t really want these, even if they were amusing. I’m afraid I’m one of those who could totally do without the deluge of forwards from my network."

And then she lists five reasons that should give pause for thought to all the avid forwarders out there. Are you one of them? Reading "Why I Hate Forwards" should cure you, I think.


(Sadly, the "forward" contagion now seems to have spread to Facebook, which is awash with links that come bearing the entreaty: "Hilarious!!! You MUST watch this!!!!!". If you really want us to read those forwards or watch those videos, doesn't it make sense to give us a valid and cogent and coherent reason to do so? Stop with those generic messages already. And if you still feel compelled to send me a forward, get rid of those unwanted e-mail addresses, please.)

JUST DESERTS: Getting our due

A FEW WEEKS AGO, in class, we had a brief discussion during a test about the correct spelling of "deserts" in the phrase "just deserts". Some students were surprised to learn that there was no connection to "desserts". We then discussed the origins of the phrase: "(From Dictionary.com) A deserved reward or punishment, as in He got his just deserts when Mary jilted him. This idiom employs 'desert'  in the sense of 'what one deserves', a usage dating from the 1300s but obsolete except in this expression. Origin: Middle English, from Old French deserte, from feminine past participle of deservir, to deserve; see deserve."

Later I remembered a little feature I had written for Dubai's Khaleej Times earlier this year at the request of editor Patrick Michael. The feature is reproduced below.

JUST DESERTS
Ramesh Prabhu left Bombay (now Mumbai) for Dubai back in October 1988. His first — and last — place of residence in Dubai was Karama. Eleven years after he returned to India, he still has fond memories of the city and his home. Here, he recalls his years as a resident of Karama:

Call it karma.

When I first landed in Dubai to work as a journalist with the Khaleej Times, I was put up in a villa somewhere in Jumeirah. Within a couple of days, I asked to be moved to “civilisation”. I had come to Dubai to learn more about the place, so living in an isolated bungalow, as we called it back in India, was not for me.

As luck — or karma — would have it, a Khaleej Times editor was vacating his second-floor apartment in Karama’s Pioneer Buildings. I moved in very soon after.

I can only imagine what the area looks like now, in the wake of Dubai’s construction boom, but in those days it was a quiet residential zone with three- and four-storeyed apartment buildings and oodles of supermarkets and convenient stores within walking distance.

The great thing about living in Karama then was the home-town atmosphere: we had friends from the subcontinent in our block and in neighbouring apartments, and get-togethers on holidays and festival days were the rule.

Living in Karama had another big advantage: easy access to all the important locations, from Satwa and Bur Dubai, to Shaikh Zayed Road and the Maktoum Bridge.

When my wife and I returned to India, I wanted to name our bungalow, sorry, villa, “Karama”, but this would have sounded strange to our fellow Bangaloreans. So we settled on a moniker that, we thought, would be a throwback to our good old days in Dubai: JUST DESERTS.

We have since moved to a new apartment in a gated community, but the gate plaque bearing the legend “Just Deserts” holds pride of place in our living room even today.

"JUST DESERTS": THE PLAQUE THAT LAY EMBEDDED IN OUR ENTRANCE GATE PILLAR FOR FIVE YEARS BEFORE WE MOVED HOME FROM AN INDEPENDENT HOUSE ON OLD MADRAS ROAD TO A GATED COMMUNITY, BRIGADE GARDENIA, IN J.P. NAGAR, SOME 30 KM AWAY. THE PLAQUE IS NOW A SHOWPIECE IN OUR LIVING ROOM. PHOTO: SANTHOSH C.J.

Plenty of bang for your buck

Think Jackie Chan on steroids. Imagine him speaking a mixture of Bhojpuri and Hindi. And picture him performing his trademark stunts in one of his many fight scenes.

And you have Salman Khan in Dabangg.

Jackie Chan never takes himself seriously in his movies. Also, we know he is having a great time up there pretending to act.

Ditto Salman Khan. In Dabangg, at least.

