A newspaper, by the lay-man’s definition of the term is any piece of writing which tells us about the day-to-day happenings and events taking place in a very limited present. So a newspaper basically is a documentation of the news, written in an interesting manner. Therefore writing for newspapers is writing news for the general public.

This brings us to the definition of news. There is no definition of news which can satisfy everyone. The perception of news differs from person to person, time to time and place to place as what’s news in US & UK may not be news in India and vice versa. One essential feature of any news is that it is ‘new’.

Writing for the Indian newspaper has its own characteristics. For the Indian newspapers still suffer colonial hangover. Which implies is that the main news is about the government and those in power. So in the Indian scenario certain events that form an integral part of newspaper writing are reports of speeches at public meetings, legislative assemblies, government announcements, appointments & notices etc.

However news writing can be writing about anything out of the ordinary. Anything that has the potential to interest the readers has the potential of becoming the news for the next day’s newspaper. So basically news is what the journalist makes it.

Certain things to be kept in mind while writing for a newspaper are:

1. Timeliness – Readers always want to be kept up-to-date. That is why in most stories about events you will find the “when” element in the lead sentence. This makes the reader feel he’s witnessing the event live. After all nobody wants to read a stale newspaper, even if it’s only one day old!

2. Proximity – this is the “where” element of news. This is almost always a part of the lead sentence of an event-based story so the audience knows whether the event is local, national or international. It excites the reader’s imagination, giving the event a visual feel.

3. Prominence – this is about keeping readers always informed and up-to-date about important people, places and events. We as readers like to read about those we look upto. It helps us establish a connect with them.

4. Currency/ Drama – What’s hot makes news. This can range from a social activist sitting on ‘’dharna’’, or a well known celebrity supporting a cause to the unfolding of a terrorist trial, probe or a conflict between two big business houses, to the launch of a new car etc. The idea is to get in the reader’s eye-span. This is extremely important for public relations people who write press-releases etc. The publication of their article depends on whether they can get the reader’s attention. For the evet organizers the consequence needs to be kept in mind. For the greater an event’s effect on people, the more likely it will be reported!

5. Depth Coverage – it is concerned with providing detail and information of the broad phenomena. The difference between spot and depth coverage is that the one refers to brief, event-based stories and the other to ones that provide background information and an analysis of the happening.

6. Enterprise Coverage – Taking the initiative called “enterprise” in the news business. This can be important in both spot and depth coverage. Ultimately it needs to be kept in mind that news and truth is not the same thing. The function of news to signalize an event, whereas that of truth is to bring the hidden facts to light. In this sense news can be compared to a beam of a searchlight. Its function is to search below the surface of the iceberg, find the news, develop it, interpret it and present it in an enterprising manner.

7. Actualities & Talking Points—Actualities are natural calamities, accidents, crime, strikes, political happenings, whereas talking points are what people are talking about.

8. Who decides the news-The journalist or the public— Ultimately news is made by those who discover the answer. And those who do not fail to survive.

9. Importance of News– The reader clamors for news. Businesses and economies depend on news. That is what makes news so important. And because the journalist has to deliver to everyone, while everyone’s perception of news differs, different newspapers have varying nature of news as is seen in the way they handle the same story.

News may not be a synonym for the truth but the news that is reported is always completely true or it is at least a set of facts that has been presented to the reporter as the truth. What this means is that there might be more to the truth than is reported in the newspaper. And ultimately all newspaper writing is about presenting true facts that have been trimmed and shredded in order to make them interesting news.

What is creativity? Is it about cosmic tattoos over body? Or is it about having your hairs grown long and tying them at back? or piercing your tongue or eyebrow with ornaments? No. None of these. These might be the by products of creativity, but real creativity lies in your mind. And believe it or not it’s totally on your fate-gad’s grace. Either you will be creative or not is decided when you were in your mother’s womb.

Creativity is in your mind!!

Your brain has two hemispheres one Right and another Left. Our creativity depends upon the either of these two dominance of the hemisphere on our mind. People having the dominance of right brain over them are called right brained personalities. And people bearing left brained dominance are called left brained personalities.

Left brain characteristics-Left Brain Traits

Our left brain is the centre for reading, writing, speech, language and memory. It is the analytical part of our brain that helps us to think logically and rationally. A few of the most interesting left brain characteristics are: Left brain processes information linearly and sequentially. In other words, it takes each part or piece of information and processes them linearly and sequentially in a systematic manner, in order to solve a problem or come to a conclusion

• analytical,

• logical,
• Sequential.

