Wednesday, August 12, 2009

The Newsroom of The Times of India, Hyderabad

By Ardra Balachandran

The Times of India (TOI), Hyderabad is a newspaper organisation with a clear corporate identity. It is no different from any software giant’s office you would find in the grandeur of Hitec City with posh interiors and latest computers. Everything from the sophisticated newsroom to the aggressive assertion of decentralization at all levels is proof to the ‘corporatization’ that has happened at the TOI.

Under the dynamic leadership of Mr. Kingshuk Nag, the Resident Editor of the Hyderabad Edition, the TOI has a contingent of hardworking professionals literally toiling it out in the field and inside the office. Sunday or weekday – each day is a working day. This applies to everyone including the Editor.

Mr. Nag mentioned that there is currently no Deputy / Assistant Editor profile in the organisation. Mr. Thomas Sebastian, the only News Editor, is the owner of the ‘newspaper product’ within the office. However, for all external purposes, the Editor takes the onus himself.

Under the News Editor, there are various ‘teams.’ It should be noted that each of them is not referred to as desks like in most other newspapers, but as teams like in corporate organisations. People designated as the Political Editor, Sports Editor, Business Editor, Metro Editor, Front Page Editor and so on head these individual teams. They play the same role as of the Chief Sub Editor in other organizations.

Some of the desks are highly specialized in nature. For example, the Sports team contains about four Sub Editors under the Sports Editor, who stay in their own cocoon, as the Editor puts it. There is a reason for this. Most often, the Sub Editors double up as reporters as well writing the stories and editing them themselves. This is justified because of the highly specialized nature of their beat and the stories are better edited by people who know the beat well - often the ones who write them. This of course translates into insanely long working hours. “But then, journalism is not a profession, but a lifestyle,” pat comes the reply from the Editor. Doubling the resources would not be a good business proposition; something that is definitely not acceptable at TOI. After all, it is owned by the family of Sameer Jain, the pioneer who broke off shackles of puritanism and walked with his newspaper through the corridors of commercialization in a revolutionary style.

The Metro team deals with the city content, and apparently has the most high profile connections as well as the grass root ones. According to Mr. Nag, they feel the pulse of the city and pass on the same to the newspaper. They give an identity to the edition.

The newsroom meeting in the morning around 11’o clock, attended mainly by the Editor himself and the Bureau Chiefs (counterparts of the Editors who head the teams), is a ceremonial one which involves a post mortem of the previous day’s newspaper. The Editor gives an analysis in detail so that the mistakes that crept in can be avoided in the future. Since the major news items of the day would break much after this meeting, only a very rough outline of the content for the next day is discussed. Often, the decisions or suggestions from the meeting are passed on to the reporters on the field by the bureau chiefs over telephone to avoid the inconvenience of making them come to the office.

The news meeting in the evening is, however, far more important. Hyderabad press caters to only one edition, and therefore, the meeting happens as late as 8 p.m. This is in contrast to; say the Ahmedabad press of TOI, where three editions – for Ahmedabad, Baroda and Surat - are printed. Based on the distance of the cities from where the press is located, time is taken into account backwards, and the meetings are held at 5 p.m., 6.30 p.m., and 8 p.m. for the Surat, Baroda and Ahmedabad editions respectively.

The heads of all the teams usually attend this evening meeting with the Editor and the News Editor. Bureau Chief does not stay back for this meeting usually. All major decisions regarding story selection for each page, particularly the first page, is done during this meeting. Mr. Nag prefers to keep this meeting short and sweet and does not dictate too much on how each single page has to be done. He believes he has an efficient team of journalists at his disposal that can be taken into confidence.

The decisions and an approximate plan of action made at the meeting are passed on to the head office at New Delhi. Beyond the meeting, each team is responsible for the final story selection and layout of their respective pages. Every Sub Editor’s immediate boss gives the final nod for a copy and page layout. The layout software currently in use is QuarkXpress 4.1. However, a transitional process is underway where the TOI across India will be migrating to brand new customized software called Computer Composite International (CCI).

For a long time, there was no single style sheet that all the editions were putting to use. As a result, large number of inconsistencies started showing up. An enterprising team member from New Delhi decided to put an end to the chaos, and now, the TOI has a centralized style sheet which everyone follows.

One characteristic feature of the TOI that needs to be emphasized is regarding the National and International pages. Despite having a head office and a common pool of stories for these sections, these pages are done locally in all the editions. While Mr. Nag feels that this results in redundant work and that the pages should be centrally done, the fact that the current system is maintained just to ensure decentralization has to be appreciated. By giving complete autonomy to local offices on how their entire newspaper will look and read, there is a clear identity and individuality that the organisation is lending to all its Editions.