That, I think, is one of the reasons I enjoyed watching (most of) Dabbang yesterday.

Dabangg is not a "drama", although there's dramabaazi aplenty; it is not a "thriller", though the movie has its share of thrills (and spills); it is definitely not a "romance", notwithstanding Salman's hook-up with Sonakshi Sinha (pictured left). I see it as a "comedy", really, with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments: Salman using a fireman's hosepipe as a weapon in the opening fight scenes, Salman doing a Keanu Reeves in those same fight scenes, Salman making one of his "Besharam se yaad aaya..." cracks, Salman... Salman... Salman....

Salman is such a towering presence in the film that every frame that does not feature him has you wishing he'd be back. Every Salman-less frame, in short, appears tedious by comparison.

Well, okay, not EVERY frame. Certainly not in the opening sequences of Munni badnaam hui, that exuberant, colourful, full-of-life item number by the oomphy Malaika Arora (pictured right) — though Salman sort of steals the scene when he makes his swaggering appearance towards the end of the dance.

To reiterate, I think we love Salman in Dabangg because he does not take himself seriously; in fact, no one in the movie takes themselves seriously (except Dimple Kapadia and Vinod Khanna — both are hopelessly miscast).

And I think both urban and rural audiences in India have given two thumbs up to Dabangg because, as my wife remarked, here's a film made for Indians in India, not for Indians in the West. (KJo and SRK, I wish there was a way to make you read this.)

Finally, people my age and older will be grateful to director Abhinav Singh Kashyap for making a movie that reminds us of the films we used to watch when we were kids, and for keeping in mind that we are not now able to sit in a cinema hall for three hours or more and so keeping the duration of Dabangg down to an acceptable two hours. Shukriya, janaab!

• Tehelka managing editor Shoma Chaudhury analyses Salman Khan, the man and the actor, in the wake of Dabangg: "Is the measure of this man just a moustache?"

Why I admire Rajinikanth

I used to wonder: The Badshah of Bollywood and other stars of his ilk won't be caught dead without their toupee — they act in their movies bewigged and they come out in public bewigged. How come Rajinikanth is different?

Rajini is happy to play the glam hero in his films — but off-screen he seems to have no problem offering us his real persona, the wig be damned.

Again, my question: How come?

Baradwaj Rangan, the erudite film critic of The New Indian Express, provides the answer in an enlightening profile of the South's biggest star in a recent issue of Tehelka.

He agrees that Rajini’s off-screen appearances can be perplexing to the untrained eye, but he clarifies quickly: "...by untrained, I refer to the non-Tamil eye."

And he elaborates:

We Tamilians, after all, are used to the dichotomy of our heroes looking one way on screen and another in real life. Cinema is a manufactured medium, and it would stand to reason that the faces up there are manufactured too, made up with make-up. ... So we don’t really flinch when Rajinikanth comes to us bewigged on screen and bald off it. He is, after all, 60. Lesser men have been reduced to shiny domes at far younger ages. (Ask me. I should know.) So when, in an audio launch for Robot, Rajinikanth looks his age, looks like the grandfather that he is, it doesn’t frazzle us. He’s not acting now. He’s real. That’s all there is to it.

And then Baradwaj wonders if there is a lesson here for the aging heroes of Bollywood:

Perhaps Bollywood stars — especially the ones in their forties and upwards, some of whom apparently are staving off signs of aging with nips and tucks and hair weaves — can learn this lesson from Rajinikanth, that you can be yourself and your fans won’t stop loving you. On the contrary, they just may come to love you a little more.

And so I learnt two things here:

First, Rajini's attitude is worth emulating. Why should we pretend to be who or what we are not in real life?

Second, there is a difference in the mindsets of movie fans on either side of the Vindhyas.

Do you agree?

If you don't read, you can't write

It's (almost) as simple as that.

Don't believe me?

Here's master storyteller Stephen King on the importance of reading:

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut."

