JOURNALIST DURING THE DAY, BLOGGER AT NIGHT

Mrinalini Santhanam

One evening, I was using the ‘The Hindu’ app to easily flip through the headlines of the day. There was nothing new there, so I promptly went onto my Twitter feed. Twitter, a form of immediate and fragmentary digital conversation that women journalists in the country have taken to this medium by storm. Nitta Bhalla is currently a correspondent for humanitarian affairs for the South Asia region at Thomson Reuters Foundation who has over sixty thousand followers which is a massive following. By following her posts I learnt more on the impact of disasters and conflicts on local populations from her 140-character posts than I ever have from any traditional news stories.

Traditional journalists are taking to blogging in order to transform their craft and overall image. Though Twitter is becoming the preferred network through which journalists can build a fan following and image. Most women journalists still take to blogging to improve their image. For instance, on speaking to Alaphia Zoyab, she landed her job as a Global Campaigner at Avaaz.org through her blog ‘Reporter’s Diary’. She has over 9000 subscribers to her blog. She says, “Blogging has helped me generate so many new ideas, unlike writing for print, we don’t need to be concerned about who our readers are. As the Internet has all kinds of people, and we already know our readers as they have subscribed to us.” These days, journalists are well aware about their readers since they tell them who they are and what they are curious about. “It is also a great chance to hone our editing skills as we are our own editors which has greatly helped at our day jobs in the press too,” she adds. There is a lot of freedom to write; this way they are their own editors. So what they cannot communicate as journalists, they communicate through their blogs.

Also, the same is true for monopoly publishers like Alaphia Zoyab, as journalists use these blogs and also compete with other blogs. According to Alaphia her biggest competitor are her rivals in print too. Digital publishing and print journalism are in each other’s pockets. For instance, Shonali Muthalaya, correspondent and columnist at The Hindu who is most famously known as ‘The Reluctant Gourmet’. As the name suggests her column at The Hindu was also named after her blog. She started writing for The Hindu as a food critic in 2009. In just five years she has over 450 food reviews to her credit and more than ten thousand followers online. She became a columnist only after her blog garnered interest. This goes to show that blogging also helps kick start a journalist’s career and is a great marketing tool for that. Especially, for women in the field who are still struggling to get their voices heard. According to Shonali, breaking a story and following up on its response online is easier and quicker than through print. “Since I started through the blog, the editors at The Hindu let me write more informally,” she says.

Print publications have taken to hiring popular bloggers as they help in enhancing the paper’s Internet presence too. This is where traditional editors come into play, according to a report by Nieman, they feel that bloggers are not trained journalists and they are not committed to fairness or objectivity the way women journalists are supposed to be. In response, Alaphia says, “Well, mainstream media is changing. Though it will take time for it to evolve with the current digital change. It is still every journalists dream to have their space to write in print.” Much more is at stake in print media as it forces transparency. If you fib it can damage the image of the publication.

Newsgathering has undergone a sea of change; the audience is now a keen part of the process. For readers, it is not an easy task to find their gold amongst the raging river of content online. The ability to attract crowds digitally across geographical borders is known as crowd sourcing. It does not replace what traditional journalist do like interviewing, fact checking, and verifying it. However, traditional journalists are no longer the only ones who can do this. For instance, in the case of Shonali’s column, after the column is published, she has a detailed version of it posted online. “After the final cut is published in the paper, I share a detailed and more personal version as a blog post which facilitates discussion between my readers,” she says. A story online has more legs since errors and leads suggested by readers give way to improvement and even other stories. “I still get comments on articles I wrote in 2009, this also helps me revisit the subject,” Alaphia explains. Leads for stories now come through their blog, which is then used to follow up on stories at their publication. And once they are pursuing a story, some journalists use the blog to ask for suggestions. “In some ways this form of crowd sourcing helps us with leads but at times this could just be a rumour. Therefore communication through blogging is great for leads but old school rigorous research is the most reliable,” Alaphia adds.

‘Just a little something’ is a travel blog maintained by Anita Bora who is a reporter at ‘Crack’, a cycling magazine. Recently, her blog was featured in this list of top travel blogs and magazines in India. An excerpt from her blog quotes, “When I’m in my 50s, I think it will be inter­est­ing to turn back to 2001 and read about the stuff I’ve writ­ten since. When I first dis­cov­ered blogs in 2001, I jumped onto the band­wagon almost imme­di­ately. My blog jour­ney has been inter­est­ing. I’ve met some won­der­ful peo­ple, made friends in many cities, and had some great expe­ri­ences. But when peo­ple ask me what it’s all about in a nut­shell, it’s rather dif­fi­cult to explain. I think it’s some­thing that needs to be expe­ri­enced.” Distribution of work has gone through a significant change, as women journalist’s writings are more prominent when it comes to forwarding links, posting updates and using RSS. As Anita says in her blog, “I have covered more than thirty countries and the reaction of people who live in a place tells me a lot about the issues I am writing about. When arguments are generated on my articles, it helps me understand my story better.”

Women bloggers and journalists have created their own space in the world through media, technology, finance, arts and culture. Blogging and traditional print go hand in hand, and this is a relationship that is not going to change in the coming future. Blogging has opened up a vast space to write for women who are either shy or being shunned down at their day jobs.