Life at Hans India-II

I started working with an enthusiasm that cannot be put in words. I was pure adrenalin rush, I was all pumped up and raring to go. I wanted to make a change, to make Hyderabad Hans really good. I knew I could do it.

For starters, I looked at reporters and their stories. After all that is where it all starts. I talked to them about their work, their issues, tried to figure out their strengths and their weaknesses. In a matter of days I knew who was good at what. I knew what to expect from every single reporter.

With all due respect to my reporter colleagues (most of them are in their early 20s), I found their writing to be lacking. Well, that’s nothing to worry about. I started like this, probably I was even worse. Everyone starts like this. What one needs to do is to watch, observe, learn and improve. Whenever I could, I gave them tips on writing. I told them how to find interesting stories, how to improve their stories by looking at different angles etc.

To improve their language I suggested a simple way. I told them: Read the stories you filed, the next day. Compare it with what you had actually written. See the changes the editors have made, and see how you can improve your language. I don’t know if they did it regularly, but I saw a lot of improvement in their writing.
I told reporters to call me every morning and discuss their stories with me. The intention was simple—I would have an idea about the day’s stories well in advance. Once I get an idea, I keep toying with it in my mind, even as I go about doing other stuff. By the time I reach office, I would have a skeleton in my mind…as to how the day’s edition would be like. That’s my way of working. Well, it’s nothing that I invented…I learned it from one of my seniors.

None of reporters called me regularly to discuss stories with me. Wonder why? I told them I could give you a few inputs too which may help them. After all, I’ve been around for some time. And in any case, discussing stories always brings benefits, ask any journo. But no, they never called.

Oh yeah! Sometimes they did. That was when they had a dearth of ideas. I had some of them calling up with a frantic “Sooraj, give me story ideas”. I have no issues… Always willing to help. I’ve done similar things too. At times while working, I’ve fallen short of stories and I rush to these guys with the same frantic tone…”Guys, find me some stories…I gotta fill up pages.” And they have always obliged and I am grateful for that.

And after a hard day’s work on the field, they have often stayed back late into the night, helping me at the desk because we were short of people. After filing their stories, they could have gone home, but they didn’t. Navin, Augustin, Varsha and Venu. Thanks guys. Not just for the help, but for making my life at The Hans India worth it!

Life at Hans-III

One of the first things I insisted on was a story list. Till I joined there was nothing of the sort at The Hans India. I couldn’t believe that a newspaper functioned without having a story list or ideas meetings. Well, miracles, like I said earlier.

I told all reporters that they had to give story ideas a day before. Of course, things can pop up at the last minute, everyone knows that. But planning in advance is mandatory. I told them to inform news coordinator Vasu every evening about their plans for the next day. Vasu was to make a story list and send it across to the higher ups and the whole team.

Now to tell you about Vasu, he is one of the finest human beings I have come across in my life. Always the perfect gentleman, he was always willing to lend a helping hand to his friends and colleagues.
On the work front, I would rate him No 1 among all the news coordinators I ever worked with. He has a huge number of contacts. Any story you wanted, any person you wanted to meet and interview, he’d arrange it for you. A hard-working and dedicated person, before leaving work every night, he meticulously made the story list and emailed it. No matter how late it was.

Now, here’s the problem. His story lists were vague. Ideally a story list should give you at least three pieces of information. What the story is, who is doing it and what time the desk can expect it. Only then can the desk plan, albeit with a sketchy idea. Vasu’s list just mentioned a place and the reporter! For example it would say ‘Nehru Zoological Garden’, Reporter: Varsha. Now, how am I supposed to figure out what the story is about? Can anyone enlighten me? At times he assigns reporters to find out what is happening at some place….like a cultural organization. But then he should put that on the list with something like ‘Details awatied’. Till the day I left, I never had the pleasure of seeing a complete story list from Vasu.
He doesn’t come from a newspaper background. So he doesn’t know the nuances of editing or page-making. He is a quick learner, but you can’t learn ‘18 years of experience’ in a few days or weeks or even months.

He was practically running the whole show. He was interacting with reporters and photographers and organizing good stories. Great! That’s his job, and he was the best, and I truly appreciated his efforts with all my heart.