And here's James Ellroy (pictured), the author of L.A. Confidential and many other crime novels, on the same subject in a Q&A published in a recent issue of Time magazine:

How did you acquire the knack for writing such colourful lingo?

I love scandal language. I love racial invective, language that is vulgar. I spent my early life reading, reading, reading, reading, reading and reading. I read crime books primarily, so I know cop jargon.

Are people born good writers?

No. You have to read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read and read. As you read, unconsciously you assimilate the rudiments of style and technique. And when it comes time for a person to begin to seriously write, they either have it, or they don't.

I have been saying something in similar vein to all my students, but Stephen King and James Ellroy have put it much better than I ever could. While both are referring, I think, to the writing of fiction, I believe what they say applies to all forms of writing, and that is what I emphasise at Commits.

Which brings me to the question that bothers me big-time: Why do so many young people give short shrift to reading?

Many youngsters today want a career in media. That really makes me happy. However, for the life of me I can't figure out how someone who doesn't like reading can be a good journalist.

Okay, so you don't want to be a journalist. I have no quarrel with that. Now, I also happen to believe that if you can write and think like a journalist, you can succeed in any media field. And this is what I tell every batch at Commits. But if you want to write and think like a journalist, close reading is vital. A devotion to words is essential. A love of books is fundamental. Reading should be like breathing. Then the writing will follow. And it will flow. Unhesitatingly. Copiously. Gracefully.

If I were a betting man, I would stake my entire library on it.

• Also read: "An ode to reading", "Reading CAN improve your writing", and "Why writing should be about 'you' ".

• Shagorika Easwar, editor of Desi News and CanadaBound Immigrant, comments: I absolutely, totally, whole-heartedly agree — the only way to improve your craft if you are a writer is to read. Or read, read, read, as you say!
  
  It saddens me that so many don't read. That newspapers around the world are losing circulation because people get their news fix on television or while driving home from work. Even those who want a career in media dream of becoming television anchors and so think they don't need to read or write. That is why you have the literate illiterate. When they speak, they are fine, but you only have to get a written submission from them to see the flaws.
  
  This problem is not restricted to the young, though. We get press releases from various tourism departments in India — you'd think they'd hire the best of the best to do the selling — but one I got recently talks about a temple being "worldy known". I kid you not.
       
  Which is one of the reasons why I love the way you teach. Not just through course books but by throwing a vast variety of books their way. Something, somewhere will stick!
       
  

  A devotion to words is essential. A love of books is fundamental. Reading should be like breathing. Then the writing will follow. And it will flow. Unhesitatingly. Copiously. Gracefully.

  
  Lovely.
  

What was the Emergency like?

The Emergency, which lasted 21 months beginning June 25, 1975, was a dark period for journalism in India. I had just finished school at the time but I remember my father, a journalist with PTI then, talking about how life had become difficult with government-appointed censors calling the shots at media organisations.

So what was the Emergency really like for journalists?

Ajay Bose had just become a reporter with the Patriot then. He later co-wrote a definitive book about the period. Last month, in the Independence Day issue of Mint Lounge, he was interviewed by Himanshu Bhagat. Here's an excerpt:

HOW WAS CENSORSHIP ENFORCED?

Initially, you actually had to take your copy to the censor and show it to them. They would then ink the offensive stuff out. But the process was too cumbersome and it didn’t last too long. The babus had a typically mindless approach and would leave the “damaging” stuff intact while cutting out what was “innocuous”. So then the papers were asked to censor themselves and not publish anything “anti-national”. All the papers had to comply. The government could do anything, just like in a dictatorship. The courts were completely with them. And the police would never support you.

Can you imagine working under such conditions?

Read the full interview here: ‘The office was in absolute darkness’.

And since this is the I-Day issue, Lounge has made a special effort to put together what I consider the best collection ever of articles and columns on free speech. Read the whole series here. I especially recommend "You are not free" and "A nation talking to itself".

