A few months back, got a call from one of journo friends, frantically asking me if I had access to a particular byte by a Maoist leader, from the jungles of Lalgarh, in West Midnapur. This was followed by another desperate call, from another scribe, this time from the print media, about the content of that particular interview. The idea was to just lay hands on the particular interview, and I obliged....it felt great, that I have something, which everyone else wants at this moment in the circuit....
Few months down the line, now I feel like asking the question to myself...."have we just become byte collectors....is this what is journalism all about these days?"
Well, if this was one side of the story...then another one really opened my eyes...I was rejoicing at the success of a particular story of mine...even mentioning about the story in my Facebook update. Praises kept pouring in from everywhere, when the bubble was burst by a former colleague of mine, who just subtly pointed out, how the story could have gone beyond..
Well, maybe, we have become more of byte collectors these days, than journalists. I mean, I have reported from the Maoist line of fire fro quite some time, ever since the colour Red, began to dominate a huge forest belt of West Bengal and Jharkhand. Have we actually touched the glass ceiling, if that does exist in News? Well, once i was brainstorming with another journo friend, and we drew up a list of stories which we could have done from he same Maoist line of fire, where we had been reporting from. Yet, we had chosen the easier way out. we chose to cater what was already available, rather than what needed to be catered. we have often joked about how the Maoists are openly giving interviews to the Nth number of regional and national news channels from their cellular phones, and yet the security forces are unable to track down their location. But neither did I nor any of my journo friends bother to work on this lead....That's a question which maybe we need to tackle....
It really hurts when someone calls you a byte collector and not a journalist... I am sure, my journo friends would agree to this, but there are several reasons for it...and all of it is not a personal laid back attitude....well, often story ideas, which could essentially break the myth that we have become byte collectors, are crushed at the bud. I mean, I remember, at the weekly editorial meeting, new ideas were always welcome...but often when you wanted to pursue it, you were maybe asked to go ahead, and do something as meaningless as getting public reaction on whether an item girl is justified in breaking off her engagement from a televised swayamvar. well, and we rush off to do that....We often work for insane hours, ours is surely a totally Thankless Job, where you are more often than not shouted upon...so are we losing the balance which is required between a byte collector and a journalist..is it...or is it a different story altogether...Is the Byte Collector the Avatar of the age old Journalist...
