Sakal Times Delhi Bureau nearly closed

I received the following mail from my young colleague Omkar Sapre who has quoted ‘a Sakal victim’. It came as a shock because I am now in Ahmedabad and unconnected with Pune’s media scene. It reminded me of the fate of all of us in The Indian Post in 1990 and The Observer of Business and Politics in 2000 when we were intimated about the closurea without a notice of even a day.

Shock this time is graver, though I am not a victim now, because I could not imagine that Mr Pratap Pawar’s son could do any such a thing. Also because, dear friend and Sakal group Editor Director Anand Agashe is among the management team.

All the best, dear victims.

Unfortunately for you, now there is no working journalists’ trade union to fight such cases. Only you and our peers are to be blamed for this as we had allowed the trade union movement to wither away during last two decades when metro journalists fell for the managements’ baits for fat salaries against ‘contracts’.

It strikes me simply because I, like Anand Agashe, were once upon a time at the forefront of Pune Union of Working Journalists and its apex bodies at the state and national level.

From: sakaal victim [mailto:sakaalvictim@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 10:25 AM
To: divyasaru@hotmail.com
Subject: sakaal times

Hi Friends. Do you remember the BiTV lockout? Something worse than that happened on the 30^th of November, 2008. Sakaal Times, the English daily brought out in May (renaming the existing Maharashtra Herald) by the Sakal group of Pune (of the Marathi daily Sakal fame) and helmed by wannabe media baron Abhijit Pawar (nephew of NCP leader, Union Minister and former BCCI president Sharad Pawar), suddenly decided to close down its Delhi operations without any prior intimation to any of its employees, making nearly 80 people jobless at one go.

Those impacted are not worthless people – all of them had left secure jobs in respected media houses to join what sounded like an ambitious media venture from one of the most-respected media houses of Maharashtra. The plans were big – following the Pune edition, there will be editions from places like (Navi) Mumbai, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and even a small edition from Delhi. The paper looked impressive – with well thought-out stories and a nice design. "Welcome to the Sakal family. Here all employees are treated like family members. Please visit our Pune headquarters sometime to know how we work like a family," were the golden words from Arun Barera, the CEO of the Sakal Media Group during his interaction with a bunch of us around July-August, when the paper's Delhi office was still in APCA House in NOIDA. APCA, helmed by Dilip Padgaonkar and Anikendra Nath (Badshah) Sen, had taken charge of recruiting people and launching the venture as a BOT project. They did the job nicely and handed over the project to the Sakal group on November 1, 2008. Everything seemed good for all of us.

Then since about a month ago, things began to go wrong – about 8-10 people were asked to leave, but resident editor Dhananjay Sardeshpande called in groups to assure that nobody from the news bureau and features would be touched. "Our plans have got delayed because of the market condition, but we will launch our Delhi edition by the end of this fiscal and our other plans are still there. We need all you people to be part of our vision," he told us. Just about two days ago, one colleague, who called him up, was told by Anand Agashe, director-editor of the newspaper, that whatever rumours were floating around were baseless. He, of course, said there will be a reduction of the number of pages, and a decision would be taken around December 2-3.

Suddenly, in the morning of November 30, a "Notice", actually a print out on a blank sheet of paper (not the company letterhead), signed by an "authorized signatory" whose name or designation was not mentioned, was found pasted on the locked gates of the premises at the 1^st floor of Pratap Bhawan on Bahadurshah Zafar Marg, saying the Delhi operations are being wound up. The letter was dated November 30, while the termination notice, with a cheque for part of our salaries for this month and one more month (minus the allowances which are paid against bills submitted) were sent through speed post to all of us individually at our residence addresses from Pune on November 29 (some of us got the mails on December 1 while others are yet to get their individual copies).

The so-called 'Notice' said:

"(For the information of the employees working for Sakaal Times)

Subject – Operations of Sakaal Times at Delhi

The new daily is incurring heavy expenses on Delhi operations resulting into substantial losses to the company. You are aware that this is further compounded by the present serious downtrend in the economy. Due to the dame the circulation and the revenue generation of the newspaper has been seriously affected. Due to this it has become inevitable for the company to restructure its operations. On account of the said restructuring the Editorial work so far carried out at Delhi is no longer required to be continued. As a result, the operations are stopped forthwith and the persons working for Sakaal Times operations are being relieved. The necessary communication has already been sent to the individual employees on their postal address registered with the company. The relevant employees need not attend the office from today onwards.

