Journalism

Shashi Tharoor: The Conviction of Banality

It takes a special skill to nail the essence of a writer in one pithy sentence, and Chandrahas Choudhury does just that when he describes Shashi Tharoor’s The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone as “a ragbag of columns and op-eds in which ancient platitudes, second-hand insights, and tacky witticisms are aimed at the reader with a quite breathtaking conviction.”

Anyone who has read Tharoor’s Sunday column in the Times of India will surely sigh and agree. My beef with Tharoor, though, is not with his monumental banality or his lack of insight, but with his double-standards on matters like free speech. For example, in a piece earlier this year, he correctly supported MF Husain, but refused to stand up for the Danish cartoonists. He wrote:

[I]‘d like to deal with those who’ve questioned my own record: many have written to ask whether I have spoken out in favour of freedom of expression elsewhere (I have, for decades, and continue to do so); whether I have publicly defended Salman Rushdie over The Satanic Verses (I have, widely, and in writing as well as in person); and whether I have spoken in favour of the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (I have not, because I consider them a needless provocation). The last line of questioning, I must say, irritated me; those who draw a parallel between Husain’s art and a bunch of cartoons have not begun to understand the first thing about either.

This excerpt makes clear, of course, that Tharoor does not understand the first thing about free speech—if it was only allowed to those whose expression has the approval of tasteful commissars like Tharoor, what meaning would freedom have at all?

One of the things Chandrahas points out in his review, by the way, is how “one of Tharoor’s main subjects” is “the ‘I’” And indeed, in the first sentence of the excerpt I quoted above, there are eight ‘I’s and one ‘my’. Prolific.

Also read: Why Indian ‘liberals’ aren’t quite liberal.

In Defence of Blogging

This is the 31st installment of my weekly column for Mint, Thinking it Through.

Not a week goes by these days without someone bashing blogs. Last Thursday, the essayist Mukul Kesavan referred disparagingly to how the “masters of blah have migrated to the Republic of Blog”. Just days before that, Robert McCrum wrote in the Observer of how “the democracy of the Web is in danger of becoming a cacophonous nightmare”. The Times of India famously (and ironically?) wrote last year that “no one can beat Indian bloggers when it comes to self-obsessed preaching, gossiping and bitching”.

I write a fairly widely read blog, India Uncut, so let me jump to the defence of blogging. Firstly, all these gentlemen are right—but they nevertheless miss the point, as Theodore Sturgeon could have told them. When Sturgeon, a writer of science fiction, was attacked for the rubbish that came out of that genre, he famously came up with what is known today as Sturgeon’s Revelation: “90% of everything is crud.”

Sturgeon’s point was that most attacks against science fiction used “the worst examples of the field for ammunition”. And while he accepted that 90% of science fiction was rubbish, so was 90% of everything else. If one just looked at the crud component of any field, it would be easy to dismiss anything.

This problem is amplified in blogging’s case. In journalism, for example, there are filters to publishing. Newspapers and magazines have editors who constrain what goes into print, and the limitations of space ensure that a lot of crud gets filtered out.

Blogging, on the other hand, puts the tools of publishing into every individual’s hands. This is tremendously empowering, but it also means that the proportion of crud that gets published is bound to be far higher than in traditional journalism. To judge blogging by the crud is, thus, meaningless.

What about the non-crud? Well, there are so many kinds of non-crud that it’s hard to generalize about them. People blog for different reasons: to filter for interesting content on the Web; to keep an online diary; to keep their friends updated on what they do; to provide different kinds of utilities; to be read by niche audiences they cannot otherwise reach; to push causes they believe in; to comment on what’s going on in the world; and even to act as a watchdog on the supposed watchdogs, big media.

Every reader is likely to find a quality blog that caters to him or her, while journalism, especially in India, increasingly caters to the lowest common denominator. Also, journalists tend to be generalists, and their coverage of specialized subjects is often shallow. In contrast, specialists on every subject blog about their passions, delving into areas and nuances ignored by mainstream media. Economics blogs such as Marginal Revolution and Café Hayek, and the law blog, The Volokh Conspiracy, are excellent examples of this.

Blogging as a medium provides many advantages that journalists and media outlets would do well to consider. One, blogging has immediacy: Reporters are not dependent on the news cycle to get their work out, and can publish it as soon as they write it. Two, blogging provides them flexibility of space. They can blog a single thought in a handful of words without needing to expand it into a publishable piece, or a 6,000-word essay that their newspaper may not have space for.

