I have good news to share. I am going to tuck it somewhere in this piece and defy all guidelines, algorithms that tell us to catch attention right at the start (first three seconds, that’s all you have got. Hell, I take longer to decide how I want to brew my coffee every morning).
You may be beginning to get the drift that this piece will be a tussle between my inner and outer journeys. An erratic, personal, disciplined & undisciplined, hopeful, hesitant struggle of a journey where I have had to mindfully decide each day, every day to wake up and put one foot in front of the other. It’s an adage common in running circles and is in ample measure in one of my favourite books, Shoe Dog (running, Nike, also because I love Onitsuka shoes). A journey where my learning curve has been at its steepest, a journey where I have struggled with two embracing two identities.
A journalist. An entrepreneur. It is an odd combination. The more I reflect and act, the more I understand why it is so hard to navigate these two very distinct roles seamlessly. And why you possibly can’t do both, in equal measure at least.
I should start from August 2019 (it was an important story).
But I start from December 2017, when I quit as Executive Editor at CNN-IBN. It had been my job and a love of sorts for about eleven plus year. I was part of its founding team but by the time I quit it was a shadow of its former self. Sedate and a lot of tosh. The decision to quit was fairly undramatic. If you know a bit of Indian media, you know what I mean. I wasn’t pushed out of the newsroom; no minister called to ask for my resignation. Even for our changed management, I was a manageable liability (I am guessing).
I only fought mini battles in the newsroom, for stories, good writing, powerful imagery, for reporters, for efficient workflows, for stronger ethics, for standing up. Much of this had started to become inconsequential, even unfashionable in the few years preceding it. It’s not as if I hadn’t noticed this decline or wasn’t perturbed or wasn’t fighting these in editorial meetings where the seeds of this decline were being sowed. It’s just that I was playing a game where the rules had dramatically changed.
Slowly, the banality, toxicity, the degradation, the lack of attention to anything I considered important began to bother, till it became claustrophobic. I resigned, without a tweet, any hullabaloo, or the weight of going independent or wanting to fix the media. Just some sweet emotional messages, coffees and drinks with friends, colleagues, and advice from people who cared (television is an addiction, being on one is a high that you will miss. I now dish this advice to people who want to come and join me).
As a single woman (who always had a job), with no major financial liabilities, some decent savings, relative good health, healthy parents, my only thought to myself in those days was — if not me, then who, who can afford to do this?
The next 18 months were full of incredible conversations. It’s as if the frog had jumped out of the well, into what I would later realise was only a pond. I became an ICFJ Knight Fellow, and I had a chance to work on a different rhythm. I went to three amazing newsrooms and built #GenderAnd for the Indian Express, #Grit for the Wire and helped the Jagran New Media newsroom. I sat with multiple CEOs/COOs/reporters/reporting managers/YouTube managers/analytic managers/KPI managers/Human Resource.
The problems were common, the decline similar, the struggle real. Newsrooms are amazing, dynamic places for young people (at least they ones I grew up in). I was encountering a completely different kind. I have long copious notes of what everyone was feeling. There was a mismatch of expectations-aspirations, talent-job, salaries-skills, words-excel sheets, real-print-digital, journalism-social. At one point I felt everyone was doing the wrong job, at the wrong place, at the same time.
I finished that stint but continued those conversations, filling more notebooks, this time with people away from the media (yes, those notebooks are gold). I worked on some basics, but I was still unsure of what I wanted to do: a freelancer, start a small niche thing, take small gigs, travel, that yoga retreat, actively concentrate on personal life were all great options. I attempted them. I failed at most.
In August 2019, unable to sit still, I took out some money and went reporting to Jammu and Kashmir for an incredibly important story that was unfolding. The lessons were inspiring and humbling.
I spent 84,000 Rs for that story in August 2019. I got paid 8000 Rs as remuneration for a piece.