Now, here’s the problem. He doesn’t stop at that. Maybe he doesn’t know the difference between being a news coordinator and an in-charge. Now it was not Vasu’s fault. The management should make it clear to everyone what his/her role is while joining. I assume they never did it. I was never introduced to the team. But when Mr Murthy introduced me to someone else he would say, “This is Sooraj, he is in-charge of Hyderabad Hans.” Wonder if he said that while introducing Vasu also!

I had no issues with Vasu handling the edition. The only problem—I had to butt in and make changes when the design looked drab, when headlines were dry, and when stories were dull. I tried putting it across in a subtle way—tried telling him to stick to what he does best, which is calling up people, arranging stories and pictures. I would take care of the rest—editing, designing etc.

I really don’t know if he understood my hints. If he did, he just chose to ignore it. And I never pushed further.

Life at Hans India-IV

The editing department of Hyderabad Hans was pretty weak. No, not in terms work quality, but in terms of numbers. There were just the two of us—Murali and yours truly.

Considering that Murali came to office only at around 6 pm (The duty time ideally starts at 3 pm), we were practically ‘one-and-a-half men’ (I start at 3 pm, and Murali came half way through). Murali stayed back after work is done and did something. I don’t know what. He said that he doesn’t mind staying late, no matter how late, but he cannot come early. What purpose does that serve???!!!

Now, Murali was a wonderful editor. Give him any story and he could change it around. And you get it as close as it can get to being a perfect story. His grammar was immaculate, his words were measured and exact, and his headings were definitely catchy.

Now, for the problems. For one he came late. He rushed into office every day, in a mad hurry…as if that ‘rush’ would make up for the lost three hours. But after that there was absolutely no rush. He ‘sat’ on stories for ages. He went on and on. I am yet to understand why a senior person like Murali didn’t understand the importance of timing.

In a newspaper environment, timing is as important as anything else. If you don’t finish editing on time, the page gets delayed. If the page gets delayed, printing gets delayed. And if printing is delayed, obviously the paper won’t reach the distributor on time. A distributor is not exclusive to a newspaper, he may have several other newspapers to deliver. Why would he delay delivering those to his customers? Why would he wait for our newspaper to reach before starting out? That too, a newly-launched newspaper which didn’t have the numbers of other established ones.

When I joined I was told that timings were sacrosanct, both my Mr Murthy and Mr Nair. I assured them that I’d do all I can to pull back timings. Of course I understood the importance of timing. Ideally, we had to send off the pages to print by 9 pm. Now it was going at around midnight, which is causing a lot of issues.
Well the first thing to do is to set a deadline—for filing stories, editing and pagemaking. If the page has to go at 9 pm, we stop taking stories at 7pm. It would take another two hours to fix all ends and send the page for printing.

So when Murali turned up at 6, a lot of work is done. Then, Murali ‘sat’ on a story. Meanwhile, I was doing everything—editing stories, doing press releases etc. In between, I had to fix headlines on the page, give captions for pictures, look at the layout, pictures etc.

To add to it, Murali used to go through stories I edited. Come on guys, gimme a break… after 18 years, I think I know a little bit of editing, probably I could write a few lines of correct English! I may not be a genius, but I am not a dud!!

I tried telling Murali this. Being a senior person, I put it across very subtly. Once I said: “Murali sir, I have edited it. You don’t have to do it again. In case you are going through it, just look for mistakes I may have made.” No, he had to ‘sit’ on it and change what I wrote.

This was going on, and pages got delayed. I have no issues about anyone changing what I did. But it has to be better (well that’s a relative subject), and timing has to kept.

One day I told Murali that editing is a never-ending process. You can do it till Kingdom come. Give any story to three persons, they can also make changes and edit it again and again. Now when we are hard-pressed for time, the thing to do is to send off the pages as quickly as possible, with the least amount of mistakes. He still didn’t get it. Was that rocket science? Somebody?

Life at Hans India-V

Days rolled by, work went on, life moved on. I found a way to work amicably with all my colleagues. I used their plus points, and worked around their minus points.

By then, I knew the writing style of each reporter like the back of my hand, I knew exactly how each would treat a story, use words and phrases etc. I could edit them ‘blindfolded’.  So my work was not too tough, except for the odd articles written by our stringer Saibaba.

