on perception -- especially among
English-language newspapers in the state -- that correspondents
are third-class passengers, who deserve little or no
decent treatment. Let me cite two instances to prove
this point. In one English-language newspaper, a
correspondent sent me a crime report, which, under
normal circumstances, should have been carried the next
day. To my surprise, the report was not published for
the next two days. The correspondent called me and
sought an explanation for the delay. Unable to give him
a suitable reply, I transferred the call to the
concerned sub-editor, who simply snapped back and
insisted that the correspondent need not bother about
his report and, that, the report would appear only when
there space was available in the paper!

Some time ago, a Vasco-based couple died in a road
mishap in Porvorim and the correspondent promptly sent
in the report. The next morning, I was taken aback to
find the item in a single column, virtually hidden in
the section for continued items on Page 4.
Incidentally, the distribution of saplings by an MLA
not only merited a double-column spread, but also a
decent photograph -- ironically, just alongside the
news item reporting the tragic deaths. The sub-editor's
reply, like his news sense, left me baffled. "So what?
So many people die almost everyday. What was so special
about these deaths?" Unfortunately, the sub-editor
failed to acknowledge the fact that the same news item
was prominently displayed in the other two
English-language newspapers.

A former colleague once aptly described such an
attitude as "'news sense' value which gets transformed
into 'nuisance value'."

In most cases, those serving on the news desk in
English-language papers have never worked as rural
correspondents and are, hence, unable, or in some cases
unwilling, to understand the intricacies of collecting
and sending news items. Confined to the four walls of
the newspaper office, some members of the news desk
play a role similar to that of a cook in the kitchen;
while rural correspondents are the waiters who have to
constantly interact either with an unhappy customer or,
in some cases, a satisfied customer. The news desk
essentially plays a vital role in the making or
breaking of a story sent by rural correspondents.

But then, the news desk is faced with pressures of a
different kind, which are not always understood by
rural correspondents, based as they are in remote
cor