Changing media
CAMIL PARKHE
Friday, January 21, 2011 AT 09:51 PM (IST)
http://www.sakaaltimes.com/SakaalTimesBeta/20110121/5298012004879421511.htm
Tags: Media, Changing Media, Journalism
Naren, there is a phone call for you," a journalist said and unsuspecting Naren left his seat to answer the call on the landline phone. A moment later, he realised that he had fallen into a trap as his colleague had taken control of the lone typewriter in the national newspaper where we worked. This was the situation prevailing two decades ago when the age of computers had not yet dawned. And only a few days ago, my daughter wanted to know what a typewriter was! Her question left me wondering at the astonishing speed at which technology has evolved during the past three decades.
The first newspaper establishment in Goa where I worked had a hand composing mechanism for the Marathi newspaper and mono-typesetting for the English one. I remember participating in and leading a number of demonstrations of journalists to oppose automation in newspaper industry on the ground that it would render many people jobless. Of course, nothing of that kind happened as I saw many of the young and other hand compositors being trained and absorbed as computer typesetters. Besides working as a staff reporter, I had also doubled as a correspondent of a newspaper outside Goa. That newspaper had provided a post-paid telegram card of the telegraph department. I wonder if today's youngsters would even know what is a telegram or the fear associated with its arrival.
I remember journalists in a Pune newspaper were reluctant to give up the use of the rickety typewriters and turned to computers only after a fatwa was issued that only news stories typeset in computers would be used. We took to computers and then there was no turning back. Internet in the early 1990s revolutionised not only the newspaper industry but the whole world. Pagers which made an appearance for a brief period of a couple of years faded into oblivion as soon as the mobile phone arrived. This reminds me of those days when people had to be on a waiting list for a landline phone connection for years and of those categories of ordinary, urgent and lightning calls of the telephone department on which journalists relied for collecting news or for transmitting news to headquarters.
Today, journalists transmit stories and photos to newspaper offices with a click of the mouse. Blackberries too have brought many wonders. The transition in the technology during the last a few decades is just breathtaking and makes one wonder what lies in store in the next few years
CAMIL PARKHE
Friday, January 21, 2011 AT 09:51 PM (IST)
http://www.sakaaltimes.com/SakaalTimesBeta/20110121/5298012004879421511.htm
Tags: Media, Changing Media, Journalism
Naren, there is a phone call for you," a journalist said and unsuspecting Naren left his seat to answer the call on the landline phone. A moment later, he realised that he had fallen into a trap as his colleague had taken control of the lone typewriter in the national newspaper where we worked. This was the situation prevailing two decades ago when the age of computers had not yet dawned. And only a few days ago, my daughter wanted to know what a typewriter was! Her question left me wondering at the astonishing speed at which technology has evolved during the past three decades.
The first newspaper establishment in Goa where I worked had a hand composing mechanism for the Marathi newspaper and mono-typesetting for the English one. I remember participating in and leading a number of demonstrations of journalists to oppose automation in newspaper industry on the ground that it would render many people jobless. Of course, nothing of that kind happened as I saw many of the young and other hand compositors being trained and absorbed as computer typesetters. Besides working as a staff reporter, I had also doubled as a correspondent of a newspaper outside Goa. That newspaper had provided a post-paid telegram card of the telegraph department. I wonder if today's youngsters would even know what is a telegram or the fear associated with its arrival.
I remember journalists in a Pune newspaper were reluctant to give up the use of the rickety typewriters and turned to computers only after a fatwa was issued that only news stories typeset in computers would be used. We took to computers and then there was no turning back. Internet in the early 1990s revolutionised not only the newspaper industry but the whole world. Pagers which made an appearance for a brief period of a couple of years faded into oblivion as soon as the mobile phone arrived. This reminds me of those days when people had to be on a waiting list for a landline phone connection for years and of those categories of ordinary, urgent and lightning calls of the telephone department on which journalists relied for collecting news or for transmitting news to headquarters.
Today, journalists transmit stories and photos to newspaper offices with a click of the mouse. Blackberries too have brought many wonders. The transition in the technology during the last a few decades is just breathtaking and makes one wonder what lies in store in the next few years
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