To write a column on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti is an appropriate time for reflection, introspection, and evaluation of my half-a- decade role as a Readers’ Editor, a sort of minor experiments with truth. I examined my own columns to look at issues that were most scrutinised and those that have been least studied. I realised that my emphasis has been on the two dominant values that shape journalism: intrinsic values and instrumental values. This predominant concern took me to various codes, laws, regulatory frameworks, and elements of journalism. If I were to précis my columns, I am afraid it may read like a manual of dos and don’ts. They miss one crucial organic link between a reader and the newspaper: the joy of reading.
George Orwell wrote that every form of writing, other than the railway timetable, has an aesthetic consideration built into it. Jorge Luis Borges imagined Paradise as a kind of library. And how can one forget Jane Austen’s pronouncement: “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!” However, news ombudsmen rarely look at the element of pleasure in reading or comment on the quality of prose that draws readers to a publication. Much less is said about other aesthetic considerations such as design, infographics, photography, illustrations, and the family of fonts that distinguishes one section of a newspaper from another. Between the two pulls — what is in public interest and what the public is interested in — the exhilaration one gets from a set of well-written sentences seems to take a back seat.
Blending form and content
If journalism were only about providing credible information and performing a critical adversarial role, then a PowerPoint presentation or a bulleted list of short sentences would suffice. Journalism’s engaging nature comes from its creative blend of form and content. Though there are a number of categories and classifications in The Hindu — national, economy, sport, international, news and opinion — there is a unifying commitment to present facts in such a manner that they hold the attention of a world that has gone tizzy over the increase of Twitter’s character limit from 140 to 280.
For instance, the term data journalism suggests something that is objective, full of numbers and graphs, and is cold and distant. However, in practice, it has become a much more lively and engaging tool to explain complex phenomena. It does not merely mean number-crunching and providing information in a chart. It has the power to provide insight into an issue. There was a perception that financial and economic journalists would be at the forefront in the use of data journalism. But the latest study by the Google News Lab revealed that politics was considered to be the most relevant topic for data journalism (32.9 percentage points), with finance and investigative journalism trailing (28 and 25.3 percentage points, respectively).
The heartening fact is that The Hindu is not chasing digital chimera at the cost of its legacy platform, which is print. In recent times, the finest confluence of prose, data, data visualisation, and layout was seen in a story in The Hindu . It was not on politics or the economy or the market. It was about an outstanding athlete, Usain Bolt. The two-page spread on August 5, 2017 brought out not just the speed of Bolt’s sprint but also the science of his strides, the way he accelerates, and the gap between him and other top-quality runners. The write-up, which was split into multiple parts looking at specific attributes of Bolt’s capability, was taut and elegant prose. The data mining was exhaustive, and the layout that balanced the photograph, tables, graphs and text was a treat for the eyes. It is impossible to experience such a comprehensive feast in the limited space of a digital screen.
My columns are essentially reactive ones responding to queries from readers. The bulk of the communication we receive is about content. The only time we got mail about the form was in the aftermath of the redesign of the newspaper focussing on visual aesthetics. I solicit readers’ reflection on form, in the widest sense of the term.
readerseditor@thehindu.co.in
