All eyes on talk by veteran
journalist Joe A Scaria
By Geetha Shankar
BENGALURU: Veteran journalist, author,
speaker and trainer Joe A Scaria will address a PR and media professionals
gathering here on Friday, March 04 on PR in the Age of Instant Media.
Hosted by PRCI and YCC and
presented by the University of Visvesvaraya College of Engineering, the talk
assumes significance in view the rapidly changing media scenario.
The event will be held at Senate Hall, Central College, Near K R Circle.
As Ajay Sharma, veteran PR
professional wrote in the January special issue of CHANAKYA, for many
generations, reading newspapers at 6.30 AM or a quick post-lunch glimpse at an
afternoon tabloid or watching an evening TV news bulletin were part of our
daily routine. For leisurely reading, there were general and business
magazines.
The entry of 24-hour TV in 1999 changed the habit
dramatically. Live TV broadcasts made it possible to view news anytime through
the day. This was the first disruption for media and communication
professionals, so to say, which brought in significant changes in its wake.
But TV news consumption,
like print, was rooted to a fixed location. Though it offered 24X7 ‘delivery’
of news, it did not facilitate 24X7 ‘consumption’ of news. News consumption
using the Internet on desktops suffered the same limitation.
Mobile phones presented an
alternative. Unlike TV, print and desktops, consumers could use them to access
the news on the go.
In June 2014, India had 914
million mobile subscribers of which 185 million accessed the Internet on their
mobiles.
In this background, PRCI and
the student community will view Joe’s talk with great interest
Joe spent the majority of
his career as a journalist, working 28 years with leading Indian newspapers and
publications. His last and longest stint was an 18-year association with the
Economic Times, where he was Senior Assistant Editor.
Presently he heads the
Kerala bureau of Dubai-based Gulf News, and is a faculty member at the
Institute of Journalism, Trivandrum.
He has worked in Kochi,
Mumbai, Coimbatore, Thiruvananthapuram and Chennai.
He graduated in Commerce
from the Kerala University, and has an MBA with specialization in Marketing.
A unique feature of his
career is he has published his resignation letter as a book, titled 'Fourth
Estate to Rubber Estate', which was released by Kerala chief minister Oommen
Chandy.