The work of Magazines and TV will continue after some modifications of the premises for which the same will be closed for few days.

For Sakal Papers limited

Authorized Signatory"

There was a rubber stamp of Sakal Papers Limited, New Delhi affixed next to the illegible signature, which looked like an "A".

Agitated employees gathered during the day itself on Sunday, Nov 30, to discuss the matter. Quite astonishingly, colleagues who were working till late night on Nov 29 had no inkling of what was going to happen in the morning. In fact, one colleague was in Rajasthan covering the elections there when the lock out was announced!

The employees, finding that the premises have been locked out with some of their valuable belongings inside (eg, bank pass books, cheque books, etc.) decided to register a complaint with the IP Estate Police Station regarding this. Photo Editor K K Laskar, as the convenor of the committee of Sakaal Times employees formed to fight the sudden lockout, registered the complaint. Till then, nobody who has a say in Sakaal Times – Abhijit Pawar, Anand Agashe, Arun Barera, Dhananjay Sardeshpande, HR director Pradeepkumar Khire – picked up numerous phone calls made by senior journalists who wanted to find out the exact situation. But within one hour of filing the police complaint, Pawar called up Laskar, claiming there had been a "communication gap" and things should not have been done as they have been. He "requested" Laskar to ask all employees to come to office on Monday, December 2, to discuss the matter with a team from Pune.

Almost at the same time, Pawar, Khire, Agashe gave contradictory and false statements to media persons who contacted them on the developments. (From Mint - http://www.livemint.com/2008/12/01010229/8216Sakaal-Times8217-shu.html - "Abhijit Pawar, managing director of the 76-year-old Sakaal Media Group, said staffers had been informed earlier. "It has just been brought to my attention that the communication hadn't reached everyone, and I'm sorry if that is the case. I have been told that a communication had been made informally to senior members of the staff in Delhi and it was supposed to have reached everyone. Everyone is being adequately compensated," Pawar added".) Just look at the casual stance he has taken. Saying just a mere "sorry" for snatching the livelihoods of around 80 people. Just look at the way he claims "I have been told….". Do you "informally" communicate to senior staff or any staff members about a lock out (which anyway is a blatant lie as there was no such communication to anyone)? "It was supposed to reach…." The sheer insensitiveness of this man seeps through every word of his quote.

(from IANS - http://in.news.yahoo.com/43/20081130/836/tbs-delhi-operations-of-sakaal-times-clo.html - "Sakal Papers' Director, Human Resources and Operations, Pradip Khire denied the charge of the staff that they had not been informed about the impending closure. 'It was communicated to them that their services are no more required and their dues are being settled,' Khire told IANS in Pune."). Another blatant lie. Can he provide any proof that staff had been informed about the closure? Even the "termination of contract" letter received by some people on December 1 (posted on Nov 29, but received only by some on Dec 1) does not mention anything about the closure. It only talks about the company's "right" to "terminate your services without assigning any reason by giving one month's notice or a notice pay in lieu of notice… the company has decided to exercise this right and is terminating your contractual employment w.e.f 30-11-2008 after working hours".

Where is the mention of the lockout? Can you find another such example of fork-tongued speak?

As we all know, there is a standard procedure for lock outs. Businesses may and do go bad, but the way Sakaal Times has done it, is pure evil. If it reminds everyone of how some Chit Fund Operators vanish after pocketing money of investors, well, you are not at fault. Any ethical company would have taken its employees into confidence, told them that they would have to shut down, and would have given them at least a month's time so that they can look out for alternative jobs. But this is what a 75-year-old media group does.

