Our New Wonderland

Ola! My reader friends!  I apologize for the long silence that befell our interection in the friendly virtual world the cruel real world kept me on my toes . Anyway, I just got down to scribbling as I found the next target for satire.  It’s this newspaper that gives really awesome news.  For the purpose of this blog, we’ll call it the Daily Devil

Lets get to the point. So this new job opened up the world of working of the print media which we in the audio-visual media have sometimes considered… errr…. ‘not above us’. Firstly, they’re night owls, considerably relaxed then the audio visual folk. And compared to our lean but mean but great news channel which I had compared to the nimble little British intelligence service, the Daily Devil employs a lot more man power.

There’s a lot more work and you’ve to write a lot. Finding shortcut in work is not easy. And of course, the sub-editors, the desk workers who write, not necessarily intelligent but sensible news from the info sent in by reporters are the key people in the channel (because I am one of them).

But the real creatures of interest are the DTP operators. These people have everything to do with the coolest field in the world- design. 

They use some Glogster type software to lay out  pages of the paper but what I don’t like is that almost all papers focus on cramming the news content in the papers, forcing the DTP operators to work as per the directions of the sub editors to arrange all the news in the paper like roman military columns rather than give them a nice jazzy look like a  nice Greek sculpture.  These are the people who make all the gibberish presentable on paper.

It’s disgusting what the budget blues force talented designers do. 

I am averse to these disciplined boxes, rows and columns and I believe in giving a lot more authority to the designers in the page layout. I think people don’t have much patience to read things these days so focusing a little more on infographics would be a great idea to sell the news papers.

I work with a plump little operator named Ganpat ( I know you are thinking of the song!)  He likes to eat laddoos and biscuits and we both design the page without sketching a dummy first, coz I think if you7 plan things you might try to stick to the plan but you can be more open and  creative without a more plan. It all just comes in my head and I let Gumpy the plumpy (short for Ganpat) have fun sometimes.   

Take a look at the national international page that I am in-charge of! It’s full of amazing pictures!

People race against deadlines and work late at night. The place is filled with conspiring field reporters  making frantic phone calls to their sources within the government, analysts pouring over sensitive documents and the DTP artists playing with their creative tools and all of them of course work under the aegis of The Boss aka the General aka Editor aka ‘Wild Bill.’

Buried in his cabin in meetings with creative heads and the company’s management, Wild Bill suddenly appears on office floor at midnight when all the deadlines approach at the end of the day. The General sets the office abuzz merely with the twitch of an eye as people scramble to get the finalized pages of the newspaper approved by him.

Wild Bill’s position gives him the opportunity to keep an eye on and contribute ideas to marketing, design and content which means he gets to engage in a lot of innovation and do all sorts of awesome things with the news paper. It’s a position one would dream to work in.

Then there is the head of Supplements, We’ve got one pretty witty and creative but decisive lady at this post and I call her Empress Tzu-hsi. Tzu hsi was a dominating Chinese empress who maintained her control on the throne up untill  the very moment she died.. Get the message?  :)  . 

She, and her cherubic lieutenant occupy my computer during the first half of the day when I m fast asleep at home. They have read all the crap people send in for publication in the Daily Devil, select the comparatively tolerable articles and fill up their supplements. We have one for women called Mukta (meaning free) one for men called Men’s Club, one for Sunday called Gulmohor (a flower here in India) and there’s also one for education, for holiday season and then we have special supplements on birthdays of powerful local political leaders which are  full of…ahem.

The supplements chief generally treads her own way never bothering any of us news writers. The guy who monitors us and the DTP artists is the news editor, fondly referred to as 'the lieutenant , because he is Wild Bill's lieutenant who watches over his staff for him.  His word  is final unless of course Wild Bill intervenes, but that does not generally happen.  

Wild bill never bothers lowly folks like me. He takes keen interest in the whereabouts and activities of the Chief Reporter-the king of all field reporters who reports directly to wild bill. The guy that holds this position is as smart as a thief who holds the master key to all the secrets of the government. He is always investigating something and does not talk to me much fearing that I will blog away anything that I hear from him. (which of course I eventually intend to). This guy holds so much knowledge and manipulation power that despite his black hair and thick spectacles, I call him Gandalf the White.

So that’s the new company I’ve joined, migrated to print from audiovisual. New challenges, new people and new stories. The news paper is a new realeas in the Goan media market, so I call my office Our New Wonderland-for now. 

The characters have just been introduced…let’s see how the story unfolds!