Using DTP to publish newspapers!

By Vrinda Manocha

Friday , the 11th of May marked the final session on the Mylapore Times Journalism Course. The class was held at the Mylapore
Times office on C. P. Ramaswamy Road, Alwarpet.

Class at the Mylapore Times Office
First, one of us read out a story from the day's newspaper and resource person D'Souza pointed out the mistakes in it and advised the students to avoid the same. An interesting report was also read out from 'Young World', a supplement of 'The Hindu' , about a similar journalism camp held for a younger age group by the Hippocampus Experience Centre.

This was followed by a discussion on various sources of
information for newspapers from snail mail to e-mail and radios to
phone calls. D' Souza then told the students about the Desktop
Publishing System (DTP) which is used to publish small newspapers. We were also shown the template of the Mylapore Times newspaper created on Adobe Pagemaker and how the reports and pictures were laid out. The 'dummy copy' of the newspaper was also shown, with the columns and spaces for advertisements marked out.

D' Souza also explained the various processes a newspaper goes through from layout to printing and distribution. He printed a page of the newspaper for proof-reading. He spoke about the different types of newspapers such as wall newspapers on street corners in Kolkata and created some amazement among all of us when he passed around a copy of the smallest newspaper in the world, 'Vossa Senhoria'.
This newspaper printed in Brazil measures 1.4 inches by 1 inch. The smallest newspaper in the world

D' Souza encouraged the students to start newspapers in their own schools. We took few photos of the class as keepsake pictures and wound up the camp