"YouTube is a miracle for cricket fanatics"

Rahul Bhattacharya, author of the cricket tour book Pundits From Pakistan, writes a monthly cricket column for Mint Lounge. He has a felicity with words that makes his articles a delight to read, even if you're not a cricket fan. On August 28, he wrote the cover story for Lounge, "Time travel cricket". The opening line says it all:

Cricket in the age of YouTube... is cricket in another age. 

Bhattacharya goes on from there to describe "the sheer athleticism of Garry Sobers, Majid Khan’s disdain for footwork, Bedi’s silken flight" and explains why YouTube is a miracle for cricket fanatics, "encouraging us to revisit the game’s greatest and often changing our idea of them".

Cricket fans are already tweeting and blogging and emailing links to this article.

BACK TO THE PAVILION: GREG CHAPPELL BOWLED FOR A DUCK BY KARSAN GHAVRI WITH AUSTRALIA CHASING 143 FOR VICTORY IN THE THIRD TEST IN MELBOURNE (1981). THIS WAS ONE OF INDIA'S MOST MEMORABLE WINS. ENJOY IT ALL OVER AGAIN ON YOUTUBE.

I'm sure they are also going to YouTube and checking out the videos recommended in a sidebar in Lounge. For those keen on watching four "memorable encounters on YouTube from the time before live telecasts", here's the list:

• West Indies in Australia, 1960-61

Search for "Green and gold greats"

• Lillee vs Sobers, 1971-72

Search for "Lillee Sobers"

• Holding vs Boycott, 1980-81

Search for "Holding Boycott"

• India vs Australia, Melbourne, 1981-82

Search for "Aus Ind Melbourne 81"

• Arpan Bhattacharyya (Class of 2010) tells me Rahul Bhattacharya's piece is available on Cricinfo, too: "Video thrills the history fan". Thanks, Arpan.
  

"If you love what you do, is it 'work'?"

For a few years now I have been posing this question to all our new students: "If you love what you do, is it 'work'?" And I have been giving them my own example: I get to do what I love — at Commits, at home, even at the gym — because I love what I do. And I try to enthuse Commitscions into feeling the same way about their assignments, their projects, their "work".

However, I guess I am not very articulate on the subject (my wife says I am the worst "communicator" she has met), so I think I have had mixed results trying to convince our students to think like I do. That is why I was so gratified when I read this feature by H.K. Shivdasani in the DNA of September 1 (Page 7): "Work-life balance is humbug".

This is the gist of the article: "If your work is your passion then you won't find the need to strike a work-life balance because you'll enjoy every moment of it."

You took the words out of my mouth, Mr Shivdasani, and I can't tell you how grateful I am.

Here are some excerpts that will, I think, inspire others to believe in our credo:

Melody queen Lata Mangeshkar would practise for hours as a teenager, and she has continued to enjoy her mammoth practice sessions every single day of her life. Sachin Tendulkar, even as a school kid, loved batting practice, hitting balls against a wall well past midnight.

Think of Zakir Hussain, Bismillah Khan, Michael Jackson, or an Olympic winner of your choice. All of them have one thing in common: they never had 'working hours'. And that's because they enjoyed their work so much that no other activity was as much 'fun'. They never knew or needed to practise 'work-life balance'.

And here are other relevant excerpts:

I had said that I'd offer one formula to achieve all different life goals. We discussed success. But what about happiness?

Well, success and happiness go together. Is happiness different from doing something that's fun, gives you joy, and satisfies your needs?

What about someone who wants to give something back to society? You can only give what you have in abundance, and in the field in which you are a master — to give, you must first achieve a lot.

Please read the full article and see how you can apply these principles to your life.

• Shagorika Easwar, editor of Desi News and CanadaBound Immigrant, comments: I couldn't agree more. That is what we have also always told our children. To find a career in a field they are passionate about, not one that is 'in' or 'hot' or because it pays the most. That because we so love what we do, it's not like work at all.
  
