It’s not often that T.J. S. George speaks his mind on journalism. At least, not in public.
Founder-editor of Asiaweek magazine, editorial advisor to the New Indian Express group, and the author of numerous books ranging from music (MS), to words (Enquire Dictionary), George is the ultimate wordsmith but also, paradoxically, a man of few words.
In a rare interaction with the Mysore District Journalists' Association (thank you Amshi Prasanna), George took questions from journalists and journalism students on Sunday morning.
Among the key points he made:
# There is a lot of immaturity in Indian journalism; out of that comes incompetence.
# Journalism is getting less and less important in Indian media, and content is no longer king.
# Money-success has become the be-all and end-all of newcomers in journalism.
Go to the T.J.S. George page on the right of the screen for the full text, and come back here to leave a comment.
Amen to Point one. But to the ‘immaturity’ factor, my take is that new comers especially in the television field find very few seniors who can be looked up to. For a lot of TV journalists a good story means when all the production cues are in place and that there are no technical glitches!!!
The third point is too general of a statement. Not every one comes to this field just to rake in a quick buck, atleast not Kozhikode Chandu.
It is the eyes, ears and the senses, which lead to illusions, and in a society, it is media, which acts as senses and builds and breaks illusions. If Immaturity is in believing and acting in these illusions, no body can help that. Everybody has illusions. Some have more, some less. And life is too short to realize, accept and break all the illusions. Journalism is all about checking and correcting the illusions. And the more powerful the illusion is, the tougher journalism is needed. Media must learn to check and correct its own illusions.
Amidst all the profundity of Mr. George, the one fact that remains unchanged is that you get the newspaper you deserve.
In these times when societal mores are changing for the worse faster than the clothes of those women who feature on Page 3, what else do you expect than the priority of news, the content, the importance to issues and the quality and style of the English language as practised by a newspaper like say ‘The Times of India’?
No matter what the hardsell, no matter what the gimmicks adopted by the MBA armed marketing gurus employed to sell the paper, IF readers at large were not party to the dumbing down of the whole process of journalism, the aforementioned newspaper or any of its type would have long fallen by the wayside.
Moral of the story: Our people want gross muck and so they get. A mirror of the times perhaps!
Mr George wake up and smell the coffee!
If you had been editing the TOI, this line would have had ‘toffee’ instead of coffee at the end!!
To.
Mr.T.J.S.GEORGE,
I have been tring to get through to you since a few months now.
Regarding a book material…
Would you be generous and correspond at: sujatac9@yahoo.com
Thsnk You.
sujata