Journalism colleges to include shoe-throwing in syllabus

Embarrassed by the inability of journalists to hit a non-moving objects — on multiple occasions now — with a shoe, even from close ranges, International Journalists Assosication have decided to include shoe-throwing as part of the syllabus in all journalism courses. They will instruct all universities to make this change considering the crisis journalists around the world are going through.

Jason Pillai, Secretary of the Association blamed the situation on the lack of exciting stuff for media to report about. “At times journos are forced to pull off such stunts, because the world we live in, is not as exciting as it used to be. There is no Hitler, no more World wars, for god’s sake they even killed Saddam Hussain. The Bin Laden tapes don’t get as many TRPs as it used to –- Pakistan being an exception — and bomb blasts have become as common as price-rise in India. No one gives a damn about those things any longer.”

At this point chupchap was forced to remind him that he was going off the mark and that the actual issue was about this journo who missed the mark at such a short distance. Jason Pillai nodded his head and said that the new subject on Shoe-throwing will be 90% practical and 10% based on written exams. “Journalists will receive training by the respective military – from Taliban and freelance suicide members for journos in NWFP Pakistan. By the need of the course, they should be able to hit the ‘target’ from  range of 50 yards.”

In the written exams they will have questions pertaining to the history of such practice and a five page essay of the founder of the trend among others.

He also said that the association will contact Oxford dictionary to change the spelling of shooed away to shoed away considering the relevance of the latter.

PS: Aw crap, looks like someone already thought about the idea before me! Grrr

PPS: Okay yet another person (also working for DNA) wrote on a similar topic! Two DNA employees wrote on the same topic. Hmm… we do some sole-ful journalism you see! =P
i

Filed under: Media , chidambaram, India, journalism, Media, politics, shoe, vore09

Advantage Newspapers

I have never believed that blogs can replace newsapapers, though I do believe blogs (including micro-blogging services like Twitter) are much more faster in delivering news than newspapers.

All over the world newspapers are facing a severe finance crunch as a result of fall in ad revenue during this recession. NYTimes mortgaged its Times Square building and is offloading its investment in Red Sox baseball team. Anything for liquidity it seems. Many newspapers are shutting down in US, and situation is not so bright in India either. But I think this is part and parcel of recession, it also highlights the dangers of ad-dependent model.

Many bloggers who following Marketing trends around the world believe newspapers are obscelete. I disagree with that a 100%.

Seth Godin believes people won’t miss newspapers much when they are gone.

The web has excelled at breaking the world into the tiniest independent parts. We don’t use this to support that online. Things support themselves. The food blog isn’t a loss leader for the gardening blog. They’re separate, usually run by separate people or organizations.

The problem here is he is looking is strictly from a business point of view. He goes to a differen level in another para

What’s left is local news, investigative journalism and intelligent coverage of national news. Perhaps 2% of the cost of a typical paper. I worry about the quality of a democracy when the the state government or the local government can do what it wants without intelligent coverage. I worry about the abuse of power when the only thing a corrupt official needs to worry about is the TV news. I worry about the quality of legislation when there isn’t a passionate, unbiased reporter there to explain it to us.

Let me make it clear. That is definitely not the case. He may know about all the things under the sky but his understanding of journalism is pretty weak.  I work in a newspaper and city teams are generally the biggest. Sections like Nation, Sport and International are generally made in one centre (Mumbai or Delhi in most cases) and sent to other locations. Also point me to one blog which provides comprehensive local news coverage. Joshua Ellis, a journalist with 15 years experience in the field posts counter points and dissects his post (MUST READ).  

Having been a print journalist for a pretty long time now (13 years! Jesus!), I’m gonna go ahead and disagree with Godin here. The heavy stuff — investigative journalism, maintaining a Washington bureau, local news — isway more than 2% of the cost of running a paper. Non-feature sections of a newspaper — arts and entertainment, opinion/editorial, advice columns, et cetera — are not that expensive to maintain. Trust me on this — most columnists and reviewers aren’t making the big bucks, unless their work is regularly and widely syndicated. (This is not a function of the Web’s advent, by the way. This is how things have always been, as far as I can tell.)

But my favourite part of his post is:

What newspapers have that blogs don’t — and can’t, and won’t for the foreseeable future — is full-time staff, who are paid a (presumably) living wage to do the kind of in-depth work that blogs don’t, can’t, and won’t for the foreseeable future. A staff writer can spend the hours in the library or the paper’s morgue and on the street interviewing sources, doing interviews and getting background.

Newspapers also still provide identity and legitimacy functions for journalists, particularly in the world of politics. Don’t believe me? Try to get White House press credentials for your blog. Call up your Senator and ask their press secretary to provide you with background and an official statement for a blog post you’re doing.

 

 

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According to techcrunch even online revenue’s are going to suffer a hit this year again due to recession.

Display advertising revenue is going to fall of a cliff in January according to a number of content sites I’ve spoken with who rely on advertising for revenue. “Sales through December were mostly strong as advertisers used up their marketing budgets,” said one sales exec. But, he added, “there are few buyers for this next fiscal quarter, and those few that are buying are looking for steep discounts.”