  It's not a grind when you work long hours or without a break. Take today, for instance. I'd started out thinking I'd catch up on some reading (Arrival City by Doug Saunders) and watch Peepli Live and take an afternoon nap. Well, guess what. A man from Kolkata who is cycling around the world and was supposed to get into town next week got in a few days early — today. Since he is here only for a day-and-a-half, there went my lazy Saturday.
  
  But I had such fun talking to him that it didn't seem like work. 

• Here's a telling quote from music composer Gurukiran in a chat with ad guru and film-maker R. Balki in the October 24 issue of DNA (After Hrs): "I love music and my work. So, in that sense, my work is my biggest time pass. If you are to ask me, if you're doing what you love, then there is no reason for you to look outside work for recreation."

• And here's Vinita Bali, CEO and MD of Britannia Industries, echoing the sentiments expressed by H.K. Shivdasani in DNA. "Somehow people who talk of this [work-life] balance make work sound like something you have to do," Bali writes in the November 19 issue of Forbes India in an article headlined People make too much of work-life balance. "There are aspects of work I may not enjoy or like. But by and large I like what I do, I like working, I like the stuff we do. It also enables me to enjoy what people call 'not work'."

• "Love what you do to stay motivated" is also the credo of Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group. Read his Mint column on motivation here.

• My favourite blogger Maria Popova has a post on the subject, too: "How to find your purpose and do what you love". 

UPDATE (May 2, 2013): I have just discovered on LinkedIn this lovely post by Dharmesh Shah, founder and CTO at HubSpot, a marketing software company based in the U.S.: "14 Telling Signs You Love Your Job".

Why writing should be about "you"

As in, "you" the reader.

If you're a journalist, you can do a good job only by putting yourself in the shoes of the readers (or viewers). What do readers want to know? How will this information help them? Why should they read this story? How can I write so that my readers are engaged, entertained, and enlightened?

This principle, and these questions, apply even if you're not a journalist, but writing is part of what you do.

In a recent column in Mint, V.R. Narayanaswami elaborated on this topic by asking similar questions:

The writer has these questions in mind: Who are my readers? How did this transaction begin? What do they expect to gain from it? In other words, what’s in it for them? What questions will they want to raise? Audience awareness, as it is called, is one of the keys to successful communication.

Narayanaswami, a former professor of English, calls his approach the "you-attitude in writing". He says the you-attitude recognises that communication takes place between real persons, not between robots.

The language, therefore, is personal, simple and direct. It is free from highfalutin clichés. It restricts the use of the passive voice which tends to distance the reader from the writer.

The column also gives helpful advice on how to tailor the content of your message to your reader. Read the article in its entirety here: "The you-attitude in writing".

The vexed issue of "private treaties"

Should a media company disclose to readers of its newspapers its interest — in this case an ownership stake — in companies that are regularly featured on its news pages?

Are media companies taking enough steps to insulate their news and opinion writing from growing business interests of the firm itself?

And in a market where newspapers are significantly subsidised by advertisers, does it matter whether such conflicts of interests are divulged or not to readers who have been reluctant to pay for what it costs to produce a daily newspaper?

Mint posed these questions earlier this year in an article on the issue of private treaties. And last month it carried a report on a move by Sebi, the capital market regulator, to make private treaty deals more transparent (Page 12: "Sebi seeks more transparency, orders media firms to declare stakes in other companies").

Reading both these articles will give you a good idea of the stakes involved here for both journalists and the reading public.

What do you intend to do if you are a journalist?

And what do you have to say about the issue as a reader?

The inviolable line between news and advertising at Mint

In this era of paid news, and Medianet, and private treaties, how refreshing — and comforting — to read this note from the editor on the front page of Mint (Friday, September 3):

Note to readers

Dear Reader,

From time to time, you will see a page or a feature in Mint clearly labelled as Media Marketing Initiative. Such content is entirely generated by an advertiser or Mint's marketing department on behalf of an advertiser, and does not involve any editorial staff.

