Aspiring Journalists

With the media boom in recent years, the image of journalists has changed forever. No longer does the picture of shabbily dressed person with pen, paper and a jhola cross our mind when we talk about journalists. Rather they have evolved as iconic figures who have succeeded in reaching out to many with their charismatic personality. And thanks to them, a career in media has emerged as a viable career option for many young people.

If there is anything that has seen an upward swing besides inflation, it is definitely the number of aspiring journalists. For some it’s the fame factor and for many it’s the desire to change the society, the nation and the world at large. There is another chunk of aspiring journalists entering this field not because of the above reasons, but for the simple fact that this particular discipline has very little (or nothing at all) to do with numbers and formulas.

However, ‘changing the world’ claim makes aspiring journalists sound like Miss World contestants because they too almost always claim they want to change the world. Its high times both Miss World contestants and aspiring journalists start making realistic expectations.

The media coverage of the Aishwarya Rai – Abhisekh Bachchan wedding (the contentious Indian wedding) few years back, or any other celebrity related event for that matter, comes nowhere close to the claim of changing the world, let alone our society. But then, there are people, many people, who can sit for hours glued onto the television screen and scan newspapers simply because they want to know about all the same. Therefore, there are plenty of occasions when responding to the readers’, viewers’ and listeners’ need is the only option.

Even though, such hardly life altering stories make up so much of the media content there are still plenty of scope for stories of other kind. Aspiring journalists need to let loose on ‘changing the world’ claim and hone the skill of balancing between what the people want to know and what they don’t know but NEED to know.

An article put things in perspective for me; “The news biz is a funny thing”, it read, “For every Shilpa Shetty Big Brother story, there’s a really lovely one like Mohammad Younis, who provides micro credit for the poor in Bangladesh.”

Just two years old as a journalism student and I already feel we are in the making of being in a business where we get to see the world, tell stories to people and interpret the world for them. Changing the world maybe a far cry for most of us. But if we are able to tell the right story, in the right way and if the right person reads it, maybe they can change their own world.