Looking beyond the inverted pyramid

Are news reports always meant to look like this? 

Do you love reading the newspaper this way?

More importantly, have you ever even thought that you deserve to read news stories written in various ways?

So when was the last time you read something really gripping or engaging in a newspaper in Assam?

Something or someone you connected with or felt strongly about? I am not talking about a report on price hike of petrol or the cabinet reshuffle. Yes, both those reports can arouse different emotions in you but I am talking about something more intimate here. Stories, not mere reports which go beyond your immediate and direct concern but engage you and move you.  

What is the inverted pyramid structure?

Simply put, this is a news writing format where the most important facts of a report are written in the beginning. 

I was, till a couple of days ago, under the impression that the inverted pyramid was a product of the civil war of America (1861-1865) when editors were increasingly getting frustrated with the unreliable but expensive means of telegraph used by reporters to  transmit stories from the field. Make no mistake, back in the day, the telegraph was as revolutionary as the internet is today, but those were the early years and more often than not stories would get cut off mid-sentence due to failure of transmission. So as a solution, frustrated editors urged writers to fill in the most important facts first, followed by the lengthier details. Soon reporters developed a formula for compressing stories and summarizing the most important facts first. Over time this took a more refined shape with the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How being included in the summary and the formula came to be known as the Inverted pyramid. Thus, goes the story.

However, it seems this is no more than folklore.

Journalism historian David T.Z. Mindich, argued that the inverted pyramid was born at the time of Abraham Lincoln’s death but even this has been negated in findings by Marcus Errico.

Taking a look at Errico’s study here compels us to come to the conclusion that the ‘inverted pyramid structure’ or the ‘summary news lead’ did not become a norm till the first decade of the 20^th century although we cannot say that it was never used before that.

Today this is a formula religiously followed across the world although other formulas like The Martini lead and the Wall street journal lead are also used in the U.S. to structure the story. In India and here in Assam we rarely look beyond the inverted pyramid style. Assamese newspapers follow something of their own which can be at best described as similar to early 19^th century style of writing where the reporter starts a story by providing his own comments along with a flurry of adjectives to describe the story and ends with an opinion. The idea that a news report can also be explored in more detail in follow up stories, or it can be presented more engagingly in a different structure doesn’t seem to exist.

The Good

So why is it that the inverted pyramid lead is so widely accepted across the world? Well, for starters it lets us organize information effectively and quickly and is ideal for readers who want to get to the facts straight.  For reporters, it is an efficient way to understand breaking news or to write quick, short reports in case of breaking news. Further, it is also helpful from the perspective of the desk people because when it comes to quick editing the news reports can be easily trimmed from bottom up, the least important details are at the bottom in the inverted pyramid structure.

 

But is this the best or only way of structuring a story? Should it be always used?

Depending on the nature of the story or the news report the answer could be both yes and no.  However, what is definitely ‘yes’ is that there are more ways than one to write the newspaper story. 

Leads like the narrative lead, the anecdotal lead and the scene setter leads are just some of the few leads that can be used to break the monotony of the inverted pyramid.

The Bad

Former journalist Bruce DaSilva, once famously said. “The inverted pyramid remains the Dracula of journalism. It keeps rising from its coffin and sneaking into paper.”

Senior journalists here may and will argue that the job of the newspaper is to inform, it is not to connect on an emotional level but that is no reason for not looking beyond the inverted pyramid lead.

I believe that due to lack of reading good journalistic work, the stories come off as mere repetitions or shadows of one another, one more dull than the next bereft of any voice and as appealing as the electronic voice of a railway passenger enquiry system. 

  In an age of digital onslaught, when 24x7 news channels rule the roost (7 channels in Guwahati and counting) how can the print media do more ? Certainly not by giving dry, drab press releases of information. 

Looking beyond

Formulas are good but not at the expense of the heart of a story and the people it is written for. Generations of readers here have been accustomed to the substandard and the petty with little in terms of choice being offered to them. “We know best. This is what works and what you should read” seems to be an arrogant surmise. Thus, news stories are not something to be savoured and relished but something to be shoved down your throat like a pill that’s bitter but necessary.  With little attention being paid to the crafting of the story, the focus is more on cramming in more and more ‘facts’.  This creates a barrier of aloofness between the   story and the reader. Why should I care if there is a riot or 200 people died in a storm? It's just another bit of information for me on the paper. To connect with readers, I believe we need more than the inverted pyramid.  The readers here are perhaps content too because when you are a frog in the well you think the well is the world.

