Raju Korti
For people who have little idea of how newsrooms across the world function or the nitty gritty and ethos that go into the working of a journalist, the word "exclusive" may not mean much. But ask any journalist worth his salt, especially the one taking baby-steps into the profession! An "exclusive story" against his name is what makes his day the next day. For the uninitiated, an "exclusive story" is supposed to be an original news that is reported for the first time (before anyone else breaks it). Since news comes with a shelf life and expiry period, journalists hold exclusive stories -- which get them bylines -- close to their heart. Very often than not, a bunch of "exclusive" stories forms a formidable part of the journalist's repertoire and he preserves them as testimonials when angling for new jobs.
The value of "exclusivity" hasn't been lost with the passage of time but the concept of news has been devalued and trivialized like never before. It makes for a compelling case to redefine what News is especially in the light of what the old school of thought believes it to be. Puritans fed and brought up on the classical definition of News are trying to reconcile to the new age parallel "news agencies" who have rewritten the rules of what constitutes News. The biggest empowerment has come from social media where such "news agencies" not only abound but flourish, patronized by the gullible unversed.
I did not need much temptation to use the word "empowerment". A veteran colleague once lamented that the social media had turned just about everyone into a journalist and/or photographer of sorts, convinced whatever they wrote was you-read-it-here-first kind. So you have "exclusives" galore with the kind of real time journalism that would leave our modern-day news channels blush red, beaten at their own craft. As this colleague always commented "साला न्यूज़ का पूरा चिन्धिकरन कर दिया".
These "exclusives" are now here to stay and have been well accepted. The "news agencies", especially the vernacular types, have institutionalized News in a new avtaar. See them on Facebook! Their names are too fancy and in-the-face- to miss. "Exclusives" are churned out daily by these news factories giving the impression that nothing ordinary happens in our lives when the truth is ordinary is elevated to the exalted status of an "exclusive."
Just how impressionable these "news agencies" are can be considered from my own example. Despite having banged my balls in this profession for four decades now, I have become their compulsive reader, albeit by default. As journalists, we worked our asses off and sweated by the litres to gather information.
Now news gathering leans solely on the speed of your internet and how practiced you are at using Cntrl A+CntrlC+CntrlV. इंटरनेट सलामत तो stories पचास!
Since I am quoting myself exclusively here, sample my own post on Facebook a little while ago:"वाचून थक्क व्हाल, ऐकून प्रचंड धक्का बसेल" ह्या पठडीमध्ये मोडणाऱ्या आणि फेसबुक वर दररोज असल्या पायली ला पन्नास भंपक बातम्या पैकी एक आज वाचली. पण for a change खरोखरच थक्क झालो अणि प्रचंड धक्का ही बसला. बातमीच्या खाली लिहिले होते: वरील अभ्यासपूर्ण बातमी इंटरनेट वर असलेल्या बातमी वर आधारित आहे. This is, of course crude oil. The refined oil goes thus: Years back a senior sports editor wrote a nostalgia piece and claimed it to be an exclusive. When asked if he could guarantee its exclusivity, he said " When I say it is exclusive, it is exclusive. When Jack Fingleton wrote the same piece in 1971, no one had the guts to ask whether it was exclusive."
The new norm is every story is an "exclusive" story unless proved otherwise. If only we old timers were born 40 years later, we would have had to buy a cupboard for storaging (my exclusive coinage) the stories. They would have tumbled out faster than the skeletons.