Please forward this to all media persons you know

This is what an aghast observer wrote to various e-groups:

From: Ram Singh <ramsinghstdelhi@ gmail.com>
Date: Nov 30, 2008 6:37 PM
Subject: Sakaal Times Delhi journalists to move court against lock-out
To:

On Sunday, 30 November 2007, journalists with Sakaal Times in Delhi
were shocked to find the office locked and a lock-out notice put up.
Their anger is not so much about the shut down but that the Sakaal
management did not inform them personally. Their belongings are
inside, they have no idea about salary and compensation, and of course
jobs to look for in an industry no longer booming. Senior Pune
management have switched off their phones. The lock-out is illegal as
they have not followed labour laws. The journalists have formed an
action committee that plans to move court. The nearly 50 journalists
are angry and aghast at such despicable treatment. This is an insult
to journalists all over India who should rise to the occasion and send
their condemnation to Sakal Papers Ltd. This is a paper with deep
pockets thanks to its Marathi print monopoly. Its owner is Ahijit
Pawar, nephew of NCP leader and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar,
whose daughter Supriya Sule is on the board of Sakal Papers Ltd.

Please circulate widely.

============ ======

The notice:

NOTICE

(For the information of the employees working for Sakaal Times)
Subject - Operations of Sakaal Times at Delhi
The new daily is incurring heavy expenses on Delhi operations
resulting into substantial losses to the company. You are aware that
this is further compounded by the present serious downtrend in the
economy. Due to the same the circulation and the revenue generation of
the newspaper has been seriously affected. Due to this it has become
inevitable for the company to restructure its operations. On account
of the said restructuring the Editorial work so far carried out at
Delhi is no longer required to be continued. As a result, the
operations are stopped forthwith and the persons working for Sakaal
Times operations are being relieved. The necessary communication has
already been sent to the individual employees on their postal address
registered with the Company. The relevant employees need not attend
the office from today onwards.

The work of Magazines and TV will continue after some modifications of
the premises for which the same will be closed for few days.

For Sakal Papers Limited

[signed and stamped]

Authorized Signatory

==========

Please note that the authorised signatory is not named.

The resident
editor, Dhananjay Sardeshpande, had not been coming to office for the
past week.
The employees have formed an action committee under the leadership of
Op-Ed pages editor Yogesh Vajpeyi and the Convener is chief
photographer KK Laskar.
Yogesh Vajpeyi - yogesh.vajpeyi@ gmail.com - 9818033223
KK Laskar - k.k.laskar@gmail. com – 9868164433

This is just for information of all media people, because if in future this group tries to hire you, beware and don't fall for its so-called reputation. It's a den of cheats and liers.

US dailies make hey

Leading US newspapers said Wednesday they had been forced to fire up their printing presses again to keep pace with demand as consumers sought out mementos of Barack Obama's historic election. In the capital, about 400 people formed a queue in front of the office of The Washington Post to buy the newspaper after copies sold out across the city early in the morning. The Post, which increased its normal print run by 30 percent, said it had decided to produce an extra 250,000 copies of a special commemorative edition. The New York Times said it had increased its normal morning print run by 35 percent but had gone back to press to produce another 75,000 copies. The Chicago Tribune restarted its presses in the morning after the initial print run of 690,000 copies sold out in the early hours. The Tribune's vice president of operations, Becky Brubaker, said the second run would number up to 120,000 papers. The Chicago Sun-Times said it had printed extra 'tens of thousands' of copies but had also been forced back to press. For those who were unable to buy the historic edition of their favorite paper on the street, the Internet auction house e-Bay listed hundreds of copies of the day's New York Times, Chicago Tribune and other papers for sale, many for hundreds of dollars apiece. Newspapers were not the only news sources in demand as CNN.com and other online news sites reported record traffic on Tuesday. CNN.com said it received the largest daily audience in its history Tuesday with 30 million unique visitors, more than double the previous record of 13.4 million unique visitors during the Democratic primaries on Super Tuesday. (AFP)

Don't Blame the Journalism

Veteran Mumbai-based journalist Mahesh Vijapurkar has forwarded the following by
Paul Farhi, American Journalism Review, October/November 2008, ,
Source: www.ajr.org
The economic and technological forces behind the collapse of newspapers
When the obituaries are written for America's newspapers, count on journalists to indict themselves in their own demise. You've heard it before, from a thousand bloggers and roundtable know-it-alls: We were too slow to adapt, too complacent, too yoked to our tried-and-true editorial traditions and formulas. We could have saved ourselves, goes the refrain, if only we had been more creative and aggressive and less risk averse.
To which I can only reply: Oh, please.
As newspapers shuffle toward the twilight, I'm increasingly convinced that the news has been the least of the newspaper industry's problems. Newspapers are in trouble for reasons that have almost nothing to do with newspaper journalism, and everything to do with the newspaper business. Even a paper stocked with the world's finest editorial minds wouldn't have a fighting chance against the economic and technological forces arrayed against the business. The critics have it exactly backward: Journalists and journalism are the victims, not the cause, of the industry's shaken state.

