MediaVidea

A simple career guide for writers and reporters in India

People in the media industry, especially in the journalism and reporting areas, tend to have a largely unstable career paths. That means dreaming is ok, but thinking those dreams will turn out into reality is so ok. Having served as editor for 11 years now, I have my reasons. Let me clarify,

1. It is a creative field, so people tend to get more passionate about disagreements on work-related issues. Creative people have fantastic egos. Job churn is heavy.

2. Writing/reporting job responsibilities are mostly front-line jobs, i.e. the company's business depends on your output directly. It is not a managerial type position. Even well-funded media brands like TOI will want you to write your keyboard out, so to speak.

3. If you are looking for a career change, look for jobs in the KPOs (e.g. IBM, Accenture), E-learning, Technical Writing and Corporate Communication industries for better pay and prospects.

Of course, you will find a drastic change in your creative outflows, but the destiny of creative writers in India is not in press and online media - there is too much insecurity and opportunities are few, despite what many will tell you to believe.

4. The final career option for journalists and reporters is to move in to management side of the media business - honing your team-building and business development expertise.

Having said all this, remember this: whatever happens, don't let that creative light die inside you. If you were meant to write, write.

Labels: career, simpleguide

posted by Pramit Singh @ 4:25 PM 0 Comments

The Truth about Cats and Dogs: Original Reporting vs. Original Opinion version

Let's get it straight: Reprinting Press Releases is not Original Reporting; rehashing opinions of hundred others is not Original Opinion and the Blogosphere is about conversations & interesting opinions - not something to be put through a cookie cutter so the suits can understand it better.

Blogger Simon Owens tries to spin a fast one whereby he picks the top 100 blogs in Technorati, and tries to prove the newspapers' charge that blogs do not carry original reporting. Here's what I think:

1. Newspapers are not about original reporting:
These are just business entities who happen to have access to capital to pay for newsprint and salaries for journalists, most of whom are forced to write yet another post about what Michael Phelps is up to nowadays (earlier, it used to be Britney Spears). The average newspaper thus is a highly capitalized business making ist money from reprinting cheap wire stories, among other things.

2. The blogosphere is about interesting and stimulating conversations:
You can justly accuse bloggers of rewriting stories (mostly, to be able to ping Google frequently ("we are updated now, come search us"), and parroting widely held, hence boring opinions.

But, it is not true that bloggers talk about what is written in the newspapers only.

Many bloggers (and group bloggers) are known for their original point of views on issues. Often , bloggers raise the art of conversation to a point that the issue at stake is taken seriously by the everyone concerned. In India, a TV journalist found this one to be true the other day.

3. Technorati Top 100 is not about authority:
The Technorati Top 100 is about age, manipulation and persistent rewriting. Many of the bloggers who have made great names and done great things, who I read on a daily basis are not on the Technorati Top 100. In fact, I read few of the Top 100 blogs. There is just no value or uniqueness out there.

Barring a few individual bloggers who blog for their passion, the top 100 is full of professional websites with professional writers (read, traditional media sites) using blog as a publishing tool.

Sites like Engadget are blogs only in the sense that allow comments, otherwise they are huge, successful newspapers running on blogging software.

Other bloggers on the list, like Seth Godin are not bloggers at all. Seth writes well, very well. But, he does not participate in the conversation, He does not allow comments on his blog.

Other top bloggers routinely remove comments they don't like. In this aspect, these guys are like the old broadcasting types.

Other bloggers who make the Technorati List start by flattering the egos of those made the list before them.

4. Techcrunch cannot be said to be doing original reporting when most of the stories are glorified Press Release stories:
Some think Techcrunch is the Red Herring of Web 2.0, the pre-eminent publication covering web 2.0. Far from true.

Red Herring in the late 90s was nothing like Techcrunch. Jason Pontin, the editor of Red Herring that time, wrote one of the first critique of the first web bubble.

The best bubble warning Techcrunch has done so far is reprinting a presentation from Sequoia, the venture capitalists.

Owens' micro research (looking at 200-odd posts over a couple of days, people read more in a couple of hours in their feed reader) says that Techcrunch had the highest amount of original reporting, 37% among blogs.

Most of this original reporting is about - "this service has shut down", "this service has launched".

Having read Techcrucnh since it was launched in 2005, I have rarely read analysis stories and trend stories on the blog, which web 2.0 entrepreneurs needed more than the latest startup to be copied.

