The Edit Desk at the Times of India, Hyderabad

The Times of India (TOI), Hyderabad, is a newspaper organisation with a clear corporate identity. It is no different from any software giant’s office you would find in the grandeur of Hitec City with posh interiors and latest computers. Everything from the sophisticated newsroom to the aggressive assertion of decentralization at all levels is proof to the ‘corporatization’ that has happened at the TOI.

Under the dynamic leadership of Mr. Kingshuk Nag, the Resident Editor of the Hyderabad Edition, the TOI has a contingent of hardworking professionals literally toiling it out in the field and inside the office. Sunday or weekday – each day is a working day. This applies to everyone including the Editor.

Mr. Nag mentioned that there is currently no Deputy / Assistant Editor profile in the organisation. Mr. Thomas Sebastian, the only News Editor, is the owner of the ‘newspaper product’ within the office. However, for all external purposes, the Editor takes the onus himself.

Under the News Editor, there are various ‘teams.’ It should be noted that each of them is not referred to as desks like in most other newspapers, but as teams like in corporate organisations. People designated as the Political Editor, Sports Editor, Business Editor, Metro Editor, Front Page Editor and so on head these individual teams. They play the same role as of the Chief Sub Editor in other organizations.

Some of the desks are highly specialized in nature. For example, the Sports team contains about four Sub Editors under the Sports Editor, who stay in their own cocoon, as the Editor puts it. There is a reason for this. Most often, the Sub Editors double up as reporters as well writing the stories and editing them themselves. This is justified because of the highly specialized nature of their beat and the stories are better edited by people who know the beat well - often the ones who write them. This of course translates into insanely long working hours. “But then, journalism is not a profession, but a lifestyle,” pat comes the reply from the Editor. Doubling the resources would not be a good business proposition; something that is definitely not acceptable at TOI. After all, it is owned by the family of Sameer Jain, the pioneer who broke off shackles of puritanism and walked with his newspaper through the corridors of commercialization in a revolutionary style.

The Metro team deals with the city content, and apparently has the most high profile connections as well as the grass root ones. According to Mr. Nag, they feel the pulse of the city and pass on the same to the newspaper. They give an identity to the edition.

The newsroom meeting in the morning around 11’o clock, attended mainly by the Editor himself and the Bureau Chiefs (counterparts of the Editors who head the teams), is a ceremonial one which involves a post mortem of the previous day’s newspaper. The Editor gives an analysis in detail so that the mistakes that crept in can be avoided in the future. Since the major news items of the day would break much after this meeting, only a very rough outline of the content for the next day is discussed. Often, the decisions or suggestions from the meeting are passed on to the reporters on the field by the bureau chiefs over telephone to avoid the inconvenience of making them come to the office.

The news meeting in the evening is, however, far more important. Hyderabad press caters to only one edition, and therefore, the meeting happens as late as 8 p.m. This is in contrast to; say the Ahmedabad press of TOI, where three editions – for Ahmedabad, Baroda and Surat - are printed. Based on the distance of the cities from where the press is located, time is taken into account backwards, and the meetings are held at 5 p.m., 6.30 p.m., and 8 p.m. for the Surat, Baroda and Ahmedabad editions respectively.

The heads of all the teams usually attend this evening meeting with the Editor and the News Editor. Bureau Chief does not stay back for this meeting usually. All major decisions regarding story selection for each page, particularly the first page, is done during this meeting. Mr. Nag prefers to keep this meeting short and sweet and does not dictate too much on how each single page has to be done. He believes he has an efficient team of journalists at his disposal that can be taken into confidence.

The decisions and an approximate plan of action made at the meeting are passed on to the head office at New Delhi. Beyond the meeting, each team is responsible for the final story selection and layout of their respective pages. Every Sub Editor’s immediate boss gives the final nod for a copy and page layout. The layout software currently in use is QuarkXpress 4.1. However, a transitional process is underway where the TOI across India will be migrating to brand new customized software called Computer Composite International (CCI).

