Showing posts with label Blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blog. Show all posts

Thursday, August 28, 2014

How digital journalism changes story telling

Picture courtesy: www.fundintranslation.berkely.edu
On Tuesday 26 August, 2014, Stats SA released the GDP figures of the second quarter of 2014. The figures showed that South Africa has managed to stave off a recession by posting a modest growth of 0.6 per cent.

The following multi media platforms may be used to tell the story.




Picture Courtesy: www.theundercovercircuit.com
Social Media Platforms:
  • Google Plus Hangout: G+ Hangout is a very useful tool to reach out to the readers. If I was reporting on the GDP news, I would have held G+ hangout with my readers and my newspaper's business/ economic editor and invited industry experts one or two days before the publication of the news. This would have generated interest among readers about the expected figures. In the environment of 24X7 news, it is extremely important to create a 'buzz' around the news one is reporting on so that one can draw the readers in.
  • Twitter: News story, sensational or otherwise is now mostly 'broken' on Twitter. I would have posted the news on Twitter as soon as Stats SA made the figures public. I would have also twitted on subsequent tweets the important numbers and facts such as the key contributors to the growth and the key sectors which pulled the growth down. Twitter serves as the most useful platform for making the news reach a large audience through the means of a "#". In addition to my followers getting my tweets, there is a high chance of the tweets being re-tweeted or being marked as favorite. 
  • News Organizations's Website: After Twitter, the second most important place to report the news is of course, the news organization's website. This platform would give the journalist an opportunity to report on the story behind the numbers and analyse the 'how' and the 'why'. It also gives the reader a chance to disseminate the news on various other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and on Google Plus and of course  to be emailed to the reader's friends. The reader also gets an opportunity to comment on the news item. 
  • News Organisation's Blog: Blogging is a very useful platform to get the reader's attention and engage him/her with the news story. For the particular GDP story, an economist or an industry spokesperson could be invited to write on the blog. Blogs are usually for serious readers who are interested in analyzing the news. Therefore it would be better if an economic analyst or the Treasury spokesperson can write the blog about the consequences of such a slow growth rate and how it would affect the economy. Also a mining industry expert could be invited to write upon what impact does the negative growth rate have on the industry  
  • Reddit.com: Reddit.com is an amazing site to put the news across. Of course, a news like SA's GDP growth would not necessarily interest readers, because a lot of readers might not be from South Africa. To make the news more interesting and relevant to readers, I would link news articles on a particular sector such as mining and show how mining in SA reflected a negative growth rate. I could also post a series of articles from my organization's website about the trends of the past quarter's GDP figures and analyse what it means for the economy.
  • Storify: Storify lets the user create stories or timelines using social media platforms. I would Storify the above news with the various tweets that my business/economic editors post and also take relevant conversation occurring on media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn on the topic and Storify them.
  • LinkedIn: Though this platforms is mostly used to connect professionally, news like the GDP growth should definitely be on LinkedIn. I can share the link from my website onto LinkedIn and through LinkedIn to the community pages that LinkedIn hosts. LinkedIn is frequented by more serious visitors who are willing to read on subjects such as GDP growth rate.
  • Web Polls: Though not a social media platform, polls are a very good tool to gain an insight into the readers. For this story, I could have a poll asking the readers to express their view on a certain sector of the economy or on the growth figures. Online polling sites such SurveyMonkey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/?ut_source=header_) to create questions and take surveys on the website or blog. Readers will have added initiative to read the article and respond.

Picture courtesy: www.socialmediaexaminer.com
Data Journalism and Visual Graphics:

Economic/ business news can be best told through visual graphics and through the use of pie charts and bar diagrams. Visual representation should be used to simplify the numbers and figures that many readers find daunting and most of them, therefore avoid news such as the one above. In an article from the Columbia Journalism School, the author points to Washington Post's successful digital initiative "Wonkblog" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/) as an example to visually represent numbers.
I would use an interactive visualization and exploration tool like Gephi to put across some of the important figures such as the positive growth by some sectors and why did these sectors grow. I could actually represent the GDP growth figures completely through graphics and share it on my website. It would help draw readers in and help them easily understand about the state of the economy.

Multimedia: 

The use of multimedia such as videos would not really help this story. A way of incorporating videos in the story would be to focus on particular sectors of the economy to show how and why it fared, as it did. Or one can interview industry experts or economists to show how the figures would impact the economy. I feel, the Google hangout mentioned above would actually help the reader more than just videos of comments from industry experts or economists.




