SAJAforum

CONV: On Navigating New and Old Media

Speakers at various workshops discussed the wide span of media available today from thick paperbacks to Twitter.

Brian Stelter, the New York Times’ “poster boy for Twitter,” extolled the virtues of the micro-blogging site. Stelter cited the example of the outrage American viewers expressed against NBC last August when it scheduled the 2008 Olympics ceremony, 12 hours after the actual event in Beijing, to coincide with local prime-time programming hours.

“Through comments on Twitter from angry viewers here [at 8 am Eastern Time], I was able to see a story emerging and by blogging it, I was able to get comments,” he said. “By 4 p.m., I was a pitching a story about people’s outrage over NBC’s decision and it was a front page story the next day."

Just few rooms away, journalists-turned-authors Tom Zoellner and Minal Hajratwala gave aspiring authors, tips on a more traditional medium. Hajratwalla, the author of "Leaving India", released by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt this year, spoke about what makes a successful narrative. “Character plus event plus theme equals narrative,” she said.

Zoellner, author of "Uranium" and "The Heartless Stone," outlined what goes into a book proposal.

“This is not the place for modesty,” he said.

CONV: THALIF DEEN SAJA-er Since 1994

[See all SAJA@15 Convention & Career Expo coverage ]

EDITOR'S NOTE: In celebration of SAJA's 15th anniversary, we talked to senior journalists who have been with the organization since its early days. In these profiles, they share a bit of themselves and their association with SAJA. 

Thalif Deen, the former U.N. Bureau Chief and Regional Director of Inter Press Service News Agency, says as a Sri Lankan journalist he is now an “endangered species.”

Over the years, Deen says that SAJA has kept South Asian reporters in North America abreast of news from the other side of the world, including the struggles of journalists in other parts of the world.

“I have always appreciated the services provided by SAJA,”  he said. He specifically mentioned Sree Sreenivasan, one of the group's founders, and his role in keeping the member community alerted to breaking news from the South Asian region.

Deen was among the first members of SAJA 15 years ago. He also served on SAJA's executive committee, and was one of the first Sri Lankan journalists to join the organization.

CONV: Amrit Kakaria Seeks Stronger Voice For SAJA

[See all SAJA@15 Convention & Career Expo coverage ]

EDITOR'S NOTE: In celebration of SAJA's 15th anniversary, we talked to senior journalists who have been with the organization since its early days. In these profiles, they share a bit of themselves and their association with SAJA. 

Amrit Kakaria

is an industry veteran who has had a hand in shaping the South Asian media landscape. The 70-year-old started his career as an intern in India at the India News & Feature Alliance, and has since worked for nearly a half dozen publications on three  continents.

After moving to the US in 1977, he joined India Abroad. In 1988, Kakaria moved to India Today to become its chief North American representative.

Kakaria has been part of SAJA since its birth in 1994. For him, the organization fulfills a personal aspiration to unite ethnic Indian journalists. SAJA, he says, “helps South Asian entrants to journalism" and is "a reassuring entity for them to belong to." He looks to SAJA becoming a powerhouse with a stronger voice.

Kakaria, however, has a less aggressive future mapped out for himself. His personal mission: to improve his golf game.

-- By Sweta Vohra, University of California at Berkeley graduate student.

CONV: Jay Mandal Explores the World with His Camera

[ See all SAJA@15 Convention & Career Expo coverage ]

EDITOR'S NOTE: In celebration of SAJA's 15th anniversary, we talked to senior journalists who have been with the organization since its early days. In these profiles, they share a bit of themselves and their association with SAJA. For the first profile, SAJA Blogger Sweta Vohra talked to New York-based photojournalist Jay Mandal.

Perhaps a bike and a passion for people is what you need to become a well-respected journalist. At the age of 17, Jay Mandal began exploring and communicating his view of the world with just his bike and amateur Kodak camera as his tools. Today, Mandal is a well-known photojournalist based in New York, who covers events all over the globe. While his equipment may have changed over the years he says, “my life’s passion has remained the same – I am an explorer and I tell stories.”

Mandal joined SAJA just two months after its inception. Over the years SAJA has become a force in the media world, and is a reflection of the influence India and Indians have on international issues. Mandal, a frequent contributor to SAJA Forum, recently was attacked when on assignment in India by Trinamul Congress activists in Nandigram. Mandal says that the support he received after the attack from SAJA members was overwhelming. (For excerpts from an interview with Mandal about the attack, please go to http://www.sajaforum.org/2009/05/indian-elections-new-york-photographer-jay-mandal-beaten-by-political-mob.html)

Mandal, a native of West Bengal, says there was no script for his career path. His advise to young journalists is that one learns the most from experiences, not necessarily from fancy university degrees.

As for the future, Mandal says that while he is an “old man with 384,000 kilometers on a bicycle”, his work is only half done. Perhaps, another few thousand miles won’t hurt.

