Sometime ago, on a not-so-cold December morning last year, we were informed about yet another assignment which made us, the class of TYBMM Journalism groan. I especially was anything but enthusiastic about it. Group projects, with more than a couple of people always end in a disaster. And Good Lord in Heaven! This included eliciting co-operation from the entire class. Mommy has always taught me to be thankful to God, regardless of the situation. So I uttered a small prayer thanking Him we were not a class of sixty anymore.
I poured over my daily dose of crosswords instead. The rest of the class, sufficiently excited for a 7:50 AM lecture heard Sridhar Sir, our lecturer for News Media Management, out. What did he say? I have no idea! I was busy figuring out 8ac., “French Friend”.
Sneha, my life saver, manages to explain to me the entire concept in the break. The conversation was somewhat like this:
Sneha: We have to make a paper. COMPLETELY. From content, to design, to marketing to selling, it’s our baby.
Nishtha: Oh dear Jesus!
For a person who was never religious, remembering God so many times in so short an amount of time was a big deal. So was the project.
After a lot of dilly-dallying we decided to hold a meeting regarding who does what in the newspaper. Sigh! How I was wishing for this project to end! Why? I don’t know, it was probably a mental block. Did I get rid of it? Read on to find out. Why should I ruin your surprise? We collectively voted for Nishit Morsawalla and Sharanya Subramanian (or was it Subramaniam) to be our Editor and Publisher respectively. In retrospect -and I’m sure my classmates will agree- they were usually, regarding issues, on one side, while the rest of the team was on the other. The Eighth Wonder of the World and probably a Journalistic first, an editor and a publisher who were in agreement on probably everything!
We had our share of false startups on the newspaper. All the meetings were held in Candies like all group meetings are always and people didn’t turn up for many, including yours truly because something or the other always crops up when a meeting is scheduled
Finally, the most interesting aspect of the newspaper finally got us interested in working for it; the name! Yes, the age old perennial question that haunted you even when you were born. “Naam kya hai?” We tried LSD. Not the drug silly, LSD stood for Lights, Sound and Drama. We even tried S.E.X. No idea why, just because sex sells probably! We finally zeroed down on Cut Copy Paste, the three words that excite any and every BMM student; after all our marks depend on it. So CCP- that’s what we called our baby- was finally making some headway! After a lot of hullabaloo, which I will not get into this time, we decided on make the issue of CCP on the Media (duh!) and interesting career options in the field. Something like an Education Times meets JLT.
The next few hurdles we faced were the most trying times of our project. Assigning stories, finding advertisers, procuring permissions from authorities, et al. After being assigned stories with Nishit’s blessings err… approvals, we launched a man-hunt to search for our missing partners who we had to collaborate with. In my opinion, working on the stories was much more a mammoth task than finding advertisers for CCP.
Although finding advertisers was as daunting a task as climbing Mount Everest. To people who’ve never needed to struggle for anything, literally having the phone slammed on your face can be very demoralizing. I uttered yet another small prayer to thank God for Uncles with businesses and deep pockets. We chased everyone from Nationalized Banks to the corner Xerox waalah. Maybe not to everyone else, but it felt like prostituting my newspaper to people and it wasn’t a good feeling. I decided that I would stick to Journalism, something that is sacred to me. The long drawn battle between the Ad guys and the Edit guys saw me take the side of the edit guys.
Working on the stories, while simultaneously working on other projects, tested our multitasking abilities to the hilt. What a sight it was; a phone in between our shoulder and ear, one hand on the keyboard, the other scribbling something on a notebook while Sneha gives me a pedicure… (okay, forget I mentioned that, tee hee) On a serious note, a lot of research and hard work went into each and every article we wrote. Yes, seriously.
More than anything else, I think the design team should be applauded for the eye catching layout they made for CCP. Our articles would get read only if people liked the layout and design. And that’s how CCP was sold to many people.
Once the top bosses had skimmed through our stuff, rejected, re-revised and edited, the design team had done their bit, the paper went into print. Wow! How I loved saying those words. CCP has gone into print. The night before the paper was to be launched, none of us slept. Thanks to a certain Miss Prakriti Sharma who tweeted non-stop about how awesome the paper felt. For the first time in three years, people reached college by 8 AM… on a public holiday!
The D-Day had dawned and the fresh copies of CCP were in our hands. We stood outside the college gates and waited for the crowd to pour out after the Republic Day function. I felt like a newbie matador waiting for a killer bull, personally. My aforementioned interaction with marketing had not been so good and I was afraid of what would be next. Thanks to my team members, I went and attacked every single person that came my way, asking them to buy our paper.
Not many were initially convinced with buying the paper. The cost or the subject or a peculiar hatred towards our cover-boy Ranbir Kapoor were cited as reasons, the last one inviting a raised eyebrow from me. We tried tricks like: “We’re from your college man!” “Help us with the project, na,” and even “Bees rupaye ke liye kya chindigiri kar raha hai” And voila! It worked! People actually brought our newspaper. We decided to widen our base and try our strategy elsewhere. As a result, we made sales in coffee shops and even places like Bandstand and Carter Road.
We could literally see 20 buck notes circling our head and hear the ‘ka-ching’ of the cash register when a potential client walked by. Over a cup of coffee, we were informed of the profit we had made. It was nearly double of what we had put in! Yayy, I could finally buy the new phone I so wanted!
But most of all, when people came up to us and said that our articles made a difference to them, helped them, entertained them, etc, it touched us. I’m sure our face would have been illuminated with the pure joy.
Did I change my mind about the newspaper? The suspense is over and to those who did not manage to guess it, my heart warmed to CCP just like a mother’s heart melts when she sees her newborn. Hopefully this is just a snapshot of what we should expect from the coming years in this field. Nowhere else will you find the joy that we have felt in every step of the production and the final result which blew us away, except perhaps the feeling of becoming a parent.
Nationals BMM Class of o'10 \FTW/ :') I miss you guys!
