Dear Yash, I hope the ongoing series on changes in the editorial departments of two mainstream Hindi publications must have attracted newer readers to your already most popular portal on media world. I congratulate you for making sincere efforts on bringing out details that might interest the community. Meanwhile, in between the news items and comments on the issue I found certain issues which I think should be addressed in proper reference. Dear, we all are human beings. None of us is god or demon. Every one of us has a trail of successes and failures. Unfortunately, we in our habit of idolization try make idols of common people. We tend to forget that success and failure are relative terms and a situation being described as success may as well be a failure in other terms.
Mrinal ji or Shashi ji are no exceptions. Both of them have successes and failures to their credit. Attempt to blow things out of proportion have a direct bearing on the credibility of the carrier. I’d advise you to exercise a bit of restraint just to keep issues within legitimate limits. Just this much about the good or bad aspects of the personalities in discussion.
Another, issue that I’d like to be discussed properly among the media people is the use of term ‘product’ for a newspaper or any other media outlet. Why this simple fact shouldn’t be accepted that all these things are products. The term product is not an abuse. Of course, it may be pleaded that these are products of a different kind – socially driven intellectual products incorporating elements of service and responsibility. There may be no difference of opinions in saying that keeping in view the socio-political impact of these products, they deserve rather different treatment and these simply can’t be compared with other categories of products like the toiletries or cloth or a car or cigarettes.
A healthy discussion only leads to better understanding of phenomena surrounding our lives and there’s no harm if you offer this great platform for such things which shall ultimately be of immense help to the media community.
Warm wishes
Shrikant
shrikant.asthana@gmail.com