Right brain characteristics-Right Brain Traits

The right brain is responsible for insight, 3D spatial reasoning, art awareness, imagination and music awareness. If you are right-brain dominant, you tend to be more extroverted than your left-brain counterpart. Musicians, actors, and actresses are commonly right-brain dominant. Subjects that require subjective reasoning, like philosophy and religion, are easier to comprehend. Creative writing courses often use right-brain techniques in combating writer’s block.

They are

• Creative
• Impractical
• Fantasizing

Misconception-Only right brained people are creative

In fact the chunk of creativity lies in both of the hemispheres but their way of manifesting is different. Creativity of left brained person is more practical and less imaginative and as of right brained person whose ideas are less practical but more imaginative. If you tell people to write a story, left brained people would write more practical stories regarding their experiences or current affairs. While right brained people would write about the story sounding supernatural i.e.-“An ants saves the whole world”

Song writing –Union of both brains

Process of composing a song is the best example of union of creativity of both the brains. As right brains thinks about the theme of the song, left brain chooses the words fits into the theme.

Answer the following questions

Right now, my things on my desk are all scattered

Yes
No

I wear a watch

Yes
No

. Some people think I’m psychic

Yes
No

. I’d make a good detective

Yes
No

I keep a to do list

Yes
No

.If I had to assemble something, I’d read the directions first.

Yes
No

. I have considered becoming a lawyer, journalist, or doctor

Yes
No

I pay attention to the words used by speaking person (his emotion comes later)

Yes
No

Before opening or using any product I read the manual first.

Yes
No

I am/was better at algebra than geometry

Yes
No

Pictorial representation gives me beeter idea of topic than verbal explanation.

Yes
No

When I have to make tough decisions, I write down the pros and cons.

Yes
No

I do well at spelling.

Yes
No

I forget to keep things on its places right after their use

Yes
No

I would choose doing a summary over doing an outline

Yes
No

I just watch my favourite TV channels, seldom glance through other channels

Yes
No

I would like to  listen my I Pod that radio, as songs on I-Pod are pre-arranged

Yes
No

(Click on the answers and at the end count your total “Yes” answers and all “NO “answers. If your answers “YES” are more t than “NO”s then you are left brained person. If “NO” answers excel “YES “, then you are left brained person.)

So More “YES”=Left brained person

More “NO”-Right brained person

Lights, Camera, Action! Heard these terms before? These are for aspiring filmmakers.

Considered as an art, producers and directors have well defined what film making is.  Lot of technical aspects are involved. It’s a tiring task to make a film. Certain guidelines on film making may definitely result in good films and movies. Students just entered the media industry or freshers may find this useful. Film making being a part of media, its study becomes essential. This area has a lot of scope and demand. The tricks would be as such:

1. Knowledge on camera handling is a basic and must. It’s a process and therefore obstacles if exist can be worked and should be worked out or else the entire efforts would be a waste. Lot of aspects like story, script, sound, music being involved are a must.
2. Not an easy task needs visualization and imagination. Good Stories and script making cant be made just like that.  If the moviemaker is a movie lover and has seen many movies in the past his imagination can be better.
3. Camera angles and direction which is commonly known can be the most common but crucial aspect in film making. For the entire consequence to happen needs patience and technical aspects as in working with softwares and all is time consuming.
4. It’s not in everybody’s ability and requires acting skills and other. Acting also needs to be decent depending on the character and nature of character. Very apt and interesting characters can be portrayed in a movie. Characters can be dull, aggressive, and enjoyable too. Just needs some thinking for the right kind of characters.
5. Recent movies like Delhi Belly and many other such movies have proved that filmmaking needs experimentation. Coming up with newer ideas every now and then can be a better aspect to cinema and cinema can be connected to some extent to filmmaking.
6. There are many such that are to be kept in mind while making a film. Audience research conducted at the beginning might help.
7. Target audience should also be kept in mind while making films for the right kind of audience. This helps in making the film a success and has positive consequencies.
8. Locations can also be the turning point in the movie. Beautiful locations exist and using them for short films is not a bad idea.
9. Some students now are going for a career in film making and various institutes now offermany courses like FTII, Pue ne and NYSA too. Getting one particular more intricate shot riht with the simultaneity of action in one space and time, with no comprise is a super high.
10. Film making encompasses so many art forms, be it literature, poetry, music, writing, acting, design, space, costumes and so many other aspects that you will actually learn a lot about yourself and in turn grow more rapidly than others.