I’ll write about it in greater detail in a Twitter thread but somewhere around that time the first seeds of Newsworthy were sown. A handful of people were following us and I had a few dispatches on the Instagram grid. There were highs and many lows. We started with about 15–20 people that time. We are now touching 20K on Instagram with no push, no marketing budgets, nothing but just our work.
That trip made me realise how incredibly unprepared I was. If I wanted to do this in a sustainable way, go beyond myself, build something, I needed a mental shift, a changed vocabulary and eating lots of humble pie, often. All the collective knowledge, scribbled in those notebooks had to be reimagined for a value system I wanted to build, for an audience I aspired to attract, to solve a problem that I had to first define (and try and define better than most CEOs in my notebooks).
I learnt from friends, ex-bosses, partners, former colleagues, and my amazing cohort at the Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program, 2021. All of us, in the middle of a pandemic were navigating life, loss and trying to build something, in our unique ways. I thought numerous times that this was a crazy bunch, attempting to build something in one of the worst times we have lived in. It’s not as if a perfect sunset was in the horizon.
Yet, for a hundred days amid positive Covid19 tests, fevers, familial responsibilities, personal losses this group came together at all odd hours. Some amazing people walked into our virtual sessions, 830pm IST Tuesdays and Fridays and gave us straight talk, possible ways forward and lots of generosity. The questions they posed were simple, fundamental. The propositions they laid out for us were straight, impossible to ignore any longer. Journalism taught me a lot, but I realised I couldn’t dip into only those experience for answers to fundamental questions.
What did I want to build, what is the scope of my ambition? There are no wrong answers but building an independent media org was a terrible answer.
What you know so far will not take you further.
A podcast is a great idea for this subject. Is this what does your audience wants?
That’s a great collaboration. What did you gain from it?
How do you know this? Did you ask them?
Have you tested this?
A four-day job is a week of your time.
Where is the big picture on your calendar?
There are many tangible and intangible learnings from our 100 days together, and beyond. I re-read my class notes often. I see many colleagues give shape to their ideas that come from a deep seated belief that journalism matters. And journalism has to be sustainable because it has a unique role to play in all our lives. I am building Newsworthy with some grounding questions before me. My arc of working in the media and social impact ecosystem has a clear thread, vision and differentiator. You will see me writing about it here in greater detail, in the days ahead.
There is a full body of work I have done individually and with amazing young people over the last year or so. They traverse Gender, Development, Business Responsibility and Public Health. We have done this in innovative formats, with intersectionality, thought for communities and an eye on measurability, testing and meeting the audience where they are. I credit journalism with a lot of the above, and a lot else belongs elsewhere.
The ability to see the linkages between all the work I was doing, the big picture, how it all tied up and what purpose did I solve (if any) has taken me a million iterations, many conversations and many un-learnings.
Slowly brick by brick I am building Newsworthy. The two creatives on the left hand side are just a sneak peek of the amazing work we have done for clients in a space often referred to as social impact (a name I think does no justice to it). Our aim is to build a space for strong connections with audiences, through empathetic storytelling, capacity building, workshops, curricula and fact based narratives, that drive real change for diverse clients and communities. I credit journalism as my learning ground for a lot of this. But as I said above, a lot of the learning has come from outside it.
There is a seductive slumber and complacency to the idea of building something small, that matters just enough, that allows you to keep your life as is and grow just that much. I think it’s a great clarity to have. I haven’t arced my ambition yet (at least not completely). But I have managed to distill some complex ideas. I have embraced the reality that journalism is not all I need to know. And that all answers do not lie with the media industry. I have begun to see gaps clearly, gaps that I can serve. I think I am sharper and have better questions — not all the answers, but better questions that over time could move me in a direction I want.
And of course things may still not go as you hoped. Or life may happen, which is why you’ll need support, mentors, help and the ability to ask for help.
You are building something.
Can we just take a moment and sit with that reality?
PS: I got a grant from YouTube for independent journalists. That’s the good news.