Such pages/features also have a different font and style to help you identify that they are not part of Mint's editorial content. As clearly stated in Mint's journalistic Code of Conduct, available on our website www.livemint.com, there is an inviolable line between news and advertising at Mint. We thought it would be useful for us to reiterate this to you.

As always, feel free to contact us at feedback@livemint.com

R. Sukumar

Editor

Here are just a few of the many pertinent points in Mint's Code of Conduct:

In the 21st century, ... news is transmitted in more ways than ever before — in print, on the air and on the Web, with words, images, graphics, sounds and video. But always and in all media, we insist on the highest standards of integrity and ethical behavior when we gather and deliver the news.

• That means we abhor inaccuracies, carelessness, bias or distortions. It means we will not knowingly introduce false information into material intended for publication or broadcast; nor will we alter photo or image content. Quotations must be accurate, and precise.

• It means we always strive to identify all the sources of our information, shielding them with anonymity only when they insist upon it and when they provide vital information — not opinion or speculation; when there is no other way to obtain that information; and when we know the source is knowledgeable and reliable.

• It means we don't plagiarize.

• It means we avoid behavior or activities that create a conflict of interest and compromise our ability to report the news fairly and accurately, uninfluenced by any person or action.

• It means we don't misidentify or misrepresent ourselves to get a story. When we seek an interview, we identify ourselves as Mint journalists.

• It means we don’t pay newsmakers for interviews, to take their photographs or to film or record them.

• It means we must be fair. Whenever we portray someone in a negative light, we must make a real effort to obtain a response from that person. When mistakes are made, they must be corrected — fully, quickly and ungrudgingly.

• And ultimately, it means it is the responsibility of every one of us to ensure that these standards are upheld. Any time a question is raised about any aspect of our work, it should be taken seriously.

There's so much here to admire — and learn from.

The king of the sting

That would be Mazher Mahmood whose latest expose has blown the lid off the so-called "spot-fixing" scandal involving Pakistan's cricketers. Who is Mazher Mahmmod? There's a bio on Wikipedia, the most interesting fact in it being the enigmatic nature of the man on account of his job profile:

Mahmood works secretively, rarely going into the News International offices. Written into Mahmood's contract is a clause stating that his photograph will never be published in the newspaper. If he features in photos that accompany his stories, his face is always concealed and a silhouette is used next to his byline.

And here's another interesting tidbit from that bio:

News Of The World claims he has brought 234 criminals to justice. He often poses as a sheikh in order to gain his target's trust, and is also known as the "Fake sheikh." In September 2008, he wrote a book titled Confessions of a Fake Sheik: The King Of The Sting Reveals All, published by Harper Collins.

Wouldn't we just love to get hold of a copy of that book? We would get to learn how an undercover reporter gets information that translates into a worldwide scoop. We would also get an insight into an aspect of journalism — sting operations — that, in the wrong hands, can have many unpleasant ramifications.

In the meantime, we can only watch this particular sting operation unfold before our eyes (check out the four-minute video) and marvel at the chutzpah of the reporter and the advances in technology that made it possible for News of the World to make headlines around the world this week.

• UPDATE (July 20, 1011): What really prompted Rupert Murdoch to shut down a 168-year-old newspaper? Read about it here: "The end of the News of the World".

6 money mistakes to avoid when you've just started working

Today's Mint has a very helpful piece by Harshada Karnik for youngsters who are into their first job. That first cheque may give you a high, she says, but before blowing it up, you should take a look at what a small part of it can earn in the long run. And then she lists the mistakes many youngsters make when it comes to financial planning:

• Mistake 1: Don't really know where I spend
• Mistake 2: I saw, I liked, I shopped
• Mistake 3: I live on plastic
• Mistake 4: Not now, maybe later
• Mistake 5: I like risks and adventure
• Mistake 6: My uncle has it, I'll also buy one; it'll save my tax, too

If you are making all or any of these mistakes, you need to read this: "Into your first job? 6 mistakes to avoid"

Sloppy subbing/house style

1. DNA (Bangalore), August 26

• Page 12: Pullout quote in first editorial

Vedanta has got its just desserts, but we need greater transparency in rules

That should be "just deserts": (From Dictionary.com) A deserved punishment or reward, as in He got his just deserts when Mary jilted him. This idiom employs desert in the sense of "what one deserves," a usage dating from the 1300s but obsolete except in this expression.