We've lost readers, to be sure. But that's been happening for decades, and not necessarily because of editorial quality. Disagree? Then try answering this: Did editorial quality kill afternoon newspapers?
Contemporary newspapers have their own problems, but the usual analysis about what ails us misses the point. Let's take a quick tour:
Fact No. 1: Despite everything you've heard, newspapers, even these days, remain remarkably popular. Some readers have left us (and many, it should be said, were dropped by cost-conscious publishers who no longer wanted to deliver papers to far-flung subscribers). But what's largely overlooked in the gloom is how many people newspapers reach each day. Almost 50 million buy one daily, and nearly 117 million read one, according to the Newspaper Association of America's research. Throw in 66 million unique visitors to newspaper Web sites each month, and the conclusion is inescapable: Lots of people want what newspaper journalists produce.
Fact No. 2: Newspaper readers – so often derided as old and unattractive to advertisers – are actually better educated and more affluent than TV news viewers. The average newspaper, for example, reaches about seven in 10 households with incomes of more than $60,000 annually, compared with about four in 10 for CNN and Fox News, according to Mediamark Research.
Fact No. 3: Every traditional news medium has lost market share, and some have lost more than newspapers. According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, ratings for late local newscasts on network-affiliated stations across the country were 6.7 percent lower during the November 2007 sweeps than the previous year – a faster decline than newspaper circulation (down 2.6 percent daily, 3.5 percent on Sunday) during roughly the same period. This isn't a one-time aberration, either. Local TV stations in Washington, D.C., for example, have seen the ratings for their 6 p.m. newscasts plunge 37 percent from 1997 to 2007. Over the same period, the Washington Post's Sunday circulation has dropped 16 percent. Yet the local TV news business remains relatively strong, with far fewer layoffs and cutbacks and less end-of-an-era weariness than in most print newsrooms.

So if the problem with newspapers really isn't too few customers, or too many undesirable ones, why are they so threatened these days?
The problem has little to do with the reporting, packaging and selling of information. It's much bigger than that. The gravest threats include the flight of classified advertisers, the deterioration of retail advertising and the indebtedness of newspaper owners. Wrap all these factors together and you've set in motion the kind of slash-and-burn tactics that will hasten, not forestall, the end.
For decades, newspapers enjoyed what economists call a "scarcity" advantage. In most cities, there was only one outfit that could profitably collect, print and distribute the day's news, and it could raise prices even as it delivered fewer readers each year. Indeed, monopoly daily newspapers enjoyed enormous profit margins – sometimes as much as 25 percent or more – until very recently. But the scarcity advantage has faded; the Internet has essentially handed a free printing press and a distribution network to anyone with a computer.
The real revelation of the Internet is not what it has done to newspaper readership – it has in fact expanded it – but how it has sapped newspapers' economic lifeblood. The most serious erosion has occurred in classified advertising, which once made up more than 40 percent of a newspaper's revenues and more than half its profits. Classified advertisers didn't desert newspapers because they disliked our political coverage or our sports sections, but because they had alternatives. Craigslist and eBay and dozens of other low-cost and no-cost classified sites began gobbling newspapers' market share a few years ago. What they didn't wipe out, the tanking economy did. During the first half of 2008, print classified advertising nosedived more than 25 percent, as withering job, real-estate and auto listings erased $1.8 billion in revenue from newspaper companies' books. Newspapers have been uniquely hurt – television never had classifieds to lose.