Having said that, there is better value in the comments where readers provide their useful opinions and analysis. There you go, that is the value of blogs - conversation.

5. Original Opinion over everything else:
The first rule of journalism is said to be, "Question Everything". The data is there to be found and analyzed. Where were the newspapers and their army of journalists while subprime crisis was imploding?

Among blogs, I know Gawker Media writing can be quite biting but it must be said that Gawker media writers ask the hard questions. I admire Owen Thomas's hard analysis on what works and what doesn't in the New Media area.

Why do you think Gawker thrives? If it were for merely linking to other blogs, it would have perished long ago.

6. Filter Blogs are the op-ed pages of today:
Group blogs like Boing Boing have a large following despite what Simon Owens calls 'Linking'. The filter blogs point to the best articles, to the experts. The Boing Boing writers are a passionate lot and have managed to excite others with the range of topics they cover.

Journalists such as Jay Rosen keep track of what's happening to the news business on a daily basis, pointing out to the latest trends through their blogs and through Twitter. These guys are today's explainers, the job that newspapers were supposed to do.

Among newspapers, the Economist has made a name for its irreverent take and incisive analysis of stories. So much for original reporting.

Tell me honestly, how many other newspapers do the job of explaining by informing?

6. What is Original Reporting anyway?:
There is big, humongous cloud hanging over the term. Owens defines original reporting as as "pulling any data that wasn’t already freely available on the web.” By this measure, even Simon's survey isn't original reporting. Anyone can access the Technorati rankings and look at what the blogs have on offer.

So, was Simon talking about classified government archives?
Because most other data can be had for free or by paying someone.

Given the limited resources a bloggers has, there are a few things a blogger can do if she/he is demanded to do original reporting :
Do interviews; Write a feature/long articles - step by step, analysis, trend spotting, well thought out critiques, aggregate links to stories other peoplke are writing on an issue, wikipedia type profiles...
these are some ideas.

I also suggest look closely at what the mainstream media is covering, you will much that they they miss and gloss over.

7. Everyone can do Original Reporting:
As I see it, there is only one difference between a citizen reporter and a resourceful newspaper: resource.

FYI, this blog post of mine does not meet the standards set by Owens.
I am only linking and commenting, that's all.

Must buy myself a newspaper company.

Labels: blogging, news business, news2.0, simpleguide

posted by Pramit Singh @ 7:35 PM 5 Comments

A Simpleguide to the State of the Indian Blogosphere

Some Indian bloggers are trying out to create something called "State of the Indian Blogosphere". As part of this improbable task, they have parceled out the job of categorization among different bloggers.

Why improbable? I don't think a group of 8-10 bloggers can really categorize a million Indian blogs.

Even DMOZ.org, the open source human-edited directory or Mahalo, the Human Edited Search Engine have trouble categorizing websites/links. In case of blogs, the problem is multiplied because for many users, a blog is a labor of love.

Pigeonholing blogs into neat categories is a mistake, big mistake.
Categorization is cruel. It is a job best left to MBA-types and guys who ran Enron, Satyam...
If you still want to do it, Ask Hitler for advice.

I read in the Indian Express a few days ago about blogger Amit Verma, profiled in the course of promotion of his upcoming fiction book. In the article, his blog is referred to as a Political Blog. I have never been a regular reader of his blog but in the course of writing this post, I jumped over. I think it is not a Political Blog, but more in the nature of "I will post what I like"/Jason Kottke type of Filter blog. Most blogs are like this one.

In case of my blog Mediavidea, I write what I think and like most bloggers I have an opinion about everything. Some of the most read posts have been on state of the nation and new media/journalism.

A blogger, Gautam Ghosh has been entrusted with the task of listing business blogs. He has Mediavidea listed under advertising (?), social media (I have written a post called "Social Media is dead in 2009", so this one is valid, you might say) and marketing (was it because I once wrote that "The Indian Government is the biggest Real Estate Agent in the World?)

Do the bloggers involved in the project even have the time or are in the habit of reading the blogs they are so hell-bent into categorizing?

Most such list-making and award type posts come under what they call 'Linkbait' in online writing parlance. I have made a couple of lists or two, but I try to make sure to inform the reader that those are subjective lists.