E-mail Jay: jay[at]jaymandalphoto.com or post your comments below.

CONV: COVERING CONFLICTS AND TELLING THE HUMAN STORY

[ See all SAJA@15 Convention & Career Expo coverage ]

The daring escape of New York Times reporter David Rohde from Taliban captivity reminded everyone just how dangerous it is for journalists to venture into regions of conflict.  So what is the best way to prepare for reporting conflicts?  SAJA blogger Gayathri Vaidyanathan asked three journalists with extensive experience in South Asia and other regions of the world for their views. These journalists also are among the line up of panelists at SAJA’s 15th anniversary convention to be held this weekend.

 Daniel Lak, a Canadian film maker and consultant, was with the BBC Foreign Service in Afghansitan-Pakistan region in 1995. As the Taliban and the Afghan government battled it out, Lak and other journalists wanted to interview the Taliban. They walked up to the government troops and requested a ceasefire.

The reporters requested the troops to withhold fighting, Lak recalled in a phone interview.  Then, the journalists ran across the frontline waving white flags.  The Taliban fighters did not fire.  When the journalists reached the rebel front and looked behind the guns, the fighters were having lunch.

“We asked harsh questions — like, are you terrorists?” Lak said.  “Another guy asked, ‘why don’t you kill us?’”

The Taliban fighters were shocked.  “Guests are sacrosanct” in their Pashtun culture, they said.

ESSAY: Class of '09, exit stage left

While many of my friends are getting their diplomas and moving into the real world this spring, I’m taking the scenic route to graduation – pinning on an extra semester that allows time for a Gainesville Sun newspaper internship, journalism trip to Brazil, volunteer work in north Indian villages, and some extra multimedia classes.

“Oh, you’re such a free spirit,” my mom’s friends tell me as they nudge their children toward law school or MCAT classes.

But my sense of adventure might have something to do with the fact that finding a job has me shaking in my hiking boots.

The other day I looked up from my elliptical to the gym TV to see a headline that read “Worst year to graduate ever?” Soothing.

It’s not just the news, or the demise of the Boston Globe, CosmoGirl or Oprah Home. It’s also the journalism conferences where even lighthearted, successful columnists like Dave Barry have given budding writers the yellow light.

Professors in j-schools around the country are arming students with “backpack journalism” skills like video editing, RSS-savvy writing and Web design, but telling us to be open to PR and advertising.

My mother, who still makes me open up Word or upload photos for her, is pushing me to become more technical. Basically, a computer programmer who might have a couple story ideas too.

PAKISTAN: The press pushes back against the Zardari gov't (Q&A)

[A guest post by Maha Atal, who works for Forbes and blogs here.]

Once a week, I go to my grandmother's apartment to watch Pakistani TV stations via satellite. Like many Pakistani-American families, we have spent the past two years glued to our screens as lawyers, politicians and citizens agitated for the restoration of the judiciary, disbanded by then-President Pervez Musharraf in 2007. Meanwhile, just as Pakistanis were tuning in, Musharraf and his civilian successors increased regulation of the televised and print media. Journalists ventured onto new media platforms and my mother and I spent many hours following the protests on news websites like GEO.tv, and when these too were restricted, on social media platforms like YouTube. Sometimes, we saw content from activists who used the web to promote their cause; sometimes, we saw journalists wander into the fray to cover it, and occasionally, to insert themselves into the protests. Now that the Chief Justice and the judiciary system have been restored, I asked Ayesha Tammy Haq, host of 24Seven on BusinessPlusTV what the convergence means for Pakistan's Fourth Estate.

SAJAforum: In some sense, there have been two protest movements underway here, one to free the judiciary and one to free the press. But the line between them is pretty thin, since many journalists have been active cheerleaders of and participants in the lawyers' marches and rallies. Can you describe how this happened? 

HAQ: When this started [in November 2007], an independent press was a relatively new phenomenon in Pakistan. We didn’t have a formal code of conduct yet. The journalists and young reporters who went out to cover the movement were sympathetic as they saw it as a force for change. The clampdown on the press brought them in to direct confrontation with the state hence their active role [in the events covered].

So the press became fairly partisan. During the marches, the producers would keep the frame tight so they never showed gaps in the crowd. People were killed in the streets in Karachi, but the media never showed the bad side.

The Daily Times did a whole series about whether the movement should be transitionist or transformationist. They became active participants not because they were marching with the lawyers but by using [their coverage] to shape government policy and saw this as their role. It was a conceptual movement.

Is there any concern about journalists giving up their objective stance to become newsmakers?

