I came back from a rather lazy weekend in Bombay where thankfully I managed to steer clear of doing crazy things. Beer, smokes and football only with a different group of people this time. Quite enjoyable. Anyway, soon after I returned by the evening flight yesterday I was coerced somewhat by a friend I had not met in a while to meet up. Like more than half the people I know, this guy also hacks around for a living and interestingly we had some points to make about media criticism online.
"You know why more people don't do it?" he told me, "Because they're shit scared they will get caught. And when they caught and if they've been stupid idiots regarding what they write on the blog, they'll be unhirable!" And of course, he proceeded to give an example of a chap who has pretty much shot his career to shreds because of this and argued that a whole generation of senior editors will never hire the bugger.
But then again, I still believe an online blog/commentary on the way Indian TV anchors/reporters look, talk and generally do news stories is a completely decent idea. I mean, there are so many pancake faces and women with bad hair day's on TV and this is before we get to the diction and elocution part. Among TV anchors while I still believe Vishnu has by far and away the best elocution of any anchor, there are others with fake accents and awful diction. Then scripts, watching TV around seeing how a bunch of unelected twits (Karat and Yechury) trying to hold our (flawed) democracy to ransom and the horrific blasts at Hyderabad, I noticed a horrible usage of adjectives.
But this is not going tob be a job for me. And before TV-types pipe-in with vitriol, I think this will be a great idea because criticism only improves the final product. What say?
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You don't want the enmity of my friendship!
5 comments:
To be fair, i think thats what WFN started out as! The first month of posts were pretty constructive and insightful. The muck-raking started in the comments section (nearly all anonymous - snakeman and yours truly being honourable exceptions) and later creeped into the posts as well since that was selling so much more.
True, and that is exactly what I was telling Sankeman the other day. The comments section became a sort of bitchboard and this is why I feel that comment moderation is critical on any blog. Heck, I delete comments I don't like.
K, any idea why TO has suddenly changed in their coverage on terrorism for the past three days. I am suprised :)
Anon, pleasantly I should hope! This government like several before it are apologists towards terrorism for fear of losing a particular votebank. Also, it isn't just that I believe the ToI has been hammering on about the Srikrishna report as well!
There are enough within that particular votebank itself who are beginning to fight back. Watch the way the Barelvis and Deobandis are fighting amongst themselves lately. Heck, just walk from Jama Masjid to Fatehpuri Masjid, especially if you have a beard . . .
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