Similarly, the disappearance of local chain stores over the past two decades has fallen like a series of hammer blows on newspapers. In my city, the names of the dearly departed included such homegrown advertisers as Hechinger hardware stores, Trak Auto Parts, Crown Books, Dart Drug, Peoples Drug, Raleigh's clothing stores and the department stores Woodward & Lothrop, Garfinckel's and Hecht's. TV lost some of these advertisers, too, but has gained the likes of Wal-Mart and other big-box outlets, which tend to buy airtime, not newspaper space.
Newspapers that were hoping to be rescued by their online ad businesses woke up to a sobering reality in mid-2007. By then, it was becoming clear that online advertising wasn't growing fast enough to make up for the rapid disappearance of print ads. In fact, at the moment, online ads aren't growing at all. Sales at newspaper Web sites fell 2.4 percent in the second quarter of 2008. This may be as ominous a development as the meltdown of print. Online newspaper revenues had grown smartly in every quarter since the Newspaper Association of America began tracking them in 2003. No longer.
There's still much that many newspapers can do to improve their Web sites: adding Twitter feeds, social networking applications, Google map mashups (maps over-laid with data), on-demand mobile information and, of course, more video. All good. But let's not kid ourselves. The online business model is still uncertain, at best. An online visitor isn't as valuable to advertisers as a print customer. Online readers tend to dart in and out, spending far less time on a newspaper site than a subscriber spends with a paper. And a portion of the traffic (how much depends on the paper) comes from outside the paper's circulation area, making these visitors irrelevant to local advertisers. I'm not really surprised that newspapers haven't figured out how to make the Web pay for all the things that print traditionally has. There may not even be a business model for it. But again: Can you really blame the newsroom for that?

The last wound is self-inflicted. Newspaper companies and other investors completed highly leveraged takeover deals just as the newspaper business rolled off the table. It's no coincidence that the most troubled newspapers are the ones owned by companies that took on enormous IOUs just as the newspaper apocalypse began. Some of these companies – Tribune, McClatchy, Journal Register, MediaNews Group, Avista Capital Partners, GateHouse Media – are now cutting like mad to stay ahead of the debt boulder bearing down on them. Meanwhile, Copley, Advance, Cox, Landmark and Blethen have all put some of their newspaper holdings up for sale. This all but guarantees more debt for the papers' new owners – assuming, of course, that the sellers can find buyers in the first place.
So add it up. Could smarter reporting, editing and photojournalism have made a difference? Can a spiffy new Web site or paper redesign win the hearts of readers? Surely, they can't hurt. But if we, and our critics, were realistic, we'd admit that much is beyond our control, and that insisting otherwise is vain. As British media scholar and author Adrian Monck put it in an essay about the industry's troubles earlier this year: "The crops did not fail because we offended the gods."
As is, I fear we're deep into the self-fulfilling prophecy stage now. In many ways, newspapers are dying...because they're dying. As their cash flow shrivels, owners aren't willing, or able, to invest in their papers to arrest the rate of decline, if not reverse it. Each cut in editorial staffing and newshole makes the newspaper less useful and attractive, which makes the next round of cuts inevitable, and so on. Some newspapers entered their death spiral months ago.
I suspect someday our former readers will be peering forlornly toward their empty doorsteps and driveways and wondering where the paper they once loved has gone. I will share their sadness, but not their shock. I've got some news for you, dear readers: Our disappearance wasn't your fault. And as a journalist, I can safely say, it wasn't ours, either.
Paul Farhi (farhip@washpost.com), a Washington Post reporter, writes frequently about the media for the Post and AJR.

America's Irresposible Media

The following is Evans Lips' article in New Statesman for those who still look at US media as model for objective responsible journalism. I suggest have a look at the comments posted at
http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2008/11/barack-obama-vote-usa-media