Tuesday, May 14, 2013

My Life as a "wanderlust"... No End To Learning...

There's practically no end to learning new things...

An oft heard old phrase, right.... but this is something that I discovered only a few years earlier... discovered, what it really meant...

Given, like all other "normal, self- absorbed" students, I hated studying.... I mean, I really hated it.

In fact I used to be very envious of my Mom, who was a home-maker, because, she had no home work to submit, she wouldn't be punished for talking in class (which, incidentally was a constant for me)... she did not have the headache of packing her bags every night after duly consulting the time table, and there were no exams for her to be given... She just stayed home...

Oh man, how envious was I of her...!!!

Little did I know, that being a mum, had other responsibilities which were far more difficult and cumbersome than my simple, student life...

I was a diligent student, part of the reason was, that would keep my parents satisfied, my teachers happy and me, out of trouble, generally...

Of course I was pathetic in Maths and Science subjects, but they were only two out of the entire course of eight subjects... Till my tenth standard, somehow, I got through without much trouble, as I earlier mentioned, I was a diligent student, able to keep everyone happy...

The trouble came in my Tenth Standard, which was one of the worst years in my entire life, just not student life, but my entire life... Personally it was the happiest, because it was the first time, I had been in LOVE... well, it was more of a adolescence crush... but professionally, I mean being student is a full-time profession, isn't... it was terrible....

I flunked in almost all the tests, that were periodically taken in my class, and passed with mere passing grade in Mathematics in the finals.

That was IT for me... no more Mathematics, no more Physics, no more Chemistry... I just don't think I could have dealt with it anymore...

Fortunately for me, my parents thought so too...

In my 11th and 12th standard, I was allowed to take up the Arts subjects, and that's where the transformation came in...

I will forever be grateful to my parents for allowing me to take up Arts...

And it was in these classes, and afterwards in College, that I really learned...

There is a difference, between learning for mark's sake and learning for your sake... and the difference is a great deal...

The way I used to mug up stuff before, changed to understanding the subjects... History, Economics, English, they were no longer "subjects" for me anymore, they were a device to learn and understand the world.

For those two last years of my school life, student life for me was no more a rigmarole... it had become a journey... For the first time, in all my years of schooling, I looked forward everyday to a school day... and no, I did not study in school that was super cool or anything like that... in fact I studied in a public school, with the worst academic students, because no one wanted to take up Arts... where's the future in that...???

My teachers became my best friends... they helped me quench my thirst for knowing more, because I had developed  this insatiable desire for reading... No more, did I envy my mum, in fact I found her world to be quite mundane...

I did not understand it back then, but I do understand it now... I had excellent results in 12th standard, which enabled me to go, to one of the most distinguished college in my country... Just studying doesn't fetch one marks, one has to really love the art of learning... otherwise it's an utter waste of time, money, and energy... just mugging for mugging's sake does not get a person anywhere...

Even the job that I took up later in my life, I loved it... and I learned tons of stuff in it... Office wasn't a place where I would just trudge, do my work and get back, it became a place where I learned a lot of stuff, some practical, some philosophical...

Even my Boss was super cool  no he wasn't hot or dashing or handsome... but he made me learn some of the most important lessons of my life, and one of them was that, there was no end to learning...

It was his "mantra" for success, he would keep on saying... "Sreeupa, there's no end to learning, everyday would teach you something, every person, whoever it is, your friend or enemy, would teach you something... you just have to be cunning enough to learn from it all..."

In due course of time, I left the job, got married, moved to another country, but those words, still stay with me...

The reason I wrote all this, because, I used to think, I am a very good writer, in fact I have a blog (which incidentally, you are reading now..!!),  my work has been published in several magazines and reputable national dailies... I worked in one of the largest newspapers of the country, but four week ago I started taking this online course about writing... and trust me, it again changed my whole perception of writing...

Once more, I learned that there was no end to leaning, and if you love something very much, you would want to learn more and more and more of it... the key is just to find out what exactly you love, and the rest you'll welcome...

I love writing, I really love, the way mere words makes magic, make you want to cry, make you want to laugh, and make you want to read more of them... I love reading stories, mine and others and I love the fact that I am still learning to be a better writer and reader of the words...


Tuesday, March 5, 2013

My life as a "wanderlust" ... The Story of Sarada

As in my previous post, I had promised, that I would write about some of the wonderful people and places that I have visited during my travels, this post is my first endevour to fulfill that promise.

