Monday | 7 October 2024 | Reg No- 06
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Monday | 7 October 2024 | Epaper

Every news media editor must know how to write and edit news

Published : Friday, 7 April, 2023 at 12:00 AM  Count : 1180
Syed Badiuzzaman
Eastern News Agency (ENA), the first non-government national wire service of Bangladesh which was born just before the independence, was once  the fastest ever news agency of the nation. ENA was established after its surprise conversion almost overnight from the Pakistan Press International (PPI) in what was then East Pakistan.

The whole process was led by the then chief reporter of the PPI Golam Rasul Mallick who became the first chief editor and managing director of ENA. Mallick was a dedicated journalist and one of the few who had a rare opportunity to come too close to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Father of the Nation. He traveled with Bangabandhu almost every trip abroad including Cairo and London.

Journalism was in the DNA of Golam Rasul Mallick. I have never seen such a spirited reporter in my life. In the day or night whenever he came to the ENA office then located on New Circular Road over the once famous Vogue Fashion in Purana Paltan area of the capital, not far from the National Press Club, he used to think about various story ideas all the time and share them with the staff.

As a reporter, Mallick was always one step ahead. Nothing could stop him from attending any big event within the country or the region or even the world. When the Apollo 11 was launched with three U.S. astronauts -- who became the first humans to land on moon -- from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida in 1969, Golam Rasul Mallick was there. Again when Indira Gandhi and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto met in Simla, India for a historic India-Pakistan peace treaty in 1972, Mallick was there.

In Bangladesh, whenever there was a big public meeting or national or international conference, ENA's boss Golam Rasul Mallick used to be there without fail along with at least his two ace reporters -- one for writing the main story and the other for side stories. But after returning to the office, it was Mallick who himself used to take charge of filing the first report quickly in many cases. And at the end of those events, he somehow managed to be the first person to return to the office.

Golam Rasul Mallick had his own unique way of filing his report. As he stepped into the newsroom, he instructed a subeditor to write. And Momtazuddin Ahmed, the best subeditor of ENA who later worked at the Daily Star for many years often typed his report. Mallick never took any note by using a notebook and pen. He had an extraordinary quality of memorizing everything. He used to walk back and forth inside the small office of ENA while dictating the whole report to the subeditor from his memory. And within less than half an hour, he produced a 600/700-word excellent first report on the event.

Momtazuddin Ahmed who was a very good colleague of mine at ENA often used to tell me that Golam Rasul Mallick had an "electronic brain." He, indeed, had and I witnessed it many times. First he was the chief reporter at the Dhaka office of the Pakistan Press International or PPI and then he converted PPI into ENA and became its chief editor. Journalism was the biggest passion in his life and he was a complete reporter. News writing and editing are the two most essential skills every person wanting to become an editor of a news organization must have.  

If you do not have these skills, do not be an editor because you are not qualified for this position. However, in Bangladesh many people have taken over the top slot (editor's job) at many media outlets even though they do not have necessary news writing and editing skills. And that is one of the main reasons the quality of journalism in our country hasn't improved. In my own newspaper New Nation in the early 80s, I saw two editors just coming to and going from their office almost every day without doing anything. None of the two ever wrote even an editorial -let alone writing and editing news.

But I also saw Mahbubul Alam, a genuinely working editor first at New Nation in the 80s and again many years later in 2012 at the Daily Independent newspaper of Bangladesh where I worked for a short period of time. He was a perfect editor. At both newspapers, Alam used to work with the newsroom staff sitting next to them in the newsroom on a daily basis. Apart from holding editorial meetings, he used to edit and sometimes rewrite reporters' stories almost every day at both newspapers. In addition to their daily job, every good editor works on reporters' stories. And sometimes they themselves write reports.

I have seen this practice in the newsrooms of both Europe and America. I worked at the Morning Telegraph newspaper in Sheffield, England under a journalism fellowship in 1984 and saw the editor of that newspaper working routinely on reporters' stories sitting with other copy editors in the newsroom. In 1988, when I was working at the Patriot Ledger, the third largest newspaper in the Greater Boston Area in Massachusetts, USA under another journalism fellowship, I again saw the editor and also the associate editor of the Ledger working on various stories themselves sitting in the newsroom alongside other news staff.

So, writing and editing news are essential skills for every editor of every news organization. But the million-dollar question is: Does every top slot holder of every media outlet of our country have it? I don't think so. Surely there are many editors in Bangladesh who do not have even the basic qualifications to hold the position they are already holding. While these fake editors with no news writing and editing skills have enhanced their honor in the society by default, they have dishonored the chair they sit on at their news organization's office and done a tremendous harm to the noble profession of journalism.  

In 1984, I had the opportunity to attend a seminar on "The Role of a Newspaper Editor" along with nine other journalists from nine different countries at London City University. The main speaker at the seminar was a former editor of the Daily Telegraph who was also a former British minister. He entered the seminar room pronouncing quite loudly that "an editor must be simple." None of us understood what actually he meant by saying so. So, we just looked at one another blankly.  Then the main speaker went straight to the blackboard and wrote "SIMPLE" -- one letter above another -- in a vertical order. At this point, we all realized that this "SIMPLE" was not that simple. In fact, it was the opposite. So, we all laughed together.

Then the famous British journalist solved his "SIMPLE" puzzle by writing "Skilled Journalist" for S, "Intelligent Leader" for I, "Market Wise" for M, "Prudent Writer" for P, "Lively Colleague" for L and "Eager Team Member" for E. Thus "SIMPLE" was solved but editor became complicated. We never knew that a journalist needed to have so many qualities to become the editor of a news organization. And journalistic skills -- especially news writing and editing -- topped the list of the qualities.
 
The writer is a Toronto-based journalist who also writes for the Toronto Sun as a guest columnist


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