How I would have loved to have had my ear against the door outside of the Boston Globe’s conference room on the morning of October 30th.
“A British paper discovered that Barack Obama’s aunt is living in squalor in a slum in South Boston.”
“A British paper!?!?”
The Boston Globe, headquartered in South Boston, had the story in its back yard. Yet it was the Times Online that first broke the news that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s aunt is living illegally in the US despite being served a deportation order several years ago.
She has collected welfare while managing to contribute – illegally - $260 to her nephew’s campaign.
This issue might seem trite, given the millions that both candidates have amassed during months of campaigning. But it begs a bigger question – where are the priorities for the American media?
Reporting centered on emotion and not based on researching the facts is alarming. But it is nothing new to this presidential election. There have been several instances where the media – confronted with relevant news regarding Barack Obama – has decided simply to remain silent.
It’s appalling to think that the press, an institution defended in the United States Constitution (The First Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom...of the press.") has squelched its own freedoms in order to help their candidate win – Barack Obama.
It’s no secret that the America mainstream media has a decidedly liberal bent to it. And this election may serve as “exhibit A.”
Consider several startling instances:
The Los Angeles Times is in possession of a 2003 tape where Senator Obama paid tribute with Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi at a private event. The Times is refusing to allow the pubic to review the tape claiming that they promised anonymity to the source that provided them with the tape. Khalidi served as a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1970s. Barack Obama had three reporters from newspapers that had endorsed John McCain removed from the campaign jet. Obama has built a campaign around inclusiveness and bringing people together. Where was the outrage from the rest of the media? Is this what we can expect if he wins?Statements made by Obama appear to have had expiration dates on them, meaning that as soon as he contradicts himself, the media covers its mouth. On March 18, 2008, Obama said, “I could no more disown Jeremiah Wright than I could disown my own grandmother.” As soon as Reverend Wright became an issue, Obama cut off all ties to Wright. Yet contradictions such as this have largely been ignored.
In late October, the non-partisan Pew Center for Media Research reported significant bias in the way major news media has covered the campaign.
Pew reviewed hundreds of TV and print news reports about the candidates. The results were disturbing.
Fifty-seven percent of all stories about McCain were negative, compared to 29 percent of stories about Obama; just 14 percent of McCain stories were clearly positive, compared to 36 percent of Obama stories. Twenty-nine percent of McCain stories were neutral, compared to 35 percent of Obama stories.
And maybe the incident here in Boston can serve as an example of America’s decline in objective reporting.
What advantages did the Times Online have over American media giants such as the Boston Globe and the New York Times? The answer appears to be simple - common sense and attentive research.
The key to the story lies in a book that has been read by millions, especially those involved with the Obama campaign. Dreams From My Father, an autobiography, is a story of how the presidential hopeful traced his Kenyan roots and focused his life’s mission.
The American media seems to have ignored the passage indicating that at least one relative of Senator Obama’s had left Kenya and immigrated to America.
At one point in the book, Senator Obama’s half-sister speaks about Africans who had emigrated to the West and presumably disappeared:
“Like our Uncle Omar, in Boston . . . They’ve been lost, you see.”
Lost, kind of like the mainstream media here in the United States. It may have been beneficial to American voters if more British news groups had covered our election.
It disturbs me to think about what other things they would have uncovered.

Divorce between US newspapers and AP?

I left United News of India in 1987 after serving the news agency for 17 years. I worked in two newspapers later and taught in media school for seven years thereafter. Thus I have no connections whatsoever with UNI for the last 21 years, yet my loyalty to news agency journalism in general and UNI in particular has remained unchanged.

That is the reason I was drawn to read Rick Edmonds blog today at http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=123&aid=152453.
We youngsters working under Mr B R P Bhaskar and Mr K P K Kutty in Delhi’s news room used to hold AP in big awe because of its news coverage and worldwide reach. UNI had tie-up with AP. I was thrilled when my story was picked up by AP's Delhi bureau for the first time and was published abroad.

I moved out of Delhi headquarters and worked as Bureau Manager in smaller centres. Here I had to interact with owners of newspapers to strike bargains for subscriptions and to recover long pending arrears. (That was in addition to my journalistic responsibilities.) I remember how the owners would haggle for cheaper monthly fees. I could not afford to be tough to recover the arrears because these owners would threaten to quit our news service and switch over to PTI’s. Similar was the situation elsewhere in India.
I thus had a fairly good idea about why UNI was never in sound financial health. I notice from Rick Edmond’s blog that even in USA, even in case of the powerful Associated Press, and even during the new era, newspaper owners are no different.
Please read Edmond's blog:
What would happen if newspapers divorce AP?
What would newspapers miss most, I asked AP's Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll in a phone interview Friday, if they followed through on threats to quit the cooperative?Her answer surprised me. For some it would be comprehensive and timely sports coverage that frees up their own staff to cover local teams. But even more fundamental, she said, is "a fast, steady diet of multimedia news for the newspaper's Web site." A couple years after being introduced, AP videos are widely used on news sites and are a big part of the cooperative's mobile offerings. We are in an era, Carroll added, "when people want to know what happens when it happens, and their appetite for video is huge."