Another feature that earmarks the democracy at the TOI is a free access queue system. While there is a separate Political Queue, Sports Queue, Business Queue, and so on for the purpose of taxonomy, all Editors have access to all the queues. Of course, there is also an Editor’s queue, where stories of significance are added to ensure the Editor’s direct attention. This queue, which often has controversial or confidential stories, is accessible only to the Editor.

The News Editor informed us that a post graduation is not a must for those who aspire to be Sub Editors. Nose for news and openness is the TOI is keen about. Since the tribe of earnest journalists is fast diminishing, imposing restrictions may not be a good idea, he said.

The Hyderabad Times (HT), the city supplement, is handled by an independent team headed by Ms. Soma Shukla. Since the press has to cater to both the supplement and the main paper, the schedule for the meetings and printing of the HT is different from the TOI. The HT goes to press by 2.30 p.m. usually to ensure enough room for the main newspaper to start printing around 12.30 a.m.

The dummy of the newspaper arrives at the Editor’s table around 5pm everyday with a clear allocation of advertising space on each page. The Editor often sends it to back to the Marketing division complaining about clutter. They may add more pages and reduce the clutter before sending it back to the Editor. However, the testing times of recession do not always give this flexibility and the Editor is forced to make compromises on content. This is part and parcel of the process of balancing ethics and business and an everyday affair at the TOI.

Sometimes, the alacrity with which the dummy is sent to the Editor is not exhibited by the Marketing division in sending the actual ad copies across. This often results in friction between the Editor and the Marketing division. When the ad copies do not reach on time, the layout cannot be frozen. Unless that is done, the newspaper cannot be put to bed. If the printing does not start at the stipulated time, delivery to the wholesalers will be delayed. The hawkers will then pick up the newspapers late. At the end of it all, the consumer will get the newspaper only after he/she is long done with the tea. As Mr. Nag says, “it is a chain reaction which cannot be avoided once a lag occurs.” A bad consumer experience like this one is what the TOI dreads the most. To avoid such situations, the Editor and his team often fight against not just another set of people, but against time and a lot of other limitations.

Monday, August 10, 2009

The News Room of The Hindu, Hyderabad


One of the most daunting and respected national newspapers of the country, The Hindu, is located in a busy part of the city in surprisingly calm premises. The board that carries the illustrious name lies remarkably hidden behind a cluster of leafy trees making it completely possible for one to pass by without a glance.

But then The Hindu has never been one for flashiness. This is not a paper where you will ogle at the bright colour bars in the Mast Head or the envelope advertising slipped over the front page. But you’ll be sure to quietly appreciate the consistent, clean and non-fussy style, the typo free stories and the general feeling that comes with reading good and well-presented content.

There are few who would choose to disagree at the assertion that The Hindu is one of the most credible and balanced newspapers in the country. This is a quality that comes from a century of unshaken editorial policy. Of not relenting on getting the other side of the picture, of verifying and cross-checking the facts of a story thoroughly before allowing it to be printed, of not allowing any mistake minor or major to creep in.

Not many might also know that The Hindu has always been a pioneer of innovations in the Indian newspaper industry. It was the first to introduce color way back in 1940 and have its own fleet of air craft for distribution in later years. It was also the first newspaper to become fully computerized, moving towards desktop publishing and the first to go online. It has the largest number of deployed foreign correspondents and a large spread of journalists making its dependence on agency feeds that much less.


The Desk at The Hindu is a well oiled machine. Organized and spread out to suit and encompass the multiple editions that reach many parts of the country, it’s centralized at the headquarters in the Desk in The Hindu office at Chennai. This desk which is almost four times the size of any city newsroom is responsible for bringing out almost 60 % of the paper including the National, Business, Op-ed, International, Sports pages which are common for all editions as is the top-half of the front page

A clear divide exists. The reporting staff are primarily concerned with generating the content (photos and graphics are additional to the written reports), and at The Hindu, these come in from staff reporters, remote correspondents (in other States, etc) and of course news agency stories. The edit desk is solely engaged in editing the content and making the pages.

The Chief News Editor is the top guy at the desk there. There are deputy editors, associate editors, senior news editors, senior sub-editors, sub-editors (not necessarily in that order) who follow him. It is then further divided beat wise. The national desk is divided into batches - a batch leader and his/her group. Each batch has to stay late one week a month for night duty (Till 2 a.m.). Stories are assigned to sub-editors, who edit, tighten etc and then they are revised by a senior before being put on page.