The offshoot of this is seen in the culture of apathy towards learning or writing good English. As long as you can write in the order of

         The most important facts first

             Lesser important fact

                  One more

                  One more

                    Zzzz…

barely managing to write grammatically correct English is considered good enough. The people on the desk will take care of the rest.

While most journalists here (including the new ones) would consider this sacrilege, they would be well informed to take note of stories being written across the globe.  So, while there is no doubting the utility and the worthiness of the inverted pyramid, it is time we pushed ourselves out of a mental rut and started thinking of journalistic writing as more than a mere collections of facts wrapped together by a blanket of 'objectivity'.  

So you want to be a journalist?

Journalism

View more PowerPoint from rupkamal_journalism

Wanted: A humane reporter

It’s been barely three weeks since a boat capsized in Dhubri district on the Brahmaputra River taking more than 100 people with it to a watery grave.

What did we get in terms of stories?

Day 1 - a lead report

Day 4 – a page 4 report on lapses / steps of district administration and that was it. A week later it had become one more incident to be stowed away in a newsroom morgue.  So long …see you…until the next boat sinks.

I believe, perhaps in my misguided idealistic way, that there is a reason why even newspaper reports are called ‘stories’. Stories are necessary for every human being. They move us, make us ponder and keep us alive.

Identifying the ‘story’ behind the ‘report’

I read a report about what could be a wonderful story about a football coach training a group of village girls with bare minimum facilities and trying to build a professional football team but I got nothing beyond clichéd parallels to a Bollywood movie. Where is the story in that?

Last year, at the peak of Garo- Rabha conflicts, I looked desperately and hoped someone would perhaps do some story on the people who had been affected but the dead and the injured were reduced to mere statistics in a refugee camp on a piece of paper and today very few would remember the incident until the next ethnic clash breaks out.

These are just a few examples. Researched and detailed human interest stories could have been attempted on various topics over the last one year like man-elephant conflict, the issue of satras losing land to illegal immigrants, the security for elderly persons in the city or the Garo –Rabha conflicts. However newspaper houses do not seem to have the time, inclination or resources to invest in such an exercise but happily invest in run-of-the-mill sensationalist tripe.

The inhuman human interest

For all the criticism of the US media, they have not forgotten or given up on one thing completely – human interest stories or follow up stories.

All this leads me to make a rather sweeping statement that some of the most ‘inhuman’ form of reporting is done here. To be fair, to the journalists here, they have been brought up on the strict diet of ‘stick to the facts’ and ‘the inverted pyramid’. Secondly, many of these stories require lot of planning and endless hours of observation, something which can’t be done in the span of a day. But yet, these factors can be no excuse for churning out ‘fill in the pages’ kind of stories.

I struggle to find a distinct voice in any newspaper – a voice that  tells us a story, calls out to us, soothes us, reminds us to have faith in ourselves  and confronts us with the humane human inside us.

Are we really concerned as human beings? Are we are going to  go beyond our token 350 word report on the incident that calls for implementation of monitoring and safety measures every time a boat sinks only to forget it two weeks later? Can we raise the same points while portraying the story of the people and not by merely giving a collection of quotes?

Facts can be adhered to without letting go of the human element in the story and reporters can be objective too.   

‘Human interest’ in the Assamese dailies here is essentially reports oozing with melodrama and in English newspapers it is something too ‘soft’ and definitely not a way to do ‘serious’ reporting.   TV journalists seem to nurture the belief that showing images of a howling, grief stricken mother lamenting her young son’s death qualifies as ‘human interest’. Zooming in and zooming out on the face of the lady continuously is supposed to make me sentimental, I guess.

Sticking to cold hard facts is good but sometimes you need to go beyond that and bring alive the scenarios around you so that your readers can actually see and feel something in the words and it doesn’t become just another lump of black on a white background.

We claim that we are human beings, it’s time we became humane.

Dear Mr. Chief Minister

Dear Mr Chief Minister,

Good Evening Sir. Hope you are doing fine. It is 6.45 pm as I sit in front of my 22’’ LCD computer screen in my one BHK apartment and write to you.

BHK means Bedroom, Hall and Kitchen but don’t let the word ‘apartment’ mislead you with any illusions of grandiose. The kitchen and the bathroom are there but the bedroom and the hall are the one and the same. I like to use the word apartment as it makes me feel rich.

My name is …

Oh god!! ‘Belan wali aunty’ is at it again! No respite from this woman! The rhythmic motion of the belan pounding against the wall and the orchestra of vessels being thrown around create mild tremors in my eardrums.

