If breaking news gives you excitement being in that newsroom gives me goosebumps.
I Always wanted to be there and work with Newslaundry since the day my brother had introduced me this news critique 5 years ago. With all the excitement and drama of boarding a wrong train, at last, landed safely in Delhi on 1
st April 2017.
My date of joining was 3
rd April and on that day during my walk to the office, my mind was boggling with a lot of questions. With the designation of “Marketing and Business Development intern” will I be able to add value to this organisation? It is for the first time they have accepted an IIM student’s profile, will I meet their expectations? And with a number of questions inside I have reached office which is in midst of one of the Delhi’s elite enclave with lush green parks surrounding it.
The first day of office, I reached at 10:00 AM the time which they asked me to report, but surprisingly I am the second one to be there in that big hall along with another intern with a journalism background. After 5 minutes, my reporting manager had arrived who in his late twenties handling HR and Marketing departments for this startup. I have received my first assignment to prepare a report on “Alternative revenue sources for a digital media house” with a deadline of few hours. Seriously If it was a college assignment I would have given up in frustration by seeing the timeline but now I was super excited to finish this on time. I could finish the report in the WAC format, 2 hours earlier than the deadline and I sent the report to my manager asking him for improvements. At this moment, I understood that Following your Passion will turn your pain into pleasure.
He got impressed with the report and asked me to do a “Comprehensive study on revenue models of digital media organisations across the globe” with a much leisure deadline, considering the scope of the report. After a few days, I have got the sales assignment of convincing local restaurant owners to give shelf space to showcase the merchandise for which they get a cut if the merchandise gets sold. I could able to successfully convince 3 restaurants on my first day. Every time one gets to know my college name, he/she has a single question “what is an IIM student doing here?” at that point, seriously even I didn’t have an answer for that…
Meanwhile, a lot of action is happening inside the newsroom, Journalism interns busily searching for a breaking news, new recruits pitching their stories to the desk, senior journalists editing the drafts of interns and working on their stories. But two things would make all in the hall to laugh one the “ads of the Republic TV on nationalism” and the second “Arnab’s new hair style”. All this I silently observe from my place in the fourth quadrant of a hall.
I have also worked on a story which involves analysing balance sheets and annual returns of media houses. This was my last assignment and with this, I was expecting to see my name as a contributor when this article gets published. This was one of my dreams to see my name as the author of an article.
Those moments of acting in an episode.. trying to convince a small restaurant owner for a shelf space.. regular shoots inside the hall... podcast recordings on Tuesdays and Thursdays … Dinner at Afghan Darbar.. Ice-cream at Qutub minar.. Dj night at Hauskhas Social... flashed in front of my eyes when I was taking my sendoff selfie with the whole team of Newslaundry.
At that moment, I got the answer to the question “what is an IIM student doing here?”
Learning and understanding how a small media house works… how it is trying to expand.. how it is trying to breakeven.. how it is trying to handle the competition and differentiate itself from the rest…
Yes, I know this is just a start! And I also know this is my future..! Newslaundry has given me a fair idea of how a newsroom functions and how hard it is to be in this industry sticking to what you believe in.. and how important are the values for a media house more than profits and ratings… With these hard lessons in mind, stuffed bags on back and heart full of unnatural confidence and with the excitement of seeing my name on an yet to be published article. I had left to Hyderabad on a train which was 6 hours late…