It’s an enriching process it enriches your life. Future of film making will be a lot more global. There are already some glimpses seen of brilliance with movies like 3 Idiots. The newer guys in the film making industry are developing and are giving off small sparks. Our films are going to get noticed by the world. If filmmakers get together and make films that they believe in, money will follow. From the belief t o have fun, more ideas may arrive and improve the present scenario of film making.

Process of film making should be enjoyed. Film makers should not depend on Box office success and critical acclaim while they should have a personal growth. Having an experience in video making would prove to be better for any film maker.

It can also be called as a team effort and just 1 man contributing it would not work. Its also a collective effort and the vision of all members in the team has to be included or else it wont turn out to be a success and would not be that good. Co-ordination from every member of the team is very much essential or else thumbs down.

Mumbai has a population of about 18 million people and is one of the most populated cities in the world.   Bollywood is very similar to Hollywood.   Aspiring models, singers, actors and actresses all come to Mumbai searching for their big break the same way people go to Hollywood search for success in the movie industry. So this industry has become a way of life to everyone living here, catching a glimpse of movie sets in streets or in malls is more than common. It’s more or less like an initiation ceremony to actually fit in society and its gossip, but as of late Indian cinema is kinda plagued with a rather dreaded illness – The Copy cat syndrome!!

Probably gone are the days where great film writers and storytellers spent what felt like millennia to perfect their creations and they took immense pride in doing so. But have you noticed the scene is rather different today, With LIMITED BUDGET FOR STORYWRITING with the rest spent on Fancy crazy special effects and overacting trying but barely capable of copying the essence of Hollywood films these films today are almost taunting us to spot the original, and every time we are watching it’s a challenge between us and the screen writer in trying to guess where it was stolen from, it’s a pastime for audiences watching Bollywood films in trying to play the guessing game.

India is known for its flamboyance and glamour, something that certainly transfers over to Indian Cinema, and it’s great we add flavours of our culture our passion to the movies we make, but we have to draw a line. Just because salt makes our food taste good doesn’t mean we marinate our food in a mountain of it, which would just leave people tasting it feel violated. Same rules applied for our cinema

We Stand at a dimension where everything around us particularly all forms of public representation are armoured with self representation editors propound, School teachers speak in homilies, parents lectured, leaders frequently asked us to rededicate our tasks to nation building and even television interviews asked everyone, including starlets, as to what their message to the youth of the country is. And With our current situations with cinema and the directions the future looks nothing more than bleak.

The year gone by saw paradigm shift in the type of Hindi films made. With the chance in the audience profile and the growing number of multiplexes it has become interactive for producers and directors to look for contemporary themes. The sentimental family dramas with endless marriage songs and teary dialogues are no more acceptable. Even the actors like to play ordinary mortals with their own set of complexities.

The Mass media and Entertainment industry is the mould on which the nation’s future shall rest, people see what we have to show, children and adults alike mimic what they perceive to be the best way to live or die mirrored entirely on the social media. And our creativity no matter if its copied or an inspiring original feed the minds of the people

Today if someone saw our mindless mirrored movies they see nothing about our culture, nothing about contemporary India, nor do they build on the Hollywood idea. And it’s sad to see the Indian parallel cinema is given no heed just because we like leaving our brains at home to watch mindless cinema

But on the brighter side we do have a budding short film scene, people willing to squish every last drop of creativity out of their brains to give birth to a species of mind teasing imagination tickling movies. It’s a movement worth giving your life for, another freedom struggle in its birth, just to bring our nation somewhere close to Culture enriching cinema. Search for friends who inspire you, who aspire to challenge you. Record everything you do try out something different for a change, and challenge the change don’t change the challenge.

Remember there is always something new, some stone never turned, some story never told. The question is you the one who could seize that little tale to your advantage. Read Books, make friends and even more enemies. Talk to people about everything even your past is a good story it’s just how you tell it. Do whatever you need to, to unleash that beast from within to go that extra mile. Because you are shaping the future, you just don’t know it yet. Be the innovators, not imitators

Media is the Minds favourite food so feed it well, you don’t want indigestion now do you

Web advertisements are designed to create awareness and interest in a product and build a brand image. This medium requires good copywriting to sustain the interest of the surfers. These ads are focused on attracting attention which is possible only when the surfers retain interest. Internet can be advertiser’s best friend. Internet has revolutionized communication all over the world. The search engines allow the viewing of the enormous ads that were earlier restricted to the few. Web advertising is a big business. The advertisers need to be familiar with the advertising terminology and understand the different ways to measure web traffic.

