Online Journalism
Its been a long time since I last posted here. The main reason behind that is that I haven't had access to a computer at home. Blog posting at work has always felt somewhat like an anti-thesis of blogging to me, so I have resisted that temptation. Now that I've finally managed to wrangle a laptop out of the company (don't you just hate these stupid 88-key keyboards??) I'm back to dumping my frustrations/thoughts in digital oblivion. Oh, and whoever said laptops are portable obviously had shoulder blades made of steel.
Coming back to what prompted this post though. I just installed and logged into MSN on the new computer and happened to click on the weather link for Delhi. It is pretty hot out there, isn't it? Anyway, while looking at the forecast I noticed an "NRI edition" link on MSN and clicked it. I saw a story about "Bollywood and Smoking" and decided to read it. I thought maybe it was a write up about how Indian movies had woken up to the incredible uncoolness/unmachoness of smoking. Turns out however that its an article about product placements in Bollywood cinema. Fine I said, minor editorial fuck up. But it was when I started reading the article that I really started to get pissed off. Sample this:
"And even for the biggest and the best, it may not been enough."
What??? Been enough? I won't even go into the area of starting a sentence with an "And", but surely, Microsoft Word would make a better editor than the people who went through this tosh! There's more:
"Here comes in Bollywood. It offers a captivity which most mass media can’t."
What?? Captivity? So bollywood's some sort of S&M club now? The quality of writing in this article was made even worse by the shoddy editing. If this is the stuff we see coming out of MSN India, I wonder what is to be expected of other online publications of lesser repute. Stuff like this is also the primary reason I often can't read online publications. However, the online media isn't the only place where the editing staff seems missing in action. This malaise also affects our print media. Now I write a blog and I don't get paid for it, but I still do read through what I write after I'm done. Besides, if I were getting paid for it, I'd make sure that the quality of writing would be at a level at least slightly above the completely pedestrian. It hurts me to see online writing destroyed like this in the ameteurish, untutored hands of most online writers. I've done a fair bit of writing myself, and I can't imagine the kind of people who produce stuff like this. I don't know whether it is because they're gtting peanuts or that they just don't care, but this is not the way I want to see journalism going.
Coming back to what prompted this post though. I just installed and logged into MSN on the new computer and happened to click on the weather link for Delhi. It is pretty hot out there, isn't it? Anyway, while looking at the forecast I noticed an "NRI edition" link on MSN and clicked it. I saw a story about "Bollywood and Smoking" and decided to read it. I thought maybe it was a write up about how Indian movies had woken up to the incredible uncoolness/unmachoness of smoking. Turns out however that its an article about product placements in Bollywood cinema. Fine I said, minor editorial fuck up. But it was when I started reading the article that I really started to get pissed off. Sample this:
"And even for the biggest and the best, it may not been enough."
What??? Been enough? I won't even go into the area of starting a sentence with an "And", but surely, Microsoft Word would make a better editor than the people who went through this tosh! There's more:
"Here comes in Bollywood. It offers a captivity which most mass media can’t."
What?? Captivity? So bollywood's some sort of S&M club now? The quality of writing in this article was made even worse by the shoddy editing. If this is the stuff we see coming out of MSN India, I wonder what is to be expected of other online publications of lesser repute. Stuff like this is also the primary reason I often can't read online publications. However, the online media isn't the only place where the editing staff seems missing in action. This malaise also affects our print media. Now I write a blog and I don't get paid for it, but I still do read through what I write after I'm done. Besides, if I were getting paid for it, I'd make sure that the quality of writing would be at a level at least slightly above the completely pedestrian. It hurts me to see online writing destroyed like this in the ameteurish, untutored hands of most online writers. I've done a fair bit of writing myself, and I can't imagine the kind of people who produce stuff like this. I don't know whether it is because they're gtting peanuts or that they just don't care, but this is not the way I want to see journalism going.
posted by Arun at 3:25 AM
6 Comments:
does this article points toward me?
Not really. You're a blogger, not an online journalist. Although I do like the quality of writing on ur web site.
You picked up my favorite topic!
I totally concur with you on this point. Although I had not read an article oozing with such hideous grammatical errors before, but the usual (and, surprisingly, acceptable) standard of articles depresses me. Good thing they do not have a 150-page style sheet (you know where I am coming from) but, hey, correct use of language is necessary if you want your article to be taken seriously.
Have you read the type of writing that goes into the glossies that accompany the newspapers these days? Pathetic is a word that comes to mind. How do reputer newspapers like the Hindustan Times end up hiring people like this anyway?
Good point, I too have noticed this. Like you mentioned the, you're most likely to find such articles in the glossies that come along with the main paper.
I guess the main reason for this is that the senior is busy boozing and partying and leaves all his work for his "juniors". Needless to say the senior is in no mood to edit the crap the juniors wrote (especially when he's nursing a hangover!).
Oh! The only other thing that parallel these articles, are articles that use too many adjectives that a common man cannot understand without opening a dictionary.
Andy
Oh yeah. You have those so called "intellectual" articles in the editorial sometimes. Incredibly dense on words and totally devoid of substance. I usually give up reading articles/books like that after the first few paragraphs though. Just don't see why things have to be so complicated.
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