Classroom Report / Day Five

By Meenaxi Palaniappan

Now a routine practice, the day started with the students reading reports from the newspaper. The first report, read by Bharathi Narayanan was an interesting story about the robbery at the Sri Kapaleeswar temple on the night of April 17. An article read by Krithika Malini, titled 'Adopt an unusual pet' from the Deccan Chronicle was interesting but ambiguous. Taking this as an example, the resource person, Vincent D' Souza advised us to ensure that our writing is clear and to the point. The second portion of today's class was focused on the lesser known departments of a news organization. We got to learn about the advertising and business departments of a news organization. We had a discussion on unusual modes of advertising like distributing free samplers along with the newspaper, 'scratch and win' offers, coupons that can be cut out of the newspaper, etc. D' Souza showed us the difference in the way a big, local story ( the robbery at Sri Kapali Temple, Mylapore) was presented in three different newspapers ( The Hindu, Times of India and The New Indian Express), which helped us understand the importance of designing a newspaper attractively. He also explained the way a newspaper designer works and promised to organise a trip to a newspaper office/press. D' Souza spoke on the production departments of a newspaper and on the Internet department which manages their online editions.