Many companies use web advertising and reap great profits. An individual can advertise through his own site or buy banner advertisements on other sites. Whenever you open a site and see a long ribbon filled with various advertisements those ads are called banner ad.  Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Amazon.com etc help you locate advertisements on the web in response to your search terms.

Web is a high involvement and interactive medium. In TV advertising you sit back and allow it to wash over you but in web advertising there is a continuous demand for decisions from you, what is commonly known as clickstream. Every click makes you think. Whether this click will lead me to the ad? Whether I want to go to that site, will it be worth it? Etc. essentially web is decision making and not relaxation.

With advanced technology available to the corporate world, web advertising is used in all possible market segments. Consumers have accepted internet as a medium of entertainment, connectivity and commerce. Whether Facebook, YouTube or twitter, you entertain the world and at the same time be connected to all your family and friends, internet has made the world a smaller place. With sites like E-bay you can buy and sell goods online. Commerce has become so easy and time saving.

Web advertising is designed to create awareness and interest in a product/service and build a brand image. Good copywriting contributes significantly in creating interest. There are so many ads on the internet that it is difficult for a surfer to go through all of them and only a few lucky ones manage to capture his attention.  In order to make the ad campaigns more interesting, the companies create interactive websites. Proctor and gamble uses a campaign “send- a- kiss” where visitors can send electronic kisses to special people in their lives on special days like valentine’s day, mother’s day etc. advertisers want web advertising that are totally interactive. If you visit any website, they ask you for your feedback or suggestions. Such interaction helps to make the surfer relate to the product.

The creative team of the ad agency has to do a lot of hard intellectual work in coming up with catchy tag lines, phrases, slogans and overall good concept for the ad.  Most of the times bright and colorful colors are used in the ads in order to capture the attention of the surfers. Also contrasting colors, black text against white background and vice-versa is used to make the ads more appealing. Photography is an important aspect of web advertising. Pictures can speak a thousand words. Effective use of photographs as and when required helps to make the ad campaign more effective.

You must have experienced that you go to a website. There is a button that says “click me” , you click on it and it leads you to a different page altogether.  Now these are interstitials, a form of web advertising which can be seen on most of the websites today. Surfing through the internet is very interesting and informative. Just a glance at a particular ad and it gets registered in your mind. Web advertising is extremely effective, especially when it comes to selling to the urban market. Children, youth, adults all are familiar with internet and use it at some point of other throughout the day. Creating ads on most visited websites like face book, twitter etc helps to create awareness about the product. Also more casual’s means of advertising like creating fan pages are also used by advertisers.

Web advertising is rapidly growing. With companies facing stiff competition in the market, every company wants to make their ad campaign work wonders for them. The surfers have to be alert because interesting and attractive ads may often manipulate the surfers. The ads may not always give correct reliable information and since the dealings are on the web there is no way to check its authenticity.

A big decision in the life of any aspiring media professional is whether to choose the agency or the big corporate job. A comparison between these two more often than not, tilts in favour of the latter and not the former.  The reason for this is more than apparent. A corporate job means a fat pay cheque and all the perks which come with it. And nowhere in this article am I questioning the joy of that pay cheque! What I look at in this article is its second cousin- the choice of an agency and what needs to be considered while joining it. While a lot can be said about how choosing an agency is the more viable option in order to lay the building blocks of a flourishing career in an MNC, this is not the route that I am going to take during the course of this article. For here all I am concerned with is the few things to be kept in mind while starting a career in media with the agency in mind. Period.

1.Ask yourself what you value more

While there are chances that the growth in the hierarchy( and in the bank account as well) is faster in a corporate, the learning opportunities could be limited there. This is because big corporations tend to have more rules and policies that are in place which might not allow a complete expression of one’s creativity. On the other hand agency’s allow a certain amount of freedom of self expression which help in enhancing one’s learning curve. Thus it is important to ask yourself which of the two you value more and then choose accordingly.

2.Growth Opportunities

In most cases, agencies allow for internal growth. Thus most of the higher positions would be filled in by people who have stayed there for long and proved their mettle. More often than not a newbie is let in at the initial career levels and is expected to grow from there. This makes it important to find out the growth opportunities that are available in the agency and how long it takes to get where you want to go.

3.Work Environment

Any job that involves creativity needs an environment that facilitates it. It is important to understand if the agency has the suitable environment to work in so as to not hamper one’s creative processes. While a good work environment is important in any industry, a good healthy work environment characterized by a level of openness and freedom is key to an agency.