A very pleasant, elderly gentleman, Saibaba took to journalism rather late. It’s never too late to learn anything. However, Saibaba never learnt the meaning of the word ‘brevity’. I doubt if he ever will. His stories were always 1000+ words. After one round of editing it comes down to 400-500. Another round, it’s just 300 or even less and to the point. Despite my telling him several times, he continued filing his ‘epics’. His phone calls were the same…long, long, long! I learnt to deal with him too.

Anyway, getting back to the story…

I easily tackled reporter’s work. Of course they were improving by the day. And thanks to their efforts and hard work, most of their stories didn’t need a total rewrite anymore. In fact, some of them were really good…hardly needed any editing.

I gave up on Murali. Come hell or high water, Murali ‘rushed’ into office at 6pm. So I used to give him one story and just let him be. In the meantime, I used to finish other stories. As I was starting on a story, I used to tell Sattar, the designer to come up with a good layout, I asked him for a word count too. By the time he was done to the layout, the story would be ready to be placed. Of course, I had to put brakes on Sattar’s gimmicks with Quark Express, but that was not a big issue.

The reporter team was also very helpful. On any given day, one of them would be at the desk, helping out. That made my life much easier.

I’m sure you’ve heard of people who get a ‘high’ from power…from being in a particular a post or position. I met one. They come in different types. Some are simply arrogant, some love the fact that they can ask others to do stuff…order people around, some others like it when people ask their permission for things, even to pee…And there are even some who get their kicks from signing leave forms and just hearing someone call them ‘sir’!!!

I don’t know what was Vasu’s high, but he definitely wasn’t an arrogant person. To this day, I value and treasure his friendship.

And so I let him be…He loved to talk to reporters, ask them what they are doing, tell them to do stuff etc. That was his job, and he was good. But something that bugged me was that he never once took any of my suggestions. Wonder why? Way of showing one's 'power'? So sad!

And he butted his head into the desk, giving direction etc. I just let him be, even though I had to get into ‘action’ very often.

I struggled to contain my laughter when once, during a meeting, Vasu told Mr Murthy: “Sir, I cannot go to HMTV (the telugu news channel the company owns) to coordinate for news. If I step out of the room, the desk work will suffer.” This, after Murali or I edited stories, gave captions and headlines and came up with good design suggestions.

“Dude, I am alive,” I wanted to scream, but I just let it go!

Life at Hans India-VI

About eight months after I joined, I took a holiday. When I returned to work, someone (I don’t remember who) said that the Editor Mr Nair had been asking for me the last two days. I immediately went downstairs to meet him. His secretary told me that he was out and that he would return in an hour or so.

But you know how it goes in a newspaper office. I got into the thick of things and completely forgot about it. I have this habit of doing a rewind once I get back home. I go through the entire day’s events. Right from the time I walked in to the time when the pages were sent off to print. That’s when I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten about Mr Nair.

The next day, the first thing I did was to go to Mr Nair’s office. After a short wait, I walked in. Mr Nair, who was working on his computer, looked up and said: “You’ve been asked to leave. Our experiment by hiring you has failed. According to reports we have received, you don’t even know how to edit. Every story you do, Murali has to go through it again.”

All this he said in one breath, and without another word, turned back to his computer and started working. I stood there stunned for about half a minute, unable to believe what I heard. Losing a job wasn’t what hurt me. I was sure that it was just a matter of a few days before I landed another job. What shocked me beyond belief was how they did it? And how Mr Nair conveyed it to me. I was too stunned to respond and mumbled something and walked off.

I left office and went to a friend’s place. This friend was a former colleague at Hans, who had the same experience—he walked into office one day and was told to leave immediately!! A senior person, who has a long association with Mr Nair asked just a couple of questions: “Did Nair look at you while he was speaking? I mean, did he look directly at you?”

“No,” I said.

“Did he discuss the issue with you or give you a chance to speak?”

“No.”

“Then it is not his decision. It must be from ‘above’.”

After spending a couple of hours at his place (he offered me rum), I returned home. All the while, there were a few questions haunting me. Why did they treat me like this? If I had not been up to their expectations, shouldn’t they have talked to me about my performance? Told me at least once that I have to buck up and perform better? Shouldn’t they have asked me if I had any problems? And if there were issues that could have been sorted out, shouldn’t they have done that? Why didn’t they do all that? Doesn’t a professional organization work like that? I am yet to find answers.