nt.
"And the money is so much better... the Gulf newspapers
pay so much more," Mascarenhas told me. Perhaps
Mascarenhas would have thought differently had
newspaper owners in Goa exhibited more commitment to
professionalism. Just browsing through the back issues
of Goa Today edited by Manohar Shetty proved to be an
eye-opener on what could have been.

With Devika Sequiera and others, the old Goa Today
turned out to be a delightful surprise. Well researched
and crisply written stories like the ones on the
protests against charter tourism in the early 1990s
were a joy to read long after the magazine became a
pale shadow of itself.

One saw similar flashes of the classic fire in the
belly kind of journalism during the agitation against
Meta Strips metal recycling plant four years ago. But
matters have since slipped back into the safe routine
of old. While mediapersons elsewhere in the country are
agitated over the loss of substance to the infusion of
style and gloss in the age of colour, it's prolonged
siesta time in Goa.

The English-language newspaper market ensures that the
readership is carved equally among both the players.
Just 2000 copies separate the number one daily oHeraldo
and the runner-up Navhind Times as per the latest Audit
Bureau of Circulation survey. But with neither of them
aiming to break out for total dominance there is little
investment either in editorial or in printing technologies.

Though tourism is major contributor to Goa's revenues,
the newspapers offer little to a visitor. The colour
and vitality of the tiny state simply does not reflect
in its English-language newspapers. Though it is the
beach belt that draws all the tourists, there is very
little coverage from these areas in the local
newspapers. As one senior journalist remarked to me,
Goa moves simultaneously on two parallel lines. And the
beach belt is a whole world away from the hinterland
that provides all of Goa's journalists. So the hotels
and the party scene appear rarely on their radar, and
that too only when disgruntled politicians in the area
rake up environmental or other issues.

There is a thriving party scene on the beach belt that
could have been happening on some other planet going
strictly by the newspapers in Goa. Purely as a
marketing play, newspapers here should be allocating
resources to ensure adequate coverage of the tourism
sector. There are any number of marketers eager to tap
the floating tourist p