(We all know what "dessert" means.)

• Page 17: Headline

Mail on Flintoff auction raises a storm

That should be "email" or "e-mail", depending on house style. Why do so many of us, including journalists who should know better, write (or say) mail when it should be email?

In the news report below that headline, we read "e-mails" in some paragraphs and "mails" in other paragraphs. It's so confusing for readers.

2. The Times of India (Bangalore), August 26

• Page 1: Headline

INDIA SETS UP TITLE CLASH WITH SL

Here India is apparently a singular noun. Now go to the fourth paragraph of the match report on Page 23:

Now India have a chance to gloss over their weak links and get their hands on the trophy if they can contrive to run through the Lankans next.

Here India becomes a plural noun. So what is the house style?

Most newspapers allow collective nouns such as the cricket or football teams to be treated as plural subjects to make for ease of reading. For example: India have reached the final. To my knowledge, The Hindu is the only mainstream Indian newspaper that persists in treating, say, cricket or football teams as a singular subject. That is the newspaper's house style. But for The Times to treat India as singular and plural on different pages in the same issue is perhaps an indication that house style is no longer as sacrosanct as it used to be.

3. Open, August 20

• Page 41: Fifth paragraph

Before the channel began operating, a former bureau chief says, there was an unofficial list of dos and don’ts for reporters to follow. He recalls an unstated rule: “‘We will not do byte reporting’ …aisa hi kuch thha  (it was something like that).” The place became a haven for journalists, but it struggled to maintain its ideals. Slowly, quietly, the bureau head believes, the rules disappeared.

Byte? Here's a dictionary definition of byte: "adjacent bits, usually eight, processed by a computer as a unit". So clearly it is a computer term.

Now here's the definition of sound bite: "a brief, striking remark or statement excerpted from an audiotape or videotape for insertion in a broadcast news story".

So Open should have used "bite reporting" in that sentence, not "byte reporting".

In Mint Lounge on May 15, a caption on Page 15 read:

Byte-hungry: Indian news channels were criticized for the way they covered the 26/11 terror attacks

But Open and Mint are not the only culprits. For some reason, universally, we will see a reference to "byte" when what is meant is "bite" or "sound bite". Even television journalists are not immune to this disease. A few months ago I sent an email to Rajdeep Sardesai about this and he replied, "It should be sound bite. But you are right, several of us, myself included, use sound byte. Am not sure why."

A new kind of brand manager

STEVE STOUTE

Steve Stoute, according to Time, has changed the way companies look at branding.

"Brands don't often speak to young people in a way that is representative of them," says Stoute. "What I do is contemporize a brand." But, he says, "I don't take the brand away from what it stands for. I don't change who they are in order to appeal to the next generation."

Read the full article by Stacy Perman: "Where Shop Meets Hip-Hop".

• Photo courtesy: Time

How do you stand out from competition?

Will you send a shoe to your prospective employer with the message, "I want to get my foot in the door"?

Read this helpful little feature by Peralte C. Paul in Mint (reproduced from the New York Times) to learn what candidates are doing in the US to impress their potential bosses: "Do you stand out in a job market?"

"The Afternoon Despatch & Courier", the newspaper closest to my heart

The newspaper I helped to launch in Bombay in March 1985 is still the closest one to my heart, though I enjoyed my time with Mid Day, Bombay (where I began my career); Khaleej Times, Dubai (where I launched special sections and where I first learnt to work with computers); and CIO magazine, Bangalore (I helped to launch this magazine in India for TMG in 1999. TMG also ran a national technology channel for which I was a news anchor for some time and also a chat show host).

