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(7L) THE SEVEN LEVELS OF COMMUNICATION : Go from Relationships to Referrals By MAHER, MICHAEL J. Published by: Piatkus (London) 1st Ed. 161pages; Price : 350.00 In any business the best projects come from referrals. So what if you had, at your fingertips, a fool-proof system for exploding your business by word of mouth? The Seven Levels of Communication tells the entertaining and educational story of Rick Masters. Down on his luck, overweight, cynical and with nothing to lose, ...

Niche Journalism

In a consistently changing world, journalism is pushing its borders towards hitherto unknown and less known areas. One among this is niche journalism: journalism that has a specific target readership which generally addressed magazines in the print media do not cater to. It could be called a kind of specialised writing but not precisely so because specialised journalism is a part of our everyday newspaper that responds to the demands of a more general readership. An example is the daily newspaper where yo...

Old is Not Gold

In a rapid survey of international journals from 2008–2012, we found that, on the topic of Kerala journalism, only one article had been published, and that too by a foreign scholar based abroad1. It told us two things: that studies on Kerala journalism were near-absent at the international level, and that Kerala’s universities were producing zero research output of international quality. Last month, I decided to explore how Kerala’s universities had managed to achieve this feat after ...

Pointers for Journalism and Education

From 23–25 March 2014, about 60 journalists, journalism educators, and journalism students from Kerala participated in a collaborative workshop organised in Kochi by the US-based Poynter Institute of Media Studies.1 What were the lessons for Kerala journalism and journalism education from that event? Media Monitoring The workshop was rooted in the understanding that journalism in the United States has been undergoing significant changes since the dawn of the 21st century. The faculty presented...

Points to Poynter

In March 2014, the Poynter Institute of Media Studies, a leading journalism school in the United States, dipped its feet in Indian waters through three workshops, one each in Chennai, Kochi, and Bengaluru. In turn, in each of these three-day collaborative workshops, mid-career Indian journalists and journalism teachers got a taste of contemporary journalism and journalism education in the United States. The Kochi workshop was organised in partnership with the Kerala Press Academy, and it ran from 23&nd...

Pothan Joseph (1892–1972) A Free-Thinking and Fiercely Independent Editor in Modern India

Nearly a century and a quarter ago, Pothan Joseph was born on 13 March 1892 as the second son of C. I. Joseph of Oor’ayil House, Chengannur, in central Travancore, the southern part of today’s Kerala. In those days Kerala was “just an idea” and it consisted of Travancore (a princely state under the maharajahs of Travancore) in the south, Kochi/Cochin (another princely state) at the centre, and Malabar (a part of Madras Presidency) in the north. What united these three parts was the...

Power of direct communication Narendra Modi’s victory

The use of one to one communication contributed significantly to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election campaign and image building. The power of mouth to mouth or interpersonal communication has long been evident, historically. It played a major role in our independence struggle and the defeat of Indira Gandhi after the emergency. What made Mr. Modi’s interpersonal communication different was that he used technology effectively to reach persons whom he could not directly reach. Thus he ac...

Press for Reforms

A 19th-century law regulates the Indian press, which enjoys restricted freedom under a 20th-century Constitution. Apart from the Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867, there are about or above two dozen Central Acts which together constitute laws relating to the press. But these are insufficient to make the media responsible and responsive to an ever-expanding democratic society. If a democracy is, by definition, the constant search for truth and liberty, then free speech must be an essential ingredie...

Reporting on Religion

Before the election season kicked in this year, in February and March, a major topic of news discussion was freedom of expression. The trigger story was publisher Penguin India’s decision to withdraw the book The Hindus by Wendy Doniger on the ground that the book allegedly offended Hindus. Justifying their decision to discontinue the legal contest, the publisher and the author blamed Indian law, especially Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code, which limits the freedom of expression on matters of r...

Representation of the media in Bollywood Films

The portrayal of media personalities in Indian mainstream films in general and Bollywood films in particular can rarely be called authentic. In fact, sometimes, commercial compromises distort and dilute the image of a media professional – journalist or reporter from the print media or media professionals in the electronic media within cinema. How authentic are these portrayals? Are journalists, reporters, news-readers, anchors and interviewers really as cheap as they are shown in films? Or, are ther...