Three, a blog adds dimensions to a piece, as one can hyperlink within it to other sources of knowledge and argument that enrich the reader’s experience. Four, blogging allows a personal tone that the dictates of a house style in a publication may not. Five, blogging opens you up to a feedback mechanism that newspapers do not provide. I am not just referring to comments, which some high-traffic bloggers avoid because the noise-to-signal ratio gets out of hand, but to the fact that the blogosphere is essentially meritocratic, and rewards excellence and punishes mediocrity virtually in real time.

If bloggers do not provide value to their readers consistently, if they do not respect their readers’ time and write crisply and lucidly, if they treat their blogging as a chore to be dispensed with, they will not be read. The impact on their traffic will be immediate and visible. In newspapers, on the other hand, such real-time feedback from readers hardly exists. For example, if most Mint readers were of the opinion that my weekly column is a waste of space, it would take a lot of time for that opinion to filter in to the editors, if at all. But if it was a blog, there would be no place to hide. The loss in readership would punish me immediately and visibly.

Ouch, I’m out of space. Damn these newspaper columns! I’m off to blog now—would you like to come along?

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You can browse through all my columns for Mint in my Thinking it Through archives. I’ve written on this subject before in the following pieces: Blogs—The New Journalism.” “Generalising About Bloggers.” “Don’t Think in Categories.”

Show me the tree!

First there was the whole saga about Aishwarya Rai marrying a tree. Then, recently, a denial from Aishwarya. Well, now Amitabh Bachchan himself has spoken:

Ash is not married to a tree! […] It’s a challenge—please show me the tree she married! Bring that person who married her to the tree. Where did it happen?

Hmm. Perhaps they’ve killed off the tree and buried it. Or maybe they’ve kidnapped its saplings and warned the tree to deny everything or else…

Perhaps we should just take Mr Bachchan at his word. But why, I wonder, would so many people report the matter if there wasn’t something to it? Still, that’s our media…

(Link via email from Arjun Swarup.)

Pictures that define our times

Gautam points me, via email, to this collection: Images that changed the world. There are some stunning photographs there, many of which you would have seen earlier. They’re worth revisiting, if only to be reminded of the turmoil of the last 100 years. What event will the next such photograph capture?

My favourite among all of them is one that stands for so much more than just the time and place it was taken. Here you go:

image

Gene Weingarten on outsourced journalism

My life is complete after reading Gene Weingarten’s satire on outsourced, long-distance journalism. Weingarten reports on a meeting of the local legislature in Tamil Nadu via webcast:

A man whose name is, I swear, “Somnath Chatterjee,” addressed the state legislature here today. Mr. Chatterjee was introduced as the leader of the “Lok Sabha,” which is evidently some sort of important national lawmaking body about which few details are available at this time.

Mr. Chatterjee is apparently in ill health, as he arrived surrounded by attendants in white hospital garb. However, he proved hale enough to mount the podium, where he delivered a lengthy speech in praise of an elderly, revered local government official whose name sounds something like “Dr. K. Haminahamina,” a name that, unfortunately, didn’t get any Google hits. But it’s got to be pretty close.

Mr. Chatterjee’s speech was interrupted many times by the sound of antelopes thundering by, which turned out to be people thumping their palms on their desks. This seems to be a local version of applause, a fact that became apparent as the camera panned the audience, and HOLY COW, wait a minute—everybody’s wearing all white, head to toe!

You can read the full piece here. If you want to. No one’s forcing you. I’m sick of being blamed for making people read sick things. Sick! Am I holding a gun to your head? Huh?

(Link via email from Deepak and two mailing lists. Blame them! Pah!)

On inspiring suicide and smashing TVs

Scott Adams writes, “Every time the media makes a big deal about a high profile suicide there’s a 100% chance it inspires additional suicide.”

So what to do, stop reporting suicides, or ban songs and movies that inspire people to kill themselves or commit violent acts? I would argue not. We have to treat people as being responsible for their own actions, and not try to second-guess what will inspire them to do this or that.

Mandira Bedi and Charu Sharma’s pretence at being knowledgeable about cricket makes me want to go and smash every TV in Mumbai. Banning Extraaa Innings is no solution to that. Punishing me if I actually damage someone else’s TV is. As this commenter points out, it’s all about personal responsibility.

(Link via email from Gautam John.)

Tears in Jaya Bachchan’s eyes

Ullas Marar writes in:

Your comments on the Abhishek-Aishwarya wedding reminds me of a hilarious news item on IBN7 last night… about the couple leaving for their honeymoon, replete with footage of a dramatic farewell.

The funniest part were the headlines which IBN7 kept on beaming:

“Amitabh ne Abhi aur Ash ko gale lagaya”

“Jaya ke aankho se aansoo chhalak gaye”

Seriously, is this journalism?

Heh.