TNU organized Colloquium on ‘Editing: Techniques and Technologies’.
TNU’s academic event on Editing took off in an air of excitement and enthusiasm on the part of the invited speakers and anticipation of the participants. The Colloquium was inaugurated by Professor Surabhi Banerjee, Mentor, Languages, TNU. In her inaugural speech, Dr. Banerjee shared her views and experiences as an author. Editing as she sees is, “Mercilessly Eliminating Redundancy”. With the result, the final manuscript may not look anything like the first draft. Often times the manuscript will go through 10 or more rounds of editing before getting published.
On welcoming the speakers and the participants, Professor A.S. Kolaskar, Vice Chancellor of TNU, briefly spoke about TNU and the vision for the University.
Mr.Avijit Nandi Majumdar, CEO, ANM Global Media Research, was the guest of honour. He spoke about the adversarial relationship that generally exist between a reporter and an editor. He also pointed out the need of an editor and a reporter to have a good understanding of each other’s roles, to achieve synergy. Then, He went on to describe the emergence of various types of media and the resultant changes in the editing techniques and methods.
Some of the Take aways from each of the speakers are as follows,
“Everybody is an editor in that they are editing their every mode of communication with their fellow human beings.” – Mr. Snehasis Sur, Senior Journalist, Doordarshan (Kolkata).
“A reporter’s job is to collect information and the editor’s job is to make the story ready to be printed. Mr Aldous Huxley puts it really well, “It is horribly difficult to find the right way of saying what one wants to say. “ – Mr. Santanu Sanyal, Former Deputy Editor and Chief of Bureau, The Hindu Business Line.
”Science Writing can be described as creating an illusion of understanding. Style, is a very important aspect of science journalism.” – Mr. Pathik Guha, Assistant Editor, ABP Pvt. Ltd.
“The Responsibility of a journalist is to report the truth and promote cohesiveness in the society.” – Mr. Ranabir Ray Choudhury, Senior Journalist and Author.
“Editing is, mercilessly eliminating redundancy.” Prof. Surabhi Banerjee, Former Founder Vice Chancellor, Central University of Orissa.
”The Reporters are supposed to report what they see and not value add to the news item.” –Mr. Avijit Nandi Majumdar, CEO, ANM Global Media Research.
“Editing is a process by which editors convert the author’s material into print. This transformation should give the reader a good experience while reading.” – Ms. Sonali Sengupta, Vice President, Orient Blackswan.
“In Today’s world, the Newspapers are competing with general public because almost everybody is reporting what they see in their daily life in various internet forums, social networking sites, etc. Every journalist is a paper boy, in that he is now delivering the news items to the readers because he is required to give his contact information at the end of his article. Unless he gets enough favourable comments on what he writes, his career as a journalist goes on a downward spiral. “– Mr. Arindam Basu, Author and Journalist Founder Director, Carpe Diem.
“The concept of Unicode was used to develop scientifically a keyboard for Indian languages.”- Dr. Goutam Mukherjee, Senior Technical Director, National Informatics Centre, Kolkata.
Panel Discussion Session
Moderator- Ms. Rita Bhimani, Founder- CEO, Ritam Communications.
Panellists:
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- Chairperson- Prof. Surabhi Banerjee, Former Founder Vice Chancellor, Central University of Orissa.
- Dr. Ramkumar Mukhopadhyay, Director, Publishing Department, Visva-Bharati University.
- Mr.Ranabir Ray Choudhury, Senior Journalist and Author.
- Mr. Santanu Sanyal, Former Deputy Editor and Chief of Bureau, The Hindu Business Line.
In the last session of the Colloquium, the panellists and the audience suggested that, TNU’s proposed Diploma course on editing should include a substantial practical component, emphasis on writing skills and internship with industry to make the graduates of the course employable.