UK: BBC Journalists to Strike Over Proposed "Offshoring" of South Asia Services

Journalists from across all services of the BBC have resolved to hold two one-day strikes next month, prompted in large part by plans to "offshore" operations for the BBC World Service's Hindi, Nepali, and Urdu programming to Delhi, Kathmandu, and Islamabad. From the Guardian:

TV, radio and online news will be disrupted on Friday 3 April and Thursday 9 April after nearly 800 members of the National Union of Journalists chapel at the BBC today voted in favour of industrial action in a national ballot.

More than 1,100 of the union's nearly 4,000 members at the corporation took part in the vote, 77% of whom voted in favour of a strike.

The most urgent threat of compulsory cuts is at the World Service's South Asian section, where up to 20 members are at risk, the union has said. Staff in Scotland are also understood to be under threat.

The NUJ general secretary, Jeremy Dear, said: "Journalists at the South Asian services have been fighting a heroic struggle against the outsourcing of their jobs ... now they have the weight of thousands of NUJ members at the BBC behind them." [link]

In late February, journalists within the South Asia services held their own one-day strike to protest the proposed restructuring. In addition to worrying about lost jobs in London, the journalists fear that shifting operations to the subcontinent would compromise the quality and independence of the BBC's coverage:

Staff are concerned that moving production of these BBC language services abroad will result in poorer output and a loss of independence which is integral to the BBC World Service.

One member commented: “If the BBC’s succeeds in imposing change, the tendency will be for the output to become more and more India-centric, in the case of the India service, as they try to compete with local FM broadcasters.

“This moves away from the World Service’s USP: impartial news with a global perspective. Why should the British taxpayer end up paying for a local Indian radio station?” [link]

The International Federation of Journalists has echoed these concerns, asserting that "the BBC management's off-shoring plans will put at risk seventy years of first-class journalism and expose their journalists to political and commercial pressures beyond their control." On the eve of last month's one-day strike, John McDonnell, a Labour MP for west London, elaborated upon these concerns even further:

PAKISTAN: Geo TV Blocked, Sherry Rehman Resigns

Everything old appears to be new again in Pakistan. The latest: government bans on independent television news coverage.

On the heels of an emergency crackdown earlier this week, in which the government of President Asif Ali Zardari responded to the "Long March" organized by the lawyers movement by banning public gatherings and reportedly detained hundreds of opposition lawyers and political workers, Zardari has also moved to block transmission of Geo TV throughout the country:

On the direct order of President Asif Ali Zardari, the transmission of the Geo News was blocked by cable operators in various parts of the country on Friday, which drew flak from across the country.

The transmission was blocked in some parts of Karachi, Hyderabad, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Quetta, Multan, Rawalakot, Muzaffarabad, Deepalpur, Sargodha, Nawabshah, Faisalabad, Gujranwala and Dera Murad Jamali. [link]

Geo and other TV news channels were previously blocked -- for much the same reasons as the present ban by Zardari -- by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, first as the lawyers' movement was gaining momentum in the spring of 2007 and later after Musharraf declared a state of "emergency" in November 2007.

MEDIA: Q&A with media critic Sevanti Ninan on the Mumbai attacks coverage

[ See SAJA's full coverage of the Mumbai attacks, including our webcasts ]

In the immediate aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, we asked Sevanti Ninan, media columnist and editor of The Hoot, to give us her thoughts on the coverage. At the time, she was too busy, but the uproar over the Indian media's coverage hasn't subsided so we put some questions to her last week.

Some background: There's an ongoing debate in India over whether the government should impose greater controls on the media. Additionally, several prominent journalists are under constant attack from people who felt the media either did a poor job, or even worse, aided the terrorists during the operation by broadcasting sensitive information.

NDTV's Barkha Dutt, who seemed to report nonstop throughout the ordeal, has been taking constant heat since the attacks, from prominent pieces in The Telegraph and the Christian Science Monitor to a Facebook campaign ("Barkha Dutt for worst senior journalist on the planet" has 1,748 members now). She also has lots of fans who have come to her defense, but recently another controversy emerged over Dutt/NDTV's threats of legal action against a blogger who criticized her. As this Hoot article makes clear, the blogger retracted his original post and conceded that it had been "untrue and defamatory." Dutt and NDTV have been accused of trying to stifle free speech.

In that context, we caught up with Sevanti Ninan. We also asked her a couple questions about the state of the Indian media, which is now seeing a downturn after a period of intense growth.

SAJAforum: What do you think are the more constructive criticisms to have emerged of the media, in the wake of the Mumbai attacks?

NINAN: That it should be far more restrained in its live coverage, that it should be aware of the import of the information it is dishing out in an unfolding crisis, that its editorial bosses should be in the studio directing sensitive coverage and not out in the field reporting breaking news, because no one  in the studio is  senior enough to rein them in when they go overboard. That it is neither the place of  TV reporters and anchors  to editorialise constantly while reporting, nor to war monger or promote ridicule of politicians.And that there should restraint in labelling the news, and trying to queer the pitch with slogans like "enough is enough."