'Honored' by Gautam's label for my blog, I went ahead and posted the following comment on his blog a couple of days ago. Since, Gautam is busy reading all the blogs, he doesn't have the time to okay my comment.

Here's my unpublished comment:

While I thank you for including my name on this 'list' but I think we are not clear about the definition of a business blog.

Is it a blog run by businesses - small or big?

Is it a blog on business-related topic, which I assume you have done here?

Moreover, I think the categorization of all these fine fellow bloggers should have been much finer.

You have done a noble job but I think it is beyond one blogger to read all these blogs to be finally able to put labels on each - too much time, for an 'unpaid' job, wouldn't you say, Gautam?

The origins of this simple guide post are here.
Why call yourself a blog, when you have no comments?

Therein also lies problem#1 of the Indian Blogging is scene. It is very insular. It is very intolerant. It is too self-important.

In the west, many top bloggers are not journalists , Scoble, Arrington, Godin, Kottke and I guess they understand the ethos of the web better than their Indian Counterparts - Link Out. Be Honest. Be Open.

I hate to think that because many of the early bloggers in the Indian Scene are from the old media scene (they were the first to have access to the Internet in this country, my dear Watson), they tend to sport the bad habits of a profession undergoing turmoil and scathing public acrutiny around the world - laziness, insular-like, groupism and a suffocating sense of self-importance (there, I have this phrase twice in one article).

As a blogger and a founder of a small citizen journalism outfit Bighow, I am awed on a daily basis by the great things people are doing using online tools. Each day, I learn new ways of writing, reporting and using the web. Each day, I am working on building a group of online reporters.

Each day, I am student on the web.

The State of the Indian Blogosphere won't teach me a thing. At most, it would be an exercise in Personal Branding for a group of bloggers.

Everyone is trying hard to become a Brand nowadays, positioning themselves this way or other.

The state of 'groupism' in the Indian Blogosphere won't be in the curriculum of the reporters at Bighow except as a footnote about things not to do on the web.

Related:
A Simpleguide to the Biggest Moments in the Indian Blogging History

Labels: blogging, india, simpleguide

posted by Pramit Singh @ 6:35 PM 6 Comments

The Satyam Fraud: A simpleguide to the continuing Irrelevancy of Indian Media

At last, we proved that India indeed is the best. The Satyam Computer fudging of Rs.8000 crores on account books, amounting to $1.6 billion, is almost three times the fudge work done by the 'McKinsey-advised' wise guys/erstwhile media poster boys at Enron 6.5 years ago, which was small change, $600 million only (Rs2400 crores, at dollar rates for that period).

The Enron scandal caused Andersen Consulting to go down for a while and reincarnate itself as Accenture, the IT solutions provider.

Does a similar fate await PriceWaterHouse Coopers, one of the top 4 accounting firms in the world? Only time will tell.

But, you ask yourself, "How come the Indian media did not spot Satyam fraud in time?'

Looking at these key numbers for the Indian media, you expected better things:

- We have the second largest newspaper market in the world, having read 99 million newspaper copies in 2007 and we publish the largest number of paid-for titles in the world.

- There are more than 372 TV channels in India.

- By 2006, India had more than fifty 24-hour news networks, operating in eleven different languages, including 14 major Hindi News channels, 4 English News channels [NDTV, CNN-IBN, Times NOW, Headlines Today] and three Business News Channels in English [NDTV Profit, CNBC, UTVi] and One Hindi Business Channel [CNBC India].

- The government network, Doordarshan has a vast footprint of its own.

- We have three big business magazines [Business Today, Business World, and Business India], three big business newspapers [Mint, Business Standard, Financial Express and Economic Times] and two major business newspapers in Hindi [Business Standard, Economic Times].

- We have four major News magazines [India Today, Outlook, Frontline, and The Week].
Does anyone read news magazines in the age of the web?

I am not counting those preparing and roting for government job exams.

- By 2008, there were at least 60,000,000 Internet users in India; almost 6.0% of the country's population was online one time or another.

Impressive numbers for a country on the make.
But, a depressing track record.

What makes the Indian Business Media, along with the News Media, so ineffective?
Is it all all noise and no signal?

You can bet a major of these usage numbers arise from the IT workers and many of them will have blogs.
How many are blogging about the operational side of the business?

Many of my friends in these IT firms blog but mostly you get the same old photos from their latest trips, the music they listen to and so on. It is just 'vanity personal blogging'.