I wanted this story to be the first, because it's a story of an incredible woman. This incident took place in the year 1998 in the month of April. I mention this story specifically, because there are so many women, and in so many different circumstances, and each have their own brave tales to tell... this is such a story, the story of Sarada, an ordinary woman, but incredible because of the circumstances she's in.

This story takes place in a small town in of Londa, more specifically, the Londa Railway Station... Londa is situated in the Belgaum district of Karnataka, India. It's a really beautiful town, with breathtaking views of the Sahyadris rising up. There are generally two types of people who come to the Londa station. The first are the trekkers who are interested in going up the Sahyadris, and the second group generally, change trains here for the further journey upto Goa. My family and I fell into the second group.

Back in the 1990's, Konkan railways, which connects Mumbai and Margao in Goa, did not have many trains in operation and as my father was being transferred from Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, taking the right connecting train was even more difficult... so we undertook a long journey, from Madhya Pradesh, to Mahrashtra to Karnataka and finally to Goa. Londa fell in our Karnataka section of the trip.

When the train stopped in Londa, very few people alighted. It was afternoon and the month of April. The summer sun was already making it's presence felt and there were very few porters available.

We were approached by one, who took a hard look at the number of cases we were carrying and asked us our destination. When we told him that we were taking a train from this station itself, and we merely needed to change the platform, he pointed out that there was a bridge to be crossed and that with the amount of luggage we had, he would charge at least 70 bucks.

Now Indians, and especially Bengalis, have an inherent habit of bargaining... no matter the money was being paid by the Indian Government, my parents and I promptly indulged in a bargain. The fellow, probably was feeling too sleepy... contrary to agreeing or disagreeing, as is the norm of a successful  bargaining, he simply left.

So here was, a family of four, stranded on a platform, with the summer sun beating down upon us, and in a few minutes it looked as if the entire station has gone on a siesta, except for us. There was not a single person milling around, not even stray dogs were found, the few stalls of books and paraphernalia had already closed with "lunch time" hanging on their downed shutters. The last departing porter gave us a reassuring advice, wait till the next train arrives and someone would be there to help us... well the next train that would arrive was the one we were supposed to take, so his advice was completely wasted on us... but we chose not to point it out to him.

As we were staring up at the stairs to the bridge, gathering up our luggage and planning on a strategy as to who would carry what, we met her... she was a frail looking woman, in a red sari, no footwear and a large red "bindi" on her forehead... she came up to us, and signaled with her hands, where we were headed.

 Our first impression was that she was a beggar, and thus consequently, we chose to ignore her. As my father picked up the first suitcase and started heading, she ran to my father, and started snatching it from his hand... we jumped up, thinking she was a mad woman, and my mother and I started screaming for help... then she started pleading to us, again with the signs to stop screaming... she painfully explained that she was a porter.

When we understood, what she was trying to convey, we were extremely taken aback, a woman porter, that too one who could not speak or hear... we didn't know whether to be impressed or suspicious...

We slowly started loading up the suitcases onto her head... when the limit of two cases was reached, my mother asked my father to take the other two, since she was so frail, we didn't really trust her to carry everything.... she again signaled, she was very able to carry the extra two suitcases, and they were also promptly loaded up...with four cases piled up on her head, and two duffel bags on her right arm, she slowly started to mount the stairs. I and my brother kept matching her pace, because we were sure she would topple over. She again signaled to me regarding which platform to go to, and I signaled back. When we reached our destination, she slowly unloaded the suitcases and the bags and waited. We weren't sure what we were supposed to do, and my father took out a 50 rupee note... she again signaled that she didn't want the money now, but when she would load the luggage on the train. We were surprised and really touched.

As then happens with all Indian families, we squatted on top of our luggage and waited for our train to come. She squatted on the floor nearby.

My mother, this is one trait I share with her... whatever the circumstances, we need to talk. My mother promptly started a conversation with her. Now it was the most strangest conversation, I have ever witnessed. No a single word was spoken between the two speakers, the entire conversation was through actions, yet the witnesses present could clearly understand what was being spoken.

What transpired from the conversation was as follows.

Her name was Sarada, she pointed at a Hindi tatoo on her arm to let us know of this fact, she was married, her husband was also a porter, infact the same one who had told us that there would be someone to help us... she had three children, and she helped her husband out in the business of pottering.