The Hindu Desk uses a unique software system called CCI, imported from Europe. It is the only newspaper in India to do so. This software is on par with international standards, used by several other newspapers of global repute. The advantage is that everything (content, photos, pages, editing, etc) is integrated into this one system and can be monitored easily. In addition every city office has its own CMS merged with MS Word. The paper follows the Cambridge dictionary and the Guardian style guide for standardizing its reporting and editing.

It is also the only paper to have a news ombudsman, or 'the reader's editor', for an effective proof-reading and error-minimizing mechanism in place.

The Hindu Newsroom in Hyderabad is not as large. It is broadly divided into four broad sections: the State Bureau, the City Bureau, the Metro Plus section and the Desk. At 5 PM in the evening, the newsroom buzzes with activity. While some reporters are already working away on their reports, others are trickling in after a day of assignments.

Field

The State Bureau is headed, by the Editor in Chief Nageshwar Rao, followed by Deputy Editor K. Venkateshwarulu. In addition to the city reporters, the newspapers large spread of reporters across the state brings in stories to feed the many regional pages of the newspaper. The City Bureau covers happenings in the city while Metro Plus is the Magazine supplement of the daily. This is the only section of the newspaper where the reporters double as sub-editors and designers. All the duties are internalized by the Metro Plus staff as part of News Paper Policy.

The Desk

The local desk comprises eleven sub-editors headed by senior-sub editors and a News Editor. The daily shift begins at 4:30 PM in the evening; soon enough as the first slew of reporters arrive with their finished assignments. It goes on till 12:30 AM in the night, with two people per shift staying back to see the whole thing through.

Two or three subs are in-charge of one page that are then marked copies meant for the pages. Any sub works on an average of ten stories a day correcting, verifying and tightening the reports for printing. These are then reviewed by senior sub editors and the news editor before being approved for printing.

The Hyderabad office is responsible for bringing out two editions. The first edition which is sent out to the distant areas is wrapped and ready to go by 10:30 PM. A strict deadline of half past eight is maintained for receiving reports to ensure no delays. The second edition is put to bed by quarter to one.

S. Sreevatsan, News Editor at The Hindu here in Hyderabad is currently busy with the Assembly session. It’s an important time for the newspaper, but he spares a few minutes to talk. As mentioned earlier the credibility of the paper, is one of its scared cows. He elaborates “Dates and spellings need to be correct and consistent. Copy has to be grammatically correct, concise and contain the least number of adjectives.”

There is a through cross-checking of facts and details provided by reporter and balance is ensured by trying to get the other side of the story. Sometimes stories are even put on hold till next day or sent back to reporter to dig deeper and get all the facts if they’re found unsatisfactory in that regard. ‘The aggrieved are often more upset after their story is published.” He candidly remarks on the insistence of balance in every story.

Roshini Pochont a Sub-Editor at the National Desk in Chennai talks about her experience “I've enjoyed my time at the desk so far, even though I was initially keen on a writing profile, but editing is a different experience altogether. It's helping with improving my language skills, and also in understanding that good journalistic writing needs to be precise, clear, simple, and objective, from all the copies i get to edit everyday. The newsroom experience, of course, is brilliant...just to be in the thick of all the breaking news and discussions of events.”

Radhika Agrawal, another Sub-Editor from Chennai describes her typical day. “It is not a 9 to 5 job. However, a sub comes to office sometime around 5.30pm and leaves around midnight. Those on night duty come in around 7pm - 8pm and leave at 2am. We all get a day off each week. During the day, a sub can report, if he/she chooses to.” But the exhausting night shift usually render many too tired to opt for reporting by day.

The seemingly efficient system is not without its hitches. The simplest things may cause inadvertent delays. Things can and do always go wrong. Two years ago, the blasts in Hyderabad which occurred late in the evening meant that the entire worked out paper had to be thrown away and a new one had to be created swiftly. Added to this is the limitation of having to design and prepare pages for newspapers around pre-designated advertisement spaces.

Radhika elaborates. “As of now, one machine is out of order. It will take about three months to get repaired. So the editions need to go out faster than usual since there are only two working machines. Besides that, when Bal T was hospitalized, there were rumors that he was dead...It upset our Chief because his death would have meant remaking everything! Then again, some important news story may take too long to arrive. It upsets the rhythm of the newsroom. The work especially page making gets held up.”

