An evening in a media house

June 16, 2008 

As a child I was nosy and would often fancy being a journalist once I grew up. The image I carried of myself was that of one dressed khadi kurta with a white salwar, big black-rimmed glasses with a chequered jhola hanging over the shoulder with a leaf of papers / pen in one hand. All my imaginary colleagues were dressed in a similar ruffled fashion. How ‘70s right?  Lot of day-dreams during those growing up days before I succumbed to the usual rut of studying engineering to code java in a software company culminating with an onsite assignment.  

Recently, something good came of this blog. Finally. An editor attached to a reputed publishing house discreetly contacted me; one thing led to another and before I knew I was summoned for a meeting in person one evening last week. The thought of lugging around Lil’ General for a discussion across the city was weird at first but there was no way out. It was kind of V to drive back from the city to accompany me and watch LG. It’s been a good year and half since I’ve met with someone in a professional setting; this was very different from my previous interview(s) in the IT industry. For one, I knew what I wanted in IT – role wise, compensation wise and what I could give back to the organization so that both of us benefited from the association. The publishing industry is new to me but I am very excited to learn. This is an opportunity in disguise.

Over the years, I’ve visualized a media house to be some sort of a crazy place - far from being organized. I carried images of people running around, scrambling to edit some piece at the last minute, exchanging stories, finding appropriate reruns when short of news items and always staying up late to meet deadlines and get the paper out the next morning just in time.  What I saw was so very different from this image. The people were real for one and ordinary ones – not the hippies I had imagined them to be.  The editor was cool – chilled out who didn’t speak some fancy language. That was a relief. And more importantly dressed casual. The workplace was similar to any other IT organization – divided into cubicles – only the barriers didn’t matter for there were islands of people chatting (umm, discussing) away in every corner.  And like many It offices, people in the same floor didn’t quite know what the guys in the extreme corner did – let alone their names. It was chaotic but in a nice way.

The editor had a corner office full of magazines and other national dailies. And I did get a glimpse of what was to appear in the next day’s paper. No sneaking – it was out there laid out in full on his desk. Cool, right? After a good wait of about 30 minutes, I got to meet him in person.  What came out of that meeting, only the coming weeks will tell. Nevertheless, it was a pleasant experience and I was impressed beyond words how creative juices flow – one idea after another.

As they say, ideas are capital; the rest is just money. It can’t get more real than this.

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Comments

6 Responses to “An evening in a media house”

  1. sangeetha on June 16th, 2008 6:02 am

    Lakshmi,

    That is very good news. I am so proud of you.

    Sangeetha

    Me: Thanks Sangeetha

  2. Alok on June 16th, 2008 6:09 am

    That’s great! Keep us posted.

    Me: Sure. Just so you know, it’s not even an inch close to what you’ve always dreamed of.

  3. Chandrika on June 16th, 2008 5:15 pm

    Nice to see you back. And good luck!

    Me: Thank you Chandu.

  4. Dip on June 16th, 2008 5:51 pm

    Good luck.

  5. Priya Sudhesh Kumar( Priya Thankappan) on June 17th, 2008 5:11 am

    I more of visualised you as Oprah Winfrey in the making with her own chat/ tv show? Now I have to start thinking differently about you - maybe KR Narayanan who is another story teller too.
    Do keep us posted as to the outcome of your visit! Good luck.

  6. Rhea on June 18th, 2008 6:07 am

    How exciting! Hope things ‘materialize’. All the best!

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