She looked after the noon shift, when there wasn't many trains and passengers, while her husband took a short nap. He would be back, she said in about an hour, and she would go to pick up her kids from school. She had three children, two daughters and one son and yes they all went to school. Her husband and her children could all speak and hear, only she couldn't. Her husband, she pointed out did not drink or beat her, as is the norm in most poor Indian families. When my mother pointed out that she too could take rest, instead of laboring in the hot syn, carrying such huge luggage... she explained to her, that she really believed in earning herself, and being independent and  in fact, it was her earnings, which made it possible for her children to attend schooling. She also pointed out that because both her husband and she earned, it has been possible for them to make a "pucca" house for themselves.This, she pointed out smiling, was an achievement,  as they were the only porters here in Londa to have one. We were stunned listening to her story.

In an era, (this was 1998, remember?) where women's lib was only a lip service, here was a woman, disable so as to speak of, but far more advanced and far more capable than, many quite able ones. She was poor, she couldn't even hear or speak, and yet here she was, doing a job, that in India, is quite clearly a man's domain. We could not hide our appreciation and respect for her.

Shortly our train came, and she again loaded each and every case, with care in our designated compartment and my father was so happy that he paid a hundred bucks to Sarada. Soon as the train left the station, we could see Sarada's red sari fluttering up in the wind as she slowly mounted up the stairs.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

The Immortals of Meluha: A Critical Review


Recently I finished reading one of the recent bestsellers, The Immortals of Meluha, by Amish.First of all kudos to the author for trying to deal with Hindu mythology and giving it the shape that would be interesting to the modern reader. Hindu mythology is a subject that very few Indian authors have tried to use in their story telling,much less to base their story on it. The fact that Amish has,goes a long way to say how our rich heritage could be used in the modern day and age. It is a very noble beginning, and I really hope we have many authors who would use this historical background to base their stories upon. We could recreate thousands of Da Vinci Codes, if we delved into our history and mythology deep enough.

Honestly, I felt I needed to write about the book, because, though it has captured the imaginations of many a readers, it would be grossly incorrect, if we were to believe that the author has tried to focus on the ancient and rich history of India. Sure, as a work of pure fiction, it is indeed good, but there are certain facts misrepresented as history of our land. It would be very unfair on my part as a reader, if I do not put out an unbiased view of the book, because even I really enjoyed how the story unfolds.

Let me first start by giving a brief synopsis of the story. The story, unfolds in the ancient land of India, known as Meluha, where reigns Emperor Daksha of the Suryavanshi clan. They are a highly civilized society where rules, guidelines and regulations are to an extent just. Their science, culture, tradition all are taken from the venerable Lord Ram, the proginetor of the Suryavanshi clan. These Suryavanshis are in constant fear of terrorist attacks from another clan, the Chandravanshis, who are exactly the opposite of them as in they adhere to no rules, regulations or guidelines. Their society isn't as civilized as the Suryanvanshis and they have now formed an ally with the "Nagas", the most heinous of all the tribes of India and together they want to steal the secret formula of "Somrasa", which Suryavanshis value as their holy drink.
Now there is a prophecy that a blue throated man from the lands of the "Sapt-Sindhu" would come and rescue the Suryavanshis. Enters Shiva, a tribal chieftain from the mountains of Kailasha, whose throat has turned blue upon consuming Somrasa, is he the prophetic one? Will he be able to deliver Suryavanshis from their problems and are Chandravanshis really the problem? Who are these Nagas? Are the Suryavanshis really as good as portrayed? For finding the answers to these questions, one has to read The Immortals of Meluha.

Now coming to the narrative style, Amish's style can never be called gripping, and cannot hold the attention of the reader. Another thing I quite disagreed with,is the occasional usage of swear words. They have been employed far too many times. The story has been weaved exceptionally well and the climax is really good though the end is kept wide open. Amish cleverly uses this book as a prequel to his next book, "The Secret of the Nagas". Kudos to Amish for knowing his historical facts well and cleverly using them to his advantage. The book can in no way be taken as a narrative of the rich ancient history of our land, but as a work of pure fiction. People reading this should bear it in mind that the author has grossly played with the historical facts and jumbled them up to present a very juvenile land of India.
Lastly it is a book, one should read as purely a work of fiction. Please do note that there are grossly misrepresented facts but yes, the storyline is good, some of the concepts given in it are extremely interesting and overall a good read, though I would not rate it as a "must read". Read it at our own leisure, for the simple pleasure of reading.

Reflection muses...

Language is the basis for recapturing experience...

- Cyhthia Selfae