Tribune became the biggest player yet Thursday to announce it had given two-year notice and was considering pulling all its newspapers out of the wire service. (The Columbus Dispatch announced Friday it would cancel its contract in 2011.) Tribune's announcement was consequential, to be sure, but Carroll took exception to one headline labeling the move stunning. "We are always having these kinds of discussions (with dissatisfied members)," she said. "The difference is that this time they are announcing" what have more typically been confidential negotiations.

Without denying the severity of newspapers' financial problems, Carroll said, she is hopeful that peace can be restored. But there are barriers. AP has a little flexibility in negotiating with individual papers -- but only a little. "Because we are a cooperative, we can't offer city X a different deal than comparable city Y," she said. "We're not like the used car salesmen who says, 'I need to go in the back room and talk to the sales manager.'" Though Carroll is a partisan and not strictly in the business loop for these negotiations, I sought her out because she takes an editor's big-picture view of the conflict. I found it noteworthy that she wanted to talk more about improved services than deeper rate reductions.This week I got Goldman Sachs' analyst Peter Appert's latest forecast. He sees total industry ad revenues falling from $39 billion this year to $30.7 billion in 2012 (and from a peak of $49.4 billion in 2005). If the industry is shrinking almost 40 percent, from almost $50 billion to just over $30 billion in ads, can AP cut rates correspondingly?Carroll's answer was that AP cannot make those kinds of cuts in its operations, nor should it -- with international markets growing and broadcast and online clients ready for an expanded report. To me, that suggests plenty more friction ahead with editors as AP redirects resources to lucrative lines of business and other clients that are doing better than the newspapers that own AP.

Arun Kumar Bhandari is Chief Editor and GM of UNI

Some how I missed the following story about change of guard at UNI with which I was associated for 17 years until 1987. Thanks to Mr B R P Bhaskar, our news editor and my guru, I came to know about the development though 11 days late:

New Delhi, Oct 1 : Senior journalist Arun Kumar Bhandari today assumed charge as Chief Editor and General Manager of the United News of India (UNI) national news agency including its Hindi wing Varta and Urdu service.
Mr Bhandari has been associated with UNI for almost four decades now and, during the period, he was bestowed several key responsibilities every one of which he fulfilled successfully. After securing a degree in journalism from Punjab University, Chandigarh, he was selected by UNI and posted as Trainee Sub-Editor at the agency's New Delhi head office in 1969.

During his career, besides receiving some organisational awards for reportage, he was honoured by the Himachal Pradesh government for best development reporting and the Madhya Pradesh Vidhan Sabha for parliamentary coverage.A diploma in Journalism (print and electronic media) from the International Institute for Journalism, Budapest, added to Mr Bhandari's qualifications.

He has widely travelled in India and overseas, including the United States of America, United Kingdom, Germany, Egypt, Colombia, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Pakistan, Nepal, China, Dubai, Singapore and Russia.

--

When will the media use the verb ‘condole’ properly?

It is rare that a journalist admits publicly that he/she has committed an error. It is still rarer that a senior journalist, holding the key post of a news editor, owns up a mistake committed by a junior.
(I should know because I was a journalist myself for over three decades.)
It came, therefore, as a pleasant surprise, when Ahmedabad Mirror, carried the following letter in its recent issue under the heading “Mind Your Language”:
When will the media use the verb ‘condole’ properly? The headline at the top of the page on September 20 says ‘PM condoles inspector Sharma’s death.’ Condole means sympathy. You can express sympathy to persons but not to death. Moreover condole (like sympathy) is an intransitive verb and can not take an object (death, in this case). Your headline and the story, should have read: The PM condoles with inspector’s family over/in his death.
Response from AM’s News Editor Pradeep Mallik published alongside was:
Thank you for writing and enlightening us on the correct usage of ‘condole.’ We stand corrected. Looking forward to more mails from you.
Those in the profession will know the importance of such a response when considered that the original story was not written by any AM staffer. It was a PTI story from New Delhi, probably edited and headlined by a sub-editor in the AM, Ahmedabad. And a news editor does not normally read every word of every story. Mallik could have passed the buck, on receipt of the mail from the reader, to PTI. Mallik did not.