Counting votes on a Sunday: A digital journalist’s challenge

(Image by © Illustration Works/Corbis)

Imagine it is a Monday, you have the boss at your 6 ‘o’ clock and he is coming right at you, would you have time to track the results of an election on TV? Probably not and that makes my life a whole lot easier. Your laptop or that news app on your phone becomes your go to and I, as a digital news producer, can serve up well-packaged content on a digital platform.

However, the Election Commission in its wisdom has decided to count the votes polled in Bihar on a Sunday in November. And that means you (the viewer) will be at home with the option of remaining glued to your TV, looking at the numbers flashing on a rather busy screen and listening to a plethora of views and analysis.

So what of the laptop, the iPad, and the mobile?

Here is where the digital news producer has a go-to — the ‘second screen’. According to some studies, 4 in 5 smartphones and tablet users use their mobile devices while sitting in front of the idiot box. The second screen it seems was born out of a sense of boredom — of people not knowing what to do when commercials are on and probably resorting to checking Facebook or Twitter. Now these social media site have become second-screen playgrounds. With a massive install base and one of the most popular social apps across app stores, the popularity and ease of use of Twitter puts it at the top of the list.

So how does that translate into coverage for a digital news producer? TV believes in continuity, most channels assume that the viewer has been on them since the beginning of coverage and there is little or no customization for individuals possible. In the specific context to election coverage, it means people don’t have the option of jumping the queue and going straight to the information they want. They also may not have all the information available for them to process what is being spoken about. In India’s busy TV-scape, screens often have busy lines scrolling and flashing, they might not necessarily parallel what is being said on the screen.

Your hand-held device (not the TV remote) gives you that power to jump the queue (without greasing palms, I may add). Information neatly packaged and tabulated — so that you the viewer gets to see only what s/he wants or how s/he wants it. It could also serve as an aid to understanding what the exalted analysts on TV are banging on about. For example, if they talk about a party losing ground in a certain area of the state, your phone may actually have that specific stat to help you understand why those 5 seats are so critical or why the anchor has spent an inordinately long time on a bellwether seat.

While most of the technology exists, I’ve not seen extremely successful dovetailing of TV and mobile apps to the extent that the idea ‘second screen’ suggests. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” sci-fi writer Arthur C Clarke had once said. When the mobile phone or tablet truly becomes a ‘second screen’ — a value-add to what’s on telly — that magic would’ve perhaps been achieved.

This article was first published in timesofindia.com

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A Magsaysay Award Winner with a Debt to Pay

For most of my life I’ve been given floccinaucinihilipilification (the action or habit of estimating something as worthless) — and the use of the second-longest word in the English dictionary — completely needless, leads me to an extremely existential question – Why? This is not the dilemma brought on by some premature version of a ‘mid-life crisis’. It is the result of a Saturday spent with my alma mater at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, talking about and to a man, who has just won a Ramon Magsaysay Award for his contribution to society.

In his acceptance speech in the Philippines, Anshu Gupta, the founder of Goonj, said he did not want to change the world; he just wanted to make it better. That came across as earnest. But as he was being felicitated by the IIMC Alumni Association, that earnestness changed into the bare naked truth, when he said, “I can’t sleep at night because I have burdened by a huge debt.”

And then he went on to explain how he owed a huge debt to his country and its taxpayers whose money had subsidized his education at this government-run institute. Imagine my indignation — what debt? I had (many moons ago) made it to IIMC on my merit. I had battled off reservation (all such government institutes have half the seats reserved) and competed in the open category to be selected for a course in journalism at what was then one of the few institutes to offer such a course.

But the rationale hit home and I’ve stewed in it for a good three days now. Yes, I competed but then I also ended up paying ₹20,000 and not ₹5 lakh as the course, correctly priced should have cost. I went to a government college in Calcutta (now Kolkata) which is one of the best in the city and where the taxpayers spent ₹1 lakh each year on a student like me. Then of course there is the entire hidden subsidy. For example, I went to Delhi Public School, which in all probability got the land, on which the school stands, at extremely subsidized rates from the government.

Most of us, the ‘creamy layer’ as sociologists and economists keep referring to, have benefited from these subsides enormously and continue to do so. According to estimates, nearly 3% of the country’s GDP is spent on subsidies — and much of it seems to be coming to people who don’t need it.

For example, how many of us have given up the LPG subsidy that we enjoy? Government figures from earlier this year say 10 lakh people have voluntarily done so. Good going you may say — not really, when the total number of LPG subscribers is a little over 15 crore. Yes I know, there are arguments both for and against this — but this is just an example. An example of how we all take from the system, selfishly and yet, put very little back in…

So what Anshu says makes sense. Give something back to your country not because of some inherent sense of patriotism but because you’ll sleep easy knowing that you’ve tried to repay the debt of the people to the fullest. It could be with something as small as running a neighbourhood watch that makes your back alley a safer place or petitioning your MLA or civic councilor for relaying the water pipelines.

Abraham Lincoln said, democracy is “for the people, of the people and by the people”. It is the actions of citizens such as us that will determine the quality of our society and our democracy. So we need to be the change instead of resisting it…

For me, step 1 is awareness. Step 2 is WIP.

This article was first published in timesofindia.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.