Things I didn't know about Journalism

Photo: Prabir Das

What do you think about journalism? Reporter collects information, interviews sources, sorts the information and then the final copy of the report is published for the readers. No... Duties of a journalist are not confined to only that; we do a lot more than you think. I believe most people do not know how the news reports they read everyday are prepared and made readable for them. As being a student of journalism, I had a little prior knowledge of these things.  Working in the field, I found it to be a world much more complex than what I had imagined it to be.

Well, what have I learned here? At first we need to brain storm and decide on a story- about something that even readers don't know they want to know about. And that's the most tactful and innovative job of the journalist which needs approval from the news editor during meetings.

Once an idea is fixed, we need research the topic, visit the spot, sometimes attend the press conferences and ask questions, and interview the sources related to the topic by face to face meetings or in urgent cases, telephonic ones. But is that everything of the interview? No. If there is more than one party related to the report, the interview must include the voices and opinions of all. Furthermore, journalists need to crosscheck the information they got from the interviewees to maintain professional ethics. At the same time, we have to keep the record or proof of our work. To maintain a flow of information for further use, we also need to build professional relationships to the sources.

Meanwhile, we must follow a strict deadline. We need to prepare the report and hand over our first draft to the editor to check whether the format and angle are okay to move on with. While writing, we need to bear in mind that we have to follow some definite style guides of the paper. Also, we are expected to follow a tight word limit. I may have more than enough information which I cannot use in my allotted space, and make the information that is most needed my priority. If the editor thinks that the report is satisfactory, they will edit the grammatical mistakes, spellings, or sometimes few words if necessary. But if the editor thinks that we need more information, then we are supposed to work on it again and complete the whole process.

One thing I must share is that, sometimes we take interviews of many people but we cannot use all of their opinions because of limited space or other issues; and in some cases, interviewees ask why we didn't publish their quotes which can be hard to explain.

The last steps involve pasting and the formatting of the articles for print. We need to be very conscious about whether all the photographs and write ups are pasted in their allotted space or not. After that we need to proof read, check the panel of each story, date; in a word, every single thing over and over again- at least thrice. And that's how a story goes to the reader through the press and distribution process.

Apart from all this, we need to make story lists, folders, and back-up articles and maintain them on a regular basis. Also, we have to manage our presence on social media, translate stories, and carry out other regular tasks and many more which are not visible to the readers.

In the whole process, we need to work with very good team spirit. Without teamwork and each others' support, it is impossible to even carry out our individual tasks.

While journalism or writing may seem as simple as writing your thoughts out, what makes it pleasantly and addictively difficult is picking which thought you want to voice, which thoughts to make a difference with, which thoughts will touch our readers' hearts with for that  is what matters most to us.