But like every newspaper worth its salt, it contends with all the problems and moves one, delivering at the break of dawn to all its subscribers their daily news. “Everyday is a new day for a newspaper, " says Sreevatsan.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

The Newsroom of Eenadu, Hyderabad

By P Kalishekar and Donnipad Sandeep

Eenadu is the largest circulated daily in Andhra Pradesh, established in 1974 by Ramoji Rao, a famous industrialist from Coastal region of Andhra Pradesh. Today Eenadu group is doing business (especially media related) in publishing Eenadu paper, magazines like Chatura (monthly magazine), Vipula (monthly) and Annadhata (a farmer or agricultural oriented monthly magazine, simply agri-journal), all comes under print media.

Among above mentioned magazines, Chatura and Vipula are mainly intended to attract women readers. They consist of stories, folk tales from famous works of popular authors. They presently cost around Rs. 10 each. Annadhata gives knowledge regarding agricultural practices especially intended to farmers.

The details of work system and organizational structure of Eenadu paper:

Head office of Eenadu is situated in Hyderabad. It has 23 branches in Andhra Pradesh – one branch per district. The collection of news is like a pyramid. The head office has its branches in each district which further have zones. The zones are divided into mandals and mandals into villages.

Every paper will have two arms: 1) News gathering 2) Editing and Printing

News flow: Villages and Mandals---Zones---Disrtrict---State head office

For every mandal there will a reporter who collects the news from all villages in that mandal. First the news is collected in the villages and mandals by local (mandal) reporters. This is sent to zonal in charge, who edits and refines it before it like reaches the district head quarters, from where it finally reaches the state head quarters after through editing and refinement (correcting and deleting wastes). The state head quarters will take the material (news) it wants and sends back the unwanted news to the district head quarters. This arrangement enables them to print important district news (in brief) in common main paper (which appears same all over the state). Very important district news will again be printed in district edition also but comprehensively, in district paper they also give the news specific to that district.

The district head office

Every district head office will have the bureau, which is the meeting place of all mandal reporters. The gathered news reaches from bureau to desk where there will be sub editors and news editor. Sub editors will do necessary corrections to the news editor will take decisions like finalizing or changing the news. From here the important news reaches state head quarters.

State head quarters

It consists of bereau of specialized reporters like politics, sports, agriculture, and education etc, city reporters. It will have a desk that comprises sub editors and news editor. Their duty is same as their counterparts in district head quarters. The state head office receives the news from district head office and other cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and their national and international reporters. The head office will send the important A.P state related news to four important city head office to publish. Four important city centres will publish national, international, important A.P news, local city news, news of the state in which they located. They receive important A.P news from the head quarters in Hyderabad.

Eenadu like other news papers buys the news and photos from

1) United News of India ( UNI )

2) Press Trust of India ( PTI )

3) India Abroad Service

4) Reuters

The head office consists of desks like Sports, Political, Research and Reference (called Guna), Film, Financial or Business, General, Regional, International etc. As the information is confidential, they told that they have more than ten desks (approximately). Each desk consists of eight to ten members not more than that.

Research and Reference desk: It is a data bank which preserves previous papers in electronic form. It consists of nearly ten members most of them from library science background and few are subject experts.

In any organization business is called front office, business and news room together called front shop. Printing and response together called back shop. Printing is called back office. The printing centre in Hyderabad is located at Musa Pet.

More over Eenadu has nineteen printing centres all over Andhra Pradesh and four printing centres in four important cities of India. Eenadu paper is published from Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Tirupathi, Anantapur, Karimnagar, Rajahmundry, Suryapet, Guntur, Nellore, Srikakulam, Kurnool, Tadepalligudem, Warangal, Kadapa, Nizamabad, Khammam, Ongole, Mahaboobnagar, Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, and Delhi.

Friday, August 7, 2009

The Newsroom of The New Indian Express, Hyderabad


The New Indian Express is a paper that caters to most of the southern regions in India. With its headquarters in Chennai, it has got its bureaus in many districts of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Orissa and Kerala. The Hyderabad bureau is the main office in Andhra Pradesh. The resident editor is Mr. G.S Vasu and the news editor, who spoke to us in length about the organisation, is Mr. G Subramaniam.

Apart from the resident and the news editor, the Hyderabad desk comprises two Deputy News editor (DNE), six chief sub-editors, one senior sub editor and two sub editors. The Expresso section has a separate editor and four sub editors-cum-reporters working under him/her. Four photographers also work in the Hyderabad office though they are considered more to be a part of the bureau than the desk.