‘Belan wali aunty’ is actually a late 20 something didi who looks like she is touching forty like most Indian ‘aunties’ who have gone through the vagaries of a housewife’s life at an early age.

Through my open window I can hear the screams and screeches of the neighbourhood children who are trying to untangle a kite which has got caught in the mass of wires which mark the electric pole. Numerous mother-in-laws and daughter-in –laws have also assembled outside their respective houses to discuss and exchange recipes, menus and gossip. The bhel puri wala and the golgappa (or pucchka as we call it) wala are the new entrants in the scene.

Sorry, so as I was about to say, I am one of those many youthful nobodies that left my state long time ago in search of some golden elixir of life and I am a resident of inconsequential galli in nameless nagar in one of the metro cities of the country.

I live in a one BHK apartment with two lizards, a computer, lots of porn movies and little peace of mind. Now before you make up your mind that I am a horny bastard, let me tell you that in a world full of glib talkers and fake health insurance sellers, the only honest profession left is pornography. No hassles of caste, creed, language, religion or nationality. Cum and leave. No questions asked. Porn stars are the only true diplomats left in the world.

Let me formally introduce myself now. My name is … actually why should my name matter? You can rightfully assume that I am just nobody. At least till now, in name and deed I am nobody. I haven’t won an election nor have I won any reality show or ‘talent hunt show’. I am not terribly good at anything since childhood and now since I pushing towards the thirties the hopes of becoming good are also fast fading. Perhaps with your grace and favour, I will soon become somebody. I have heard that you have turned many nobody’s into somebody’s.

However, at the same time I do not belong to that exotic breed of species called ‘common man’. I am very uncommon because I think for myself and sometimes for others too which are definitely not characteristics of the common man.

I haven’t told you about my profession. Just because I happen to have a computer please do not mistake me to be one of those IT guys or worse still a MBA guy; the real ‘desh ka bhavishya’ and the ‘youth of the nation’. - The ones with those shiny cars, rolex watches and trophy wives / GFs whose idea of recreation is to go sightseeing to malls on weekends or visit some fancy restaurant. I try to write and I struggle while doing so. Hence, let me designate myself as a ‘struggling writer’.

It’s been ten years since I left ‘sonar asom’ in search of ‘greener pastures’ like many lucky northeasterners. I work 12 hours a day in hopes of minting money and going up the ladder in the rat race. There are many others like me. We were lucky. Some have escaped for good. Some like me are in two minds. With a little help from you I could make it back.

My Assamese is not too ‘refined’ if you may call it. Nor is my Tamil, Telegu or Marathi for that matter. Sometimes I want to be cool and say “Yo bro, am glocal”, but after eating wada pav and idli sambar for a week I am compelled to change my mind.

Once a year, I visit my home. It is like one of those aerial surveys of flooded areas that you and your colleagues do every year. I come, survey the changes in my city, make noises and go back. This year after an eight year long ‘break’ I went home to see lot of changes.

Numerous steel bar making companies, cement companies and ‘world class’ educational institutes unheard of in rest of India welcome me to Guwahati.

There is an influx of unknown educational institutes just like our ‘foreign friends’ from the friendly neighbourhood country. The three room ‘MBA colleges’, the numerous edu-fair hoardings tell me what a marvelous achievement you have made for the state.

Going by the cement ads in the city, it won’t be a surprise if any new visitor thought that the minute a shovel hit earth, gleaming grey cement would greet your eyes. The land of the red river and blue hills is fast becoming land of grey hills and Grey River. The ads of steel bars that dot the city every 100 meters desperately try to convince me that Guwahati is THE next big place. There is already a steel city in India. Perhaps we will become ‘steel bar and cement city’ of India. Twin honours for us. I am eagerly waiting for that day.

TV reporters blurt out ‘news’ at an orgasmic pace 24x7 and the couples sitting on the steps of the malls remind of the metro cities in the rest of the country. The sprawl of wannabe multiplexes, malls, eateries and high rise buildings tell me that we have ‘arrived’. The defining traits of a city are all fast appearing here too. People don’t know know any prominent landmarks nor do they know their next door neighbours.

Before you jump to the conclusion that I am a sympathizer of some red coloured party, let me make myself clear. I am all for full fledged development and amenities but half- baked things like unknown educational institutes , malls without elevators and AC and in short poor replicas of similar establishments just stand out for what they are, poor replicas.

Oh this reminds me… while we are on the topic of ‘landmarks’ let me congratulate you on your visionary tourism development plan. Some time back I saw this ad from your government about the progress we have made in tourism development.