MINT, the business newspaper had done a 'day in the life' of a benched IT worker.
We need more such first-person life experience stories.

Why was no business journalist able to expose the fraud?
Why was there no insider at Satyam willing to break ranks and tell the truth?
In case of Enron, it took an insider, Sherron Watkins to blow the whistle.

Instead of 'Investigate Raju', there was some 'Support Raju' group at Orkut. [Ironically, this item got much traction on the TV news channels]

You can say the media is lazy.
You can say there are vested interests at work and thus PR-puff pieces and PR-rewriting is rife on most media outlets.
You can say the media has huge up-front costs and so making money from advertisers at all costs comes from everything else.

And you are right in all the above cases.

1. The Media is greedy for ads from real estate firms.
No one is asking how long Indians will continue to afford to pay huge installments on hugely inflated salaries for ultra-expensive houses.

For long, there has been a housing shortage in India and so far, we have seen few affordable housing projects.
Pretty soon, the easy money for the real estate firms will dry out, if it is not already. And, so will the ads.

No journalist bothers to ask whether she/he can indeed afford the expensive homes on sale.

2. The Media is greedy for ads from education companies - Business College, IIT tutorials...
I have written about the IIPM scandal, and how few among the big media outlets cared to investigate whether the claims made by the said business school were true.

How could they? After all, IIPM was the seventh largest print advertiser.

The burgeoning private education business in India warrants a better attention.

3. The media has so far stayed away from probing the IT-services business, it being the champion for the country and all.
We need more stories about life inside these firms - business practices, hiring and firing practices, tax benefits enjoyed, cost of land acquired through the government and so on.

We need more stories about the India 2.0.
Is it that indeed shining? If yes, what are the implications for the huge gap between the two Indias we are creating?

Questions, questions.
The rule is: If there is any doubt, there is no doubt.

I could go on and on and you might say, "Well, the U.S. media did no better in warning the people about the sub prime crisis."

And, you would be right.

The U.S, media is paying a big price for its failures.
The power is shifting from the print and TV to online brands.
The decline of news brands in America and the West has more to do with changes in technology.

It is also about people's need for more views, more reports.
It is about more analysis.

Above everything else, it is about the need for truth.

And, you wonder how long the shining India news story is going to last.

Labels: business, india, news business, simpleguide

posted by Pramit Singh @ 6:25 PM 2 Comments

A simpleguide to Internet and Cyber Laws in India

Make a law, and people will follow. As we all looked away, the Information Technology Act's amendment bill 2006 was passed in the Parliament without much debate and scrutiny and is awaiting ascent of the President and formal notification.

The new additions to the IT Act make it clear that the terrorists have succeeded - they have run circles around ignorant, afraid, lazy and (help! I am running out of adjectives here) clueless people who we have entrusted to look after this country of ours.

A list of things you cannot do online after this Act comes into effect:
- Do not tell a joke or forward a joke.
- Do not surf content that corrupts your mind (legal speak: any material which is lascivious or appeals to the prurient interest or if its effect is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons)
- Do not watch porn (earlier, only people dealing in pornography were targeted)
- Do not steal or ‘misuse’ information. If found guilty, you can get up to three years in prison and a fine of up to Rs 1 lakh.

A list of things the government can do if it thinks you are violating the law:
- Even a local Police Inspector can investigate complaints against you. Earlier only an officer of the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police or higher could do that.
- The government can intercept messages from your mobile phones, computers and other communication devices.
– The government can block websites in the interest of national security.

Meant to tackle cyber crime including fraud, phishing, cyber- terrorism, the IT ACT 2006 now sports around 45 amendments following recommendations made by the Parliamentary Standing Committee.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, 429 persons were arrested in India in 2007 for Cyber-Crimes under the Indian Penal Code. 63 per cent of the offenders were in the age group 18–30 years (97 out of 154) and 29.9 per cent of the offenders were in the age group 30–45 years (46 out of 154). 99 cases, 46% of all cyber-crime cases, involved pornography.

Things actually good in the IT Act:
- The government will set up Cyber Appellate Tribunals.
- The government will be more serious about phishing and online frauds.
- Under section 67 of the IT ACT, the new law does not extend to any book, pamphlet, paper, writing, drawing, painting, representation or figure in electronic form, provided it is in the interest of science, literature, art or learning or religion. Moreover, photos and videos are not considered art.