For a long time, there was no single style sheet that all the editions were putting to use. As a result, large number of inconsistencies started showing up. An enterprising team member from New Delhi decided to put an end to the chaos, and now, the TOI has a centralized style sheet which everyone follows.

One characteristic feature of the TOI that needs to be emphasized is regarding the National and International pages. Despite having a head office and a common pool of stories for these sections, these pages are done locally in all the editions. While Mr. Nag feels that this results in redundant work and that the pages should be centrally done, the fact that the current system is maintained just to ensure decentralization has to be appreciated. By giving complete autonomy to local offices on how their entire newspaper will look and read, there is a clear identity and individuality that the organisation is lending to all its Editions.

Another feature that earmarks the democracy at the TOI is a free access queue system. While there is a separate Political Queue, Sports Queue, Business Queue, and so on for the purpose of taxonomy, all Editors have access to all the queues. Of course, there is also an Editor’s queue, where stories of significance are added to ensure the Editor’s direct attention. This queue, which often has controversial or confidential stories, is accessible only to the Editor.

The News Editor informed us that a post graduation is not a must for those who aspire to be Sub Editors. Nose for news and openness is the TOI is keen about. Since the tribe of earnest journalists is fast diminishing, imposing restrictions may not be a good idea, he said.

The Hyderabad Times (HT), the city supplement, is handled by an independent team headed by Ms. Soma Shukla. Since the press has to cater to both the supplement and the main paper, the schedule for the meetings and printing of the HT is different from the TOI. The HT goes to press by 2.30 p.m. usually to ensure enough room for the main newspaper to start printing around 12.30 a.m.

The dummy of the newspaper arrives at the Editor’s table around 5pm everyday with a clear allocation of advertising space on each page. The Editor often sends it to back to the Marketing division complaining about clutter. They may add more pages and reduce the clutter before sending it back to the Editor. However, the testing times of recession do not always give this flexibility and the Editor is forced to make compromises on content. This is part and parcel of the process of balancing ethics and business and an everyday affair at the TOI.

Sometimes, the alacrity with which the dummy is sent to the Editor is not exhibited by the Marketing division in sending the actual ad copies across. This often results in friction between the Editor and the Marketing division. When the ad copies do not reach on time, the layout cannot be frozen. Unless that is done, the newspaper cannot be put to bed. If the printing does not start at the stipulated time, delivery to the wholesalers will be delayed. The hawkers will then pick up the newspapers late. At the end of it all, the consumer will get the newspaper only after he/she is long done with the tea. As Mr. Nag says, “it is a chain reaction which cannot be avoided once a lag occurs.” A bad consumer experience like this one is what the TOI dreads the most. To avoid such situations, the Editor and his team often fight against not just another set of people, but against time and a lot of other limitations.

The Edit Desk at the New Indian Express, Hyderabad

The New Indian Express is a paper that caters to most of the southern regions in India. With its headquarters in Chennai, it has got its bureaus in many districts of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Orissa and Kerala. The Hyderabad bureau is the main office in Andhra Pradesh. The resident editor is Mr. G.S Vasu and the news editor, who spoke to us in length about the organisation, is Mr. G Subramaniam.

Apart from the resident and the news editor, the Hyderabad desk comprises two Deputy News editor (DNE), six chief sub-editors, one senior sub editor and two sub editors. The Expressosection has a separate editor and four sub editors-cum-reporters working under him/her. Four photographers also work in the Hyderabad office though they are considered more to be a part of the bureau than the desk.

The Hyderabad desk is responsible for the creation of first six pages of the daily newspaper. Pages 7, 9 and 10 which are the nation pages are created in Cochin. The edit page (page no.8), Page 11 (world), pages 12 and 13 (markets and business) and pages 14 to 16 (sports) are created in Chennai.

The desk keeps to its daily schedule without fail. A meeting consisting of the resident editor, the news editor, the chief of bureau, DNEs, photographers, chief sub editors etc is held everyday at 6.30 pm. Apart from the review of the previous day’s newspaper, selection of the lead stories and the placement of most of the news items are discussed and finalised.