The Hyderabad desk is responsible for the creation of first six pages of the daily newspaper. Pages 7, 9 and 10 which are the nation pages are created in Cochin. The edit page (page no.8), Page 11 (world), pages 12 and 13 (markets and business) and pages 14 to 16 (sports) are created in Chennai.

The desk keeps to its daily schedule without fail. A meeting consisting of the resident editor, the news editor, the chief of bureau, DNEs, photographers, chief sub editors etc is held everyday at 6.30 pm. Apart from the review of the previous day’s newspaper, selection of the lead stories and the placement of most of the news items are discussed and finalised.

The New Indian Express comes out with two editions daily. The deadline for the first edition is 10:15 pm. The reporters can hand in their stories until 9 -9:15 pm. The agency copy also roll in till this time. The newspaper subscribes to copy from PTI, IANS, AFP and AP. The news editor specified that though the deadline for handing in the stories is 9:15 pm, they do not wait for this time to start the production. It happens simultaneously but after 9:15 pm, the pages are laid to bed. At 10:15 pm, the pages are sent for process and printing at Bovanpally. The deadline for the late city edition is 1:45 am. Thus, it can be seen that the entire process is a chain reaction with each person depending upon the previous person to finish their job on time. Only then can the paper roll out in time. To the question whether the first edition and the late city edition will have huge differences, Mr. Subramaniam told us that a lot of news like crime, accidents etc. happen at night. Hence, there is almost always quite a lot of different news in the late city edition.

As is mostly misconstrued, the editing of the copy is not done strictly through the line of hierarchy. Just because the hierarchy is in place does not mean that the sub editor leaves a majority of the jobs to the senior sub editors. According to the news editor, it is generally agreed that the chief sub-editors are responsible for the pages. Each chief sub-editor looks into the pages of each other as well. This is to prevent any unconscious human error. Thus everybody is responsible for everything. Ultimately the news editor has to approve all the pages.

Unlike the olden days, the proof readers have no place in the modern newsroom. Since the entire work has been computerised, the editors themselves check the pages for mistakes. The New Indian Express makes use of in-house software called Win Editor for editing. It is linked to a database which provides help to the editors. The pages are designed by the designers in collaboration with the editors. They use Adobe Indesign CS3 for the layout. There is an engineer who takes care of the maintenance of these softwares. They also make use of an internal website to communicate with the other employees in other bureaus.

There is another section in the desk called scanning section who are responsible for scanning the photographs and making necessary changes like cropping, providing sufficient light to the photo and processing it. They have to take care of the advertisements too which come from the ad agencies. They check the print quality of the given ads and if needed, they boost it. Though these scanners carry out purely technical work in the news papers, they are also considered as journalist and are paid like them. They enjoy all the privileges of a normal journalist.

The people who live in the city are commonly very keen towards the things which happen in and around the city. That means proximity is very important in the profession of journalism these days. Regarding this, almost all newspapers have a city special pull out with the daily except on Sunday. The city pull-out of the The New Indian Express is ‘Expresso’ which deals with the city happenings. Most of the news which appears in ‘Expresso’ is soft news and features. The ‘Expresso’ has a separate Desk and Bureau. At the desk there is one editor under whom four reporters cum editors work.

The New Indian Express has quite a few sister publications. They include Kannada Prabha, Dinamani (Tamil Nadu), Tamil Nadu Express and Malayalam Varika. They used to own Andhra Prabha but they have sold it off now. Apart from this, the newspaper itself has its bureaus spread across south India. In Andhra Pradesh, they have their reporters present in 19 out of the 23 districts. They have their bureaus in Tirupati, Rajamuhndry, Vijaywada, Vishakapatnam etc.

The tables at the newspaper desk were traditionally arranged in a semi-circle fashion. But with the computerization of most of the work, this system is no longer followed. At The New Indian Express office, each editor was provided with his/her own cubicle with their own computer terminal.

Though the office space of The New Indian Express seems small, all the major functions go on quite smoothly in it. They follow the policy of team work and no matter what the hierarchy is, they believe in each one being responsible for everything.

We also talked to one of the sub editors, Mr. Rahul Ganguly, at the Indian Express daily supplement, Expresso. To the questions asked to him, he gave replies that were quite informative. The editors at the Expresso come at around 3 pm and stay till late night. Since there are only four sub-editors cum reporters, they do the editing and designing as a team. All the sub-editors are allowed access to other people’s news but generally do not interfere too much. There isn’t any specific number of articles that each sub-editor works on but all they are divided quite equally. Though the job can be stressful at times, they manage their social and family life along with it quite well.