Prithwish
I was going through the morning newspapers today and I got a little confused! The suppliments catering to entertainment/lifestyle news made me question myself what does covering entertainment/lifestyle mean? Is it just providing information about stupid page 3 parties or who's dating whom, which covers most of the space and then the rest is taken up by adverts or is it something more than mere titillation or yellow journalism?
It's been a while that I have been covering entertainment/lifestyle, say around 3 years (radio & print) but when i started off it was more meaningful than what it is today. we had to dig out stories, journalists were well read and some that i have met truly understood cinema and had the passion for the subject and that was the reason which made them so good. That was the reason why they chose to be entertainment reporters but now I hardly meet people knowing anything beyond who's dating whom.
I guess that sells but does it give pleasure to people covering such frivolous news bits? This again makes me think -- are they covering entertainment/lifestyle because they chose to or was it because they had to?
I guess the second one holds true for many people involved in the profession of high-life, paarties and star-studded extravaganzas but we all have to draw a line as to till what level should we lower the bar.
Entertainment/lifestyle reporting should not be about dimples and pimples and who wore what and who's abusing whom.
It is much more meaningful than these petty stories running through the day.
Reporting for cinema, fashion or music needs knowledge about the subject but I'm sure most of us can count only a handful names whose reviews you like reading or seeing. Most reviews are heavily opinionated without giving reasons for it. A film review dissects a movie, compares it with others and discusses the style, narration, script and screenplay. How many reviews today have that?
Even stories on fashion -- forget writing about experiments with cuts and silhouettes, just write about what models wore and what colours were used. For heaven's sake -- we all can see that in the pictures!
In music, the scenario is better -- thank god!! Some of the writers are really good but again reporting for entertainment has a benchmark and its reporting does not end with just saying what the event was all about, how people went ga-ga over it and how many songs the album has! It needs in-depth analysis which only a few does -- but they do it well!
Yesterday I was seeing stories on the death of "Tulsi" famed Smriti Irani from the cult television serial -- Kyunki Saans Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi -- and in the stories nowhere did anyone use a tv critics comment on how the character became so successful and i still remember this character has catapulted Star's rating to number 1. An analysts quote on all this would have been a good angle but anyways I guess people these days are happy with vox-pop journalism.
No matter what, it's a cause for concern for all those doing 
entertainment/lifestyle reporting. Are we doing what we want to or are we just filling up pages of newspapers and doing tv stories just to see our names on them! If that's the case -- can't we work a bit more. Entertainment reporting is one of the oldest professions and it started with the success of newspapers in India. We can do a little more to dish out good in-depth stories can't we? We must remember that a country so engaged in entertainment would lap up anything that we give them but that should not make us relax. We can only be respected as an entertainment journalist when we do good stories and that involves us becoming well read and we should probe and analyse stories rather than just pushing them out.
entertainment/lifestyle reporting. Are we doing what we want to or are we just filling up pages of newspapers and doing tv stories just to see our names on them! If that's the case -- can't we work a bit more. Entertainment reporting is one of the oldest professions and it started with the success of newspapers in India. We can do a little more to dish out good in-depth stories can't we? We must remember that a country so engaged in entertainment would lap up anything that we give them but that should not make us relax. We can only be respected as an entertainment journalist when we do good stories and that involves us becoming well read and we should probe and analyse stories rather than just pushing them out.It's understandable that the pressure is immense to produce more and more such stories but can't we do one big in-depth entertainment/lifestyle story a week? Think over it!
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