So does this mean ad supported websites are going to shutdown? No, they will survive much like newspapers, but only the best will survive. The rest will die a slow death.

So what we newspapers need to do here is reinvent themselves not shut down because of the temporary slump. Also, people should stop believng that they can exist in a wrld without such a medium. You may say you get to read all news online, but hey most of them come via newspapers, may be not the breaking news. But yes analysis and other in depth stories which is not expected from an online website/blog.

PS: Manu has a great post on innovation in media industry

Filed under: Media

“We didn’t spam,” CNN

As soon as I finished my last post, I shot a mail to CNN feedback email id expressing my frustration. This was my mail

I never visit CNN website I don’t have an id there. Nor do I subscribe to any news from the
site. Why am I still receiving “news updates”?
From where did you get my email id and who gave you permission to send me mails which
I have no interest in! The funniest part is to disable these mails I need to create an id
now that was my WTF moment of the day. Please I need answers.
If you are not the right person please redirect me to the correct person. (email id pls)

….and to be honest I wasn’t disappointed, as I received a reply from them today morning

Thank you for alerting us to the spam you have received that purports to be from CNN.  As you may know, spammers often disguise or forge the source of their e-mail to give the impression that it derived from the CNN system.  In fact, this message is fraudulent and did not originate from CNN.  We suggest that you delete it, and any other e-mails you suspect to be illegitimate, from your mailbox.

So the suspicion most people raised as comments to my previous post were indeed true. Check this post made by CNN on their blog on this issue (thanks karmalove)

There is another improvement on the issue, Gmail is flagging those mails with warning notes

Check this screen

Filed under: Media , CNN, E-mail address, email, Gmail, Mail, spam

CNN is spamming my inbox

The first thing I do when I go online is check my mail. Why? Because I love reading those spam mails.. It’s interesting you know, someone wants me to sell Britney Spears porn DVD and some want me to sell pills (guess what kind!)

However for the past one week there is one more source trying to “sell” stuff to me. Its none other than media giant CNN who is “selling news” to me.. woah…

The mail says I subscribed to them. Hold on did I? hmm nah none that I can think of. So I decided to disable the alerts and reached the link given at the end of the mail to disbale them. I was redirected to a login page. Well I tried logging in with my email id and guess what CNN site figured!

Apparently my EMAIL IS NOT RECOGNISED.. really? Then how how you are spamming my mail with alerts and blah? Well at this point I was quite confused and didn’t know what to do. So I did the most logical thing under the circumstances – google search. And look what it threw up.

Also am not alone, many others are also being spammed! Any idea whats happening, how it happened?

UPDATE: PROGRESS ON THE ISSUE. CHECK THIS POST

Filed under: Media, chupchap , Britney Spears, CNN, E-mail, google, help, MTV, MTV Video Music Awards, Music, news, News and Media, spam

Blogging v/s traditional media

I have been listening to a lot of blogging v/s mainstream media debate at the Blogaloreans google groups community and to be frank I am fed up of it. Why do some think traditional media can be replaced by blogging/blogs? How practical is such a solution?
Can blogging sustain without traditional media?

Okay lets approach these questions one by one

Can traditional media be replaced completely replaced by blogs?
Absolutely not! As I see it… blogs are interesting take (heavily opinionated) of an incident which the blogger came across on television/newspaper. People can refer to blog posts to may be, understand certain issues better and people can write posts to make their opinion on certain issues clear. But they can never give what traditional media gives – unbiased news coverage or reporting. One field in which blogs do the news reporting is when it comes to technology/gaming and they already have more so.

How practical is it for blogs to replace traditional media?
Quite impractical! Lets say a blogger gets to know a tit-bit of information from some source on twitter (or any other source). He/she doesn’t have contacts of officials nor contacts of other victims/witnesses. It is impossible for a person in such a position to write a wholistic report… all that can be written is a description of events which might not be enough from a reader point of view. Now lets take the same case with a newspaper. They generally have access to officials in the city/nation and can afford to send people to report the event (they get paid to do it unlike a blogger)

So can blogging sustain without traditional media?

Are you kidding me? No ways.. Traditional media give you the heads up. How much

ever you deny it is still trustworthy enough why else do so bloggers link back to stories which appeared in traditional media! May be media industry has sold its soul to the devil (advertising) that too mainly because no paper can afford to transfer is printing and staff expenses on to the reader. We are in the age of Re 1 (all-colour) papers and if such a paper is brought out without ads it would cost Rs 25 at least!

Does traditional media want bloggers dead?
Of course not! Newspapers have started relying on contents from blog for example Bangalore Mirror has a daily column featuring a Bangalore blog and Indian Express’s Zeitgeist supplement is almost fully made of blogs. And yes some prefer to ‘steal’ content as well.

What is required?
Peace. Yes the word is peace. The blood lust has to end and we need to understand that one medium cannot do without the other. No medium is perfect as each has its own shortcomings, some medium however may look more cool or glamorous thats all. Blogging is the ‘in-thing’ right now and hopefully will remain to be. It will grow much like traditional media did over the ages and hopefully will become a traditional media form in the future but never even dream of replacing the existing ones!

Filed under: Media, chupchap , blogging, India, Media, news, thoughts