Tourist lodges a.k.a ‘Jatri Niwases’ have been set up like ‘ shulabh sochalays’ all across the state and you have given fertile land to private entrepreneurs to set up hotel management institutes. Such foresight is really unparalleled.

However as they some things never change. These things are familiar and dear to me. The Bharalu nallah or should I call it river, still mesmerizes Bharalumukh with its intoxicating, hypnotizing odour which can act as a tranquilizer for wild elephants. Everytime I pass the place, I carry some of its fragrant memories with me. There are still no street lights on the roads just outside the 'main' city' in the evenings and Guwahati still resembles Venice in monsoons. There are still seven hour long power cuts and I still have to run around for a minimum of two months to get a telephone connection or a dead telephone repaired. I love such connect with my past.

As I write this, I read that we have also bagged the 29th position out of 30 states in the 20- point program under the National Common Minimum Programme so I believe that we will progress hand-in-hand. I am sure we will top from the bottom in the coming years.

Oh shit! I am sorry but will take your leave now. My tummy is cringing. Must have been that blasted Dosa I had in the afternoon for lunch. I will keep writing to you and hopefully we will meet soon. In the meantime, I have attached my bio-data along with this letter. Please see if you can provide some employment opportunity in Guwahati. I also want to come back and take part in the spoils.

Yours Sincerely,

Mr Nobody

Written in 2010

'Them' versus 'us'

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN 2010 and updated a  little now in the context of the ongoing reports about 'discrimination against northeastern people'.

 It was after the rape of a lady from some northeastern state (the media was confused about which state it was) that I started getting these mails.

‘Voice your protest’, ‘Sign the protest petition’  ‘We condemn this heinous crime’ etc etc

The words of such mails are always similar and the timing seems to be similar too.  Every time a rape or molestation of a Northeastern occurs in the capital or a metro city, these chain mails and perhaps other social media campaigns become more vocal and active.  I don’t know where they are the rest of the year or why we can’t hear them.

Coming back to the mail, this particular letter voiced its contempt and condemnation for the incident which is all fair and good and also asked ‘concerned’ citizens take part in some protest dharna organized in Delhi.  At the same time there was a list of steps which the NGO demanded that the Delhi government take in order to prevent such crimes.

Two of these steps really caught my eye.

“Immediately provide better street lights and police patrols in all areas, and bus stops.

More effective mechanisms must be instituted to ensure the safety of women in Delhi, especially women from the North East.

 The question that immediately came to my mind is why seemingly educated people ask for measures like “Immediately provide better street lights and police patrols in all areas, and bus stops. Oh! really?  Do you seriously think this will deter rapists and firstly, is this feasible? According to a report by Human Rights Watch, there is just one civil police officer for every 1037 Indian residents, far below the Asia’s average of one officer for every 558 people and the global average of 333 people. You don’t need to read a report to realize this.

 Now of course, we can wait for the police force to increase its numbers OR we can take some matters into our own hands and start on our own.

Secondly, they ask that ‘more effective mechanisms must be instituted to ensure the safety of women in Delhi, especially women from the North East’. - What are these more effective mechanisms? What are these vague statements supposed to mean? The tone of the sentence projects Northeastern women as some kind of endangered species that needs special protection.

Measures like these can be only stop gap fillers aimed at temporary relief but the root issues persist and one of the root causes for these crimes and prejudices is ignorance.

Now I don’t have a M.A. in social work but why don’t these wise NGOs and intellectuals start targeting the root causes of the problems?

I proceed to offer some starting point towards serious work in terms of awareness generation and steps to gradually bring down the rate of such incidents.

The first step to dispelling this ignorance could be concentrated efforts on part of communities to build goodwill and understanding. Now how to go about building it?  Education, I believe is a key to solving problems and also dispelling ignorance.  Why don’t we for starters build a social media campaign on introducing Northeast India in the different school syllabuses as a long term goal.  63 years after independence there is still no mention of Northeast India in any geography or history textbook in schools and colleges other than the respective Northeastern state education boards. The result is that many people think Assam is in South India and Nagaland is in Nepal.

For taking immediate measures; introducing programmes of a recurring nature, students can be motivated or guided to start community outreach programmes where the ‘locals’ get to interact with their Northeastern tenants and so forth in their respective areas. Northeasterners can also interact with locals and take part in community festivals or events.

 For e.g. In Delhi, Mukherjee Nagar and Vijay Nagar are areas that immediately come to mind.

There is no bridge or a go-between among the various communities right now. Local NGOs can play a very important role in this regard.