BEHRAM CONTRACTOR

I CONSIDER MYSELF privileged to have been given the opportunity to work with the brilliantly talented team, led by Behram "Busybee" Contractor, that launched The Afternoon Despatch & Courier on March 25, 1985. At the time it was Bombay's fourth evening paper, and our competitors were the formidable Mid Day (which we had quit to start a newspaper "owned" by journalists), The Evening News of India, from the Times of India stable, and Free Press Bulletin, owned by the Free Press Journal group.

I remember being asked by a good friend who was concerned about my future: "What kind of research have you people done? Have you carried out any surveys? Is there room in Bombay for one more eveninger?"

We had all left Mid Day sometime in January. And we were planning to launch The Afternoon a few weeks later, in March.

Did we have time for surveys? No.

But what we had going for us was belief. The belief that we had a lot going for us.

What we had going for us was gut instinct. Not for a moment did any of us think that it couldn't be done.

What we had going for us was confidence. We knew we were good at what we were doing.

Above all, what we had going for us was an editor all Bombay loved and respected, and 30 or 40 people — from office assistants to experienced journalists — who believed in the idea of a newspaper that would be run without any interference from "owners".

Sure, there were problems on the way, mainly financial, but all of us stuck to our task. And not too long after it was launched, The Afternoon became the city's No. 2 newspaper because both Evening News and Free Press Bulletin, unable to stand the competition, closed down.

Twenty-five years on, The Afternoon and Mid Day (the latter now owned by the Dainik Jagran group) are still the only English evening newspapers in Mumbai. The Afternoon, now led by the redoubtable Carol Andrade, is back on its feet after a particularly troubling phase and it continues to make its presence felt. And afternoondc.in is a great example of how the sensibilities, tastes, and needs of readers can be incorporated into a newspaper website.

Five months ago, on March 25, The Afternoon's 25th anniversary, I was thinking back to those frenetic early days. So guys, this one is for you: Behram Contractor, Mr Kanangi, Carol Andrade, Shashi Jadhav, Mark Manuel, Archie D'Cruz, Sabbas Joseph, Leo Manickam, Suresh Baliga, Mobin Pandit, Sharad Kotnis, Glen D'Souza, Anthony D'Silva, Arvind Kulkarni, Tara Patel, Menka Shivdasani, Conrad Prabhu, Anthony Azavedo, Jerry D'Souza, Dinshaw Dotivala, Mario Miranda, E.P. Vijaykumar, P.S. Rajan, Elias Hendricks, Prabhu, Jadhav, Ramdas, Vasant, Hari, Prashant, and many others who made such vital contributions to our great newspaper experiment. Salud!

• Read Outlook editor-in-chief Vinod Mehta's tribute to Behram Contractor: "My friend Behram".

• You can feast on the "Round and About" archives here: "Busybee Forever".

• Read Carol Andrade's take on faith in Open magazine: "My Kinda God". 

PAPER VIEW: One of my best friends, Sunil Maurya, and his daughter, Ankita, are engrossed in reading The Afternoon. This picture was taken sometime in the Eighties in the Mumbai suburb of Borivli, where Sunil lived before he and his family moved to the US. I am indebted to Ankita for giving me permission to use this photograph, which I discovered recently on her Facebook timeline.

UPDATE (June 21, 2013): Commitscion Natasha Rego (Class of 2014) lived up to my expectations (and perhaps exceeded hers) when she filed this brilliant story for The Afternoon: 10/10 for a newspaper story written by an intern from Commits.

"If you never hit the word limit assigned to you by a teacher or editor; if anyone has ever called your prose "flabby"; if a critic condemned your first novel as being twice the desired length"...

...you need to read this superlative column by Roy Peter Clark of Poynter. (Poynter Online claims it has "everything you need to be a better journalist". I believe it.) And you will get even more helpful advice on writing tight by reading the transcript of the chat Clark conducted on Poynter — "How can I tighten up my writing?" is fascinating reading for both novice writers and experienced ones.