Things that the IT Act does not cover:
- As a founder of a Citizen Journalism site, I am more concerned about “Safe Harbor’ provisions. In the United States, under the DMCA Act, sites are saved from liability arising from users who upload infringing content.
- Who is liable in cases of transfer of copyrighted data(films, music etc.) using P2P (Bittorrent etc.) - the person downloading, uploading or both?

Un-encouraging Government History
- In 2004, Avnish Bajaj, then CEO of Bazee.com, was arrested because a MMS Video involving schoolkids from the Delhi Public School was put on sale on his website. He was later released on bail.

- In 2006, owing to government pressures, ISPs went ahead and blocked access to all Blogspot blogs just because a blog had some ‘inflammatory’ material.

The Trend of Government Over-Activism around the world
The amended IT Act is just another disturbing instance of ham handed legislation by governments around the world gaining sweeping new powers, sacrificing citizens' privacy in the process.

In the United States, they recently passed the US Real ID legislation without much debate. Australia is going to spend US$30.7 dollars to supposedly filter the Internet.

Andy Burnham, a minister in the U.K. government is advocating for a age-wise rating of internet websites, like the movies have.

The Chinese government has perfected the art of internet monitoring using an army of paid people and unpaid volunteers numbering in tens of thousands.

Countries in the Middle East Asia and others like Indonesia and Malaysia have worse laws dealing with the Internet. For example, here.

Coming next: The National ID Card Project
The Government of India is soon going ahead with The National Identity Card Project. As if, the driving license, the electoral voter identity card, the PAN card were not enough. After all, they are only too eager to give more business to the private IT firms. Trials runs are already on in several states across the country.

The United Kingdom government is also going ahead with an expensive (IT firms, rejoice) National ID Card project amidst protests from citizens. The government’s argument got a jolt after it was found out that there was just one person responsible for the safety of revenue department details and he had accidentally lost a CD containing personal information of 25 million people, including their bank records and addresses.

Here’s what an IT Security expert says:

1. Police would end up relying on automated ID checks instead of using their own judgment and intelligence.

2. People with the same or a similar name to people on terrorist and security watch-lists have been put on 'no-fly' lists and had their ability to travel freely restricted.

And the clincher,

3. If we take a cursory glance at Israel you can't argue that an Israeli citizen is safer today than they were 30 years ago. When people are willing to die all the bets are off and no security measures will work.

So, are we indeed sleepwalking into a Surveillance society?

1. Do we let a few people what we view or do online? I tried to find who the members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee but I have so far. I wanted to check the expertise of our M.P.s – for example, how many of them have an online presence? What is their online diet? There are so many I wanted answers for.

2. How indeed are laws made in my country? What influences do lobbyists have? Why isn’t there more information about legislatures online? Why don’t they set up referendums for important laws?

3. Do we let a Police State take over our lives? How do I know the sub-inspector who has come to my house indeed can tell what crime is and what it is not? Does he have the knowledge and training? According to the NCRB, the strength of police personnel per unit area in the country i.e., per 100 Sq. Kms. in 2004 was 42.2. The strength of police personnel per 1,000 population in the country was observed to be at 1.2.

4. Are we making sure that important laws, such as the IT ACT are made clear to the Public in General? All we have at present is this web page about Cyber laws about India maintained by a ‘Cyber law expert’.

5. Do we have to accept government failures on reforming the police? For how long will the police have to work ‘for’ politicians? In September 2006, the Supreme Court of India laid down principles for Police reforms in the country. So far, few states have done anything about it.

6. One reason the government gives out for the National ID card project is the influx of migrants, especially from Bangladesh. But, our politicians have encouraged these migrants to settle in metropolitan cities, in exchange for guaranteed votes for quite some time now.

7. Will things come to a pass and even this writer will have to think twice about posting such ‘inflammatory’ article online?

Will governments around the world succeed in muzzling voices of citizens using dumb-ass laws, monitoring panels and what not?

I sure hope not. Voices are all we have.

And,

8. Where is the Lawrence Lessig of India? The world sure needs some Lawrence Lessigs in its Parliaments.

Related links:
The IT Act 2006 (PDF)

Labels: Cyber Crime, IT Act, online rights, simpleguide

posted by Pramit Singh @ 7:16 PM 4 Comments