NGOs could tie up with government and private schools to have talks and awareness classes about the history, culture, geography and people of the northeastern part of the country.

Groups of Northeastern students can participate in interactions in schools and colleges and increase the knowledge of the students there. Once the awareness is there I am sure the mistrust and suspicion will also give way to some level of understanding which will bring down this wall of ‘them’ and ‘us’.  

I am sure there will be some hurdles that will be faced at the outset but what great purpose was ever achieved without a bit of pain?

There is a school of thought that also says that in metro cities not only Northeasterners but people from other communities are also victimized.  I do agree that northeasterners are often discriminated against because of their physical features but crimes are overall not directed at only one community in metros or even the capital. According to a report in the Times of India newspaper, there have been 433 rapes in Delhi this year[(2010) In 2011, 568 rapes were reported].  It would be naïve to suggest that a majority of them were directed at only one community without a proper study of this. We should probably reflect a bit more on this and do some self introspection. Are we doing enough to mix with people?

There is also the media that is obsessed with the idea of painting the picture of ‘them’ and ‘us’ which also plays to popular perceptions.  Keeping that in mind, it is time that we took a good hard look at ourselves and our socialization skills.

It is the onus of Northeasterns who go outside to try and mingle as much as possible with the locals outside.  . As they say, to clap you need to use both your hands.  One sided measures are not going to help. When you go outside your home, there is no point in being aloof from the people and the place you go to. You have to adjust.

I studied in Delhi University myself and do know for a fact that, forget interaction between locals and Northeasterners, there is hardly any interaction among students of the eight states themselves. As they say charity begins at home. We should stop being Nagas, Assamese, Manipuris, this and that and start interacting with each other. Of, course this is easier said than done.

Simply sticking to your own group and forming a ghetto sort of environment won’t help which was the case till 2 years back in my knowledge. I doubt if it has changed. The Nagas stay in their own group, the Manipuris in their own, and so on and so forth.

There seems to be a section of people that simply want to have cannon fodder from time to time to show that “we are also there and “we are trying to make a change”. Certain groups of people seem to be making their living since eternity by raising these ‘issues’ and ‘voicing their protest’.

The point is not to single any one particular NGO or entire community of NGOs and take them to task.  The lesson for us here is that people are talking nonsense about us perhaps due to ignorance or perhaps due to opportunism and it is time we started taking some remedial measures.

 Simply paying lip service and artificial short term and hollow measures won’t help to genuinely solve these problems. It’s time, we as citizens, took matters in our own hands and started to think differently from the herd. It is also time we sent out a message that we don’t need special treatment or someone’s graces but just recognition that we are same as the ‘others’.

Why I left Facebook...and why I came back

Why I left

1. One day I will die and you will not know that because there will be no one to give a ‘status update’

 2. I have too many ‘friends’ who didn’t talk  with me in the last 15 years or so when they had a chance but now they suddenly want to be ‘friends’ – P.S. I looked up the meaning of the word ‘friend’ in the dictionary. Well, turns out I had been hallucinating all these years!

 3. FB suggests that I be friends with the guy who lent me a pencil sharpener in Class 2.

 4. I don’t want  any more   E-loves (E loves can also hurt)  and ‘ Long time no see, How are you?’ talk – ( If you really wanted to meet me, you would have met me the last time you were in town)

 5. It is the age of PR and marketing and there is a little three year girl inside everyone (including me) that demands attention, seeks attention and throws tantrums. I want to kill the bitch!

6. I have no  pics of  me holding  a beer glass with a hot babe  swooning  on my neck

7. I am tired of electronically stalking ‘friends’ and people I hate.

 8. I want to slow poison the voyeuristic horny pest in me and you that likes to know who the ex GF is dating and keeps tabs on what I am doing in life.  

 9. I figure that I don’t need a computer to ‘LIKE’ people and become ‘popular’.

10. On an 'intellectual' note - Ever since I read about Peter Thiel ( FB board of directors), Rene Girard (philosophical mentor of Thiel) and the theory of mimetic desire where Girard reckons that people are essentially sheep- like in nature and will copy one another without much thought the FB thing is making more sense to me. 

11. If you have had the patience of reading it this far, congratulations! 10 points are more than enough I guess, as any MBA god will tell you, with lessening attention spans, people do not want to read more. 

And why I came back ...

1. The three year old bitch inside me won ! 


On all other counts I stand by what I said... My friend fakebook.

My first post

Everybody is original if he is true to himself and speaks from his self. But it must be from his true self and not from the self he thinks he should be. - Brenda Ueland

Keeping these words in mind let me embark on this journey.