The New Indian Express comes out with two editions daily. The deadline for the first edition is 10:15 pm. The reporters can hand in their stories until 9 -9:15 pm. The agency copy also roll in till this time. The newspaper subscribes to copy from PTI, IANS, AFP and AP. The news editor specified that though the deadline for handing in the stories is 9:15 pm, they do not wait for this time to start the production. It happens simultaneously but after 9:15 pm, the pages are laid to bed. At 10:15 pm, the pages are sent for process and printing at Bovanpally. The deadline for the late city edition is 1:45 am. Thus, it can be seen that the entire process is a chain reaction with each person depending upon the previous person to finish their job on time. Only then can the paper roll out in time. To the question whether the first edition and the late city edition will have huge differences, Mr. Subramaniam told us that a lot of news like crime, accidents etc. happen at night. Hence, there is almost always quite a lot of different news in the late city edition.

As is mostly misconstrued, the editing of the copy is not done strictly through the line of hierarchy. Just because the hierarchy is in place does not mean that the sub editor leaves a majority of the jobs to the senior sub editors. According to the news editor, it is generally agreed that the chief sub-editors are responsible for the pages. Each chief sub-editor looks into the pages of each other as well. This is to prevent any unconscious human error. Thus everybody is responsible for everything. Ultimately the news editor has to approve all the pages.

Unlike the olden days, the proof readers have no place in the modern newsroom. Since the entire work has been computerised, the editors themselves check the pages for mistakes. The New Indian Express makes use of in-house software called Win Editor for editing. It is linked to a database which provides help to the editors. The pages are designed by the designers in collaboration with the editors. They use Adobe Indesign CS3 for the layout. There is an engineer who takes care of the maintenance of these softwares. They also make use of an internal website to communicate with the other employees in other bureaus.

There is another section in the desk called scanning section who are responsible for scanning the photographs and making necessary changes like cropping, providing sufficient light to the photo and processing it. They have to take care of the advertisements too which come from the ad agencies. They check the print quality of the given ads and if needed, they boost it. Though these scanners carry out purely technical work in the news papers, they are also considered as journalist and are paid like them. They enjoy all the privileges of a normal journalist.

The people who live in the city are commonly very keen towards the things which happen in and around the city. That means proximity is very important in the profession of journalism these days. Regarding this, almost all newspapers have a city special pull out with the daily except on Sunday. The city pull-out of the The New Indian Express is ‘Expresso’ which deals with the city happenings. Most of the news which appears in ‘Expresso’ is soft news and features. The‘Expresso’ has a separate Desk and Bureau. At the desk there is one editor under whom four reporters cum editors work.

The New Indian Express has quite a few sister publications. They include Kannada Prabha, Dinamani (Tamil Nadu), Tamil Nadu Express and Malayalam Varika. They used to ownAndhra Prabha but they have sold it off now. Apart from this, the newspaper itself has its bureaus spread across south India. In Andhra Pradesh, they have their reporters present in 19 out of the 23 districts. They have their bureaus in Tirupati, Rajamuhndry, Vijaywada, Vishakapatnam etc.

The tables at the newspaper desk were traditionally arranged in a semi-circle fashion. But with the computerization of most of the work, this system is no longer followed. At The New Indian Express office, each editor was provided with his/her own cubicle with their own computer terminal.

Though the office space of The New Indian Express seems small, all the major functions go on quite smoothly in it. They follow the policy of team work and no matter what the hierarchy is, they believe in each one being responsible for everything.

We also talked to one of the sub editors, Mr. Rahul Ganguly, at the Indian Express daily supplement, Expresso. To the questions asked to him, he gave replies that were quite informative. The editors at the Expresso come at around 3 pm and stay till late night. Since there are only four sub-editors cum reporters, they do the editing and designing as a team. All the sub-editors are allowed access to other people’s news but generally do not interfere too much. There isn’t any specific number of articles that each sub-editor works on but all they are divided quite equally. Though the job can be stressful at times, they manage their social and family life along with it quite well.