4.Reputation in the market

While this might seem like an inconsequential issue at the time, in reality it is very important to identify the reputation that the company has in the market and it’s rating amongst its peer companies. A good rating is an indication of the overall growth and work environment that exists in the agency which is an important point to consider before joining an agency.

5.Choice of department

While at an initial point in a career it is more important to get the job rather than a job in one’s preferred department, it is important to keep your eyes and ears open for any opportunities coming your way. Though at an initial stage you might be fine doing a copy writing job, if you aspire to be in research or account planning, this is something that needs to be highlighted at the beginning itself. Also it is important to understand whether the agency considers such shifts in interests and facilitates them for its employees. If not, there could be a situation where you have the ideal agency but not the ideal job.

6.A smaller pay cheque

While this has been mentioned earlier as well, it cannot be emphasized enough! An agency job might not be able to compare with a corporate one in the salary domain. Thus it is important to realize this while deciding to join an agency so as to prevent disappointment later. What one needs to understand is that this is the initial situation and things get a lot better with some amount of experience.

7.Late hours of work

A job in an agency means you need to be available around the clock. By virtue of being part of the media industry and a creative part of it, there are no fixed hours of work that can be adhered to. This is not to discourage an aspirant but to tell him or her that this field is fraught with exciting new challenges each day. It is a job which ceases to be a job and should become a way of life.

8.Personal satisfaction

At the end of the day, choosing an agency depends a lot on your own personality as well. It is important to choose an agency that mirrors your own personality so that the relationship becomes symbiotic. There is a lot of mutual inter dependence and understanding that is required while working in a creative field and especially in an agency.

A job becomes so much more when it becomes a part of your life. And as a great person once said, find a job you like and you won’t have to work a single day of your life.

Whenever we set off for a trip with family or with colleagues for any business purpose we come across many difficulties and language of that city or country becomes the major barrier while travelling into different places. This should be given much more importance as language is the means of communication. This will help you in understanding the street signs and menus. The language of one country differs from the other country by learning different languages you will understand the features of that state or country and also you will understand what makes them stand in a different way from others.

It gives us knowledge which can help us to grow and stay in this competitive world. Also it helps us to make better relations with people for personal sake or for any trading objective. A new language opens up a new culture you start understanding different cultures their virtues and its meaning and your lives takes a new dimension. Languages form the way people perceive the world.

Languages bring a mutual understanding, a sense of global citizenship as by learning their language we directly or indirectly become a part of that country of their customs and traditions since we understand it well through communicating in their own language.

The person who knows many languages is able to watch programs in various other languages. The individual is aware about the current happenings around the world by watching News in another language. So the person who knows more than one language has a better possibility of watching a variety of programs on television and thus gets more of entertainment too.

By learning a new language, you gain new scope, but at the same time you strengthen your own identity, individuality and also your self-confidence. A foreign language can add to a stronger persona. Language is a means of expression and allows a person to take part in social and various other activities.

Learning languages brings up more job opportunities to develop their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills and to express them with increasing confidence, independence and creativity. Students of foreign languages have access to a greater number of career possibilities. Learning other languages gives you enhanced methods of expressing ideas, concepts, or thoughts, this will shape your thought pattern, your behavior and you will explore same things in a different manner.

Amul – “The Taste of India,” has once again got it right with its Bhaag Milkha Bhaag campaign. While many of us wouldn’t know that one of the biggest ingredients of Milkha’s success was Milk, Amul has capitalized on this very well by associating with the movie in a unique way. BestMediaInfo has captured the essence of the collaboration in this article.

Speaking on the collaboration, Nitin Karkare, COO, Mumbai, Draftfcb Ulka said, “Association with the Bhaag Milkha Bhaag film seemed like a perfect next step for the brand after London Olympics, The Amazing Spiderman and Man of Steel. The objective is to reach our TG with the core message of milk as the original energy drink, but at the same time retaining the freshness, topicality and excitement.”

“This movie has a great fit with brand Amul, it stands for striving and winning to become the leader and we want the youth to follow this, to persevere with dedication, awakening the winner in us,” said GCMMF’s managing director RS Sodhi. He added, “Milk, the world’s original energy drink, will help provide nourishment and energy to reach their goals.”

Milkha Singh himself said, “This film will help inspire the youth to win in the Olympics, especially in athletics.”

Watch the Amul Milk TVC here.