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Part II

TOWARDS SHORT FORM

But, in the process I think in India we have lost the long form journalism. People are getting more impatient with long pieces. You have it in the United States, like the Newyorker. Even the daily newspapers like New York Times or Washington Post and numerous other papers have pretty long stories. But the global trend is to go for short form, which has its virtues, because you have got to grip the reader. It is the same thing in your medium, Television. I think Radio fortunately provides more of an opportunity for doing in-depth features, documentaries and so on. If you go for eyeballs, the pressure is even greater. The same thing is happening to newspapers. The tendency to play it up, hype it up and catch the attention, being loud and in the process going down market, diluting your content. It is there. But we try to avoid it in the Hindu. But daily journalism is more stimulating and exciting. Everything comes at you, the whole day. They could all be unrelated things. So the real skill is to be able to withstand that pressure and not getting confused and then to absorb it and try to put out a fairly coherent product.It is a big challenge. It is one thing I like. But I also miss the opportunity to do longer form of journalism, say three thousand words or four thousand words.

Rama: You were the Associate Editor of the Hindu in the late seventies and in early eighties. Now you are the Editor in Chief, for the Hindu and for all its publications. What difference do you see in the journalistic trends between then and now.

Ram:The first thing is that there are more mistakes. The standard of English has gone down generally across, though more people now know English and some of them write very well. But you cannot count on it. Even in the eighties we used to complain. The old timers used to complain that it has declined. It is true. But we shouldn't make too much of it because when language becomes more broad based, this is bound to happen. This is with English and I am told this is also the case in other even in Indian languages to a large extent.

Rama:In fact it is much worse.

Ram;So it is not just a problem for English language journalism in India,. That is one. The other thing is, now you have tremendous technological opportunities. You have the Internet. You have access to lots of sources. You are able to have more control over things like the time factor and also many design elements. Layout and design have become important. I know I can handle all this material. I can put some of this in print and the rest in our website. For example, yesterday, Professor Veena Das, who has settled down in the U S, had sent us a joint statement signed by 170 intellectuals, strongly protesting against the charges of criminal offence brought against Ashis Nandy in Gujarat. Now we can't publish in print all the 170 names. But I can do it on line. So, in print I can say, ' The list of signatories is published at www.thehindu.com. These are things that we couldn't have dreamt of... But in the eighties, for example, I was in Washington DC and we had a major exclusive in the Hindu on the secret conditionalities involved in the Indian Government's extended fund facility agreement deal with the International Monitory Fund. It was in those days a huge sum. Five billion SDRs., more than 6.5 billion US Dollars. That was a loan for over three years. But, now it is nothing much of a loan for a country. But that was the largest multilateral line of credit in history at that point of time. It was negotiated in secret. Everything was hush hush. The conditionalities which were kept a secret were leaked to me. The Hindu in those days published the whole thing virtually. I remember the A4 size text of the agreement was 64 pages. It was published in installments. Well, that was the journalism of those days and if the interest of the readers could be sustained, they would follow it day after day like a Thodar Kathai, like a serial.

READERS' EDITOR

Today, of course with colour, with pagination where the whole thing is digitally manageable, with Internet, with access to more sources and with much better control over photography, it has become all the more interesting. But, at the end of the day, quality is a concern, with too many mistakes in all the newspapers including the Hindu. That is why we have a Reader's Editor.

Rama: I think you are the first to have a Readers' Editor.

Ram: Yes, and he is doing a great job, because apart from interacting with the readers, he has an internal function too. It puts pressure on people to perform, although our Reader's Editor K Narayanan often writes openly. I think it has an effect. It calls attention to mistakes. It is more honest. Self correction is important. And, above all it is a way of reaching out to readers, getting them engaged. We learnt it from the Guardian. We can't even claim any great credit for it, except for implementing it in an honest and efficient way. We have an excellent man for the first assignment. He was saying he feels it is too much pressure, it is stressful. Yet we persuaded him to take up the second term in an open ended way, saying that he could manage with assistance. He has done a great job. I think that assures the need to improve our standards, improve our systems. Of course everybody will plead the excuse of the deadline pressure. The situation cannot continue for too long. You cannot have mistakes.

Rama: You have won several awards, from the Alumni Award of the Columbia University to Padma Bhushan. Which one do you cherish and why?

Ram: It is hard to say. In a sense, the several awards that I won for Bofors., including the BDGoenka Award that I shared, and the Padma Bhushan. Although it was not for any particular story, it did cite this. Columbia Award was much broader. While Bofors was much more interesting and exciting, I would also certainly mention IMF. It was even more creditable a subject to take up. Because, nobody else was looking at it and nobody thought of getting access to the conditionalities, those days, it was possibly the first anywhere. Several other stories we did in Frontline as well, the kidney commerce for example. We also did a story on the claims that the Indus valley script had been deciphered as Vedic Sanskrit. Another was on the Gandhi papers. They had to be retrieved from an auction house. It was a legal effort as well as a personal effort to persuade the gentleman to have it returned. We had a whole cover story on that. That has an enduring value. Covering my visits to China and Tibet in particular was also interesting. Also, sports. You mentioned sports. That is correct. I have always been interested in Cricket. My uncle, the then Editor Mr. G Kasturi wanted me to cover Cricket.

Rama: I still remember your well-written pieces

Ram: I am very pleased with that opportunity. I covered the West Indies tour of India 1974-75. I covered the debut of not only Gordon Greenidge, but possibly the greatest batsman of the era, Viv Richards, Andy Roberts and Clive Lloyd. Alexander was the manager. After the West Indies won the first two tests, with Viv Richards getting over 190 in Delhi, I thought it was one sided and I didn't go to Calcutta. I persuaded my uncle to use the agency coverage. And India came back, with a great innings by Viswanath. Then I came back and covered the last two tests in Chennai and Mumbai. It was a wonderful opportunity. You interacted with the players, with spectators and the journalists. I remember very well meeting people like Tony Cozier on that trip. It was quite interesting. You have some very good cricket correspondents over the years, starting from S K Gurunathan, whose birth centenary is coming up this year, Rajan Bala, and various others. We have Mohan. Today we have the young man I rate as India's finest Cricket Correspondent Ram Mahesh. You have got to be very professional. The only thing is, my cousin who became Sports Editor S Krishnan, reminded me that I am not very good at meeting deadlines. Because I try to refine it more, till the last moment and I would push it in at the very last moment. I wasn't delivering the way these people do like Ram Mahesh does. He is on the dot. Even today the problem with some good writers is meeting the deadline. If you don't meet the deadline you are no good. This is even more so for your Television.

(Please wait for the second part next week)

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