As the newspaper as a media sits at its fin de siecle, the death of Therese Mills resounds with the end of an era. It forces one to question how adequately has our traditional media been meeting, facing and addressing the challenges of the changing environment of news delivery when one can sit in any corner of the world and command the combined circulation of all of our national newspapers, with just a click while offering personalised customised individualised news ....
It is not often that we
know or understand the birth of one of our passions, though it may be easier to
identify who or what may have fed it.
It might be as a child,
from a village, remote and somewhat cut out from the goings on in the capital
city and seat of administration and power, waiting to receive the Sunday
newspapers - not with any curiosity to know what's going on in the far off
capital, but to pull out the comics section and the children's supplement that
included puzzles, and colouring and drawing challenges, initially, and read the
folk stories of mythical characters in the forest around or stories about
children from other lands. Later, the delivery of the Sunday newspaper allowed
one to graduate through curiosity to watching pictures - some macabre, some
celebratory of national life and international goings-on, a portal to the world;
and as one grows older, to read the headlines, and later, to delve into the
feature articles, and eventually, news.
That may be said to be
the process of awakening into the thing called ‘news’ when news also had the
character of the neighbour leaning out her back window to share some snipet of
an overnight occurrence that could change the entire character of the day or
week in a village. It may also be the process of awakening of the consciousness
of a citizen, and perhaps, too, of a journalist.
It may or may not have
been the same for Therese Mills (1928-2014) who passed away a few hours ago, but
it was for me who never had any greater ambition than to read, and yes, perhaps
too, to write.
From a place where
reading material was scarce, expensive, and hard to come by with the volatility
of income of a family that lived off the land, the newspaper was a first source
reader.
Therese was a journalist
at the time of my growing into reading. Reading Therese and the other names
in black and white – John, Valentino, Gail, Clevon, Carl, Francis, Horace - their feature
stories in particular, chronicling the (anti) and heroes and heroines of
our times from our distant village where the authority on anything was my
father, the Sheriff, fed my growing into citizen-consciousness.
Therese was too, a
journalist and editor of the Sunday Guardian, at the time of my budding
journalism consciousness in the first half-decade of my journalistic life.
She was a woman in
whose footsteps I stepped into, and in many ways, took a parallel career path -
for the most part inadvertently, more by accident than by design, though it
might not seem so.
Driven into journalism
only by the wish to write, and an unexpected prompt response to a frenzy of
post-high-school job applications by Guardian’s Editor-in-Chief Lenn Chongsing,
I found myself in the world of that far off place of city journalism and in the
ambit of the larger than life energy of Therese Mills.
Not generally known - nor
did she present herself - as a nurturer,
Therese nurtured the passion to know, and to inform that must be the
basic raw materials of every journalist in ways I hardly ever recognised.
She was editor of the
Sunday Guardian - a post that would much later pass to me about a decade after
I was summoned to the Port of Spain desk by on first impression too-shy-to-be-a-newspaperman,
Lenn Chongsing - the then Editor-in-Chief of the Trinidad Guardian newspapers
after a month as 'stringer' at the San Fernando desk that
serviced all of "South" Trinidad then manned by John Alleyne and
Mikey Mahabir both of whom are now deceased.
She was already in my
constitution from reading her, and from liaising with her on the unending list
of stories I was uncovering in the South, feeling much like Columbus must have
when he stumbled on our islands or Sir Walter Raleigh on seeing the Pitch Lake
for the first time. Journalism was a platform for discovering the nation - as
it must have been for the several journalists who preceded me - and Therese
like John Alleyne, Mahabir, and Lenn Chongsing and Norris Solomon (also
deceased) and Carl Jacobs, John Babb, Arthur Dash and Romeo were
unbridled sources of nurturing the curiosity, the enthusiasm and the sense of a
refreshing newness and newsiness of it all - a new world 20th century 'Kris' of
the post-Columbus world, I began the series, Discover Trinidad and Tobago,
along with others as Teenlife, and holding down the daily news 'beats' in
education, health, youth, local government, community and social services while also contributing
several articles for each issue of the flagship Sunday edition - that's
probably now the combined portfolio of about a dozen reporters today, servicing
various niched desks.
Bliss was it, one might
paraphrase Wordsworth, in that dawning of my journalism career, and heavenly to
have such mentors. A newsroom could be a most stimulating of classrooms for
anyone lusting for knowledge.
Under such tutelage,
the islands became the university I could not yet afford to attend, so by the
time I would achieve my doctorate, the first sitting journalist, they say, to
do so, I had already accumulated such volumes of research and stories and
collections of sometimes intimate details of the lives of famous and not so
famous and nondescript nationals and international ones as well - Fidel Castro, the Dalai Lama, Derek Walcott, Sam Selvon, Naipaul - to fill an encyclopaedia. The accumulation of
my mentors could fill several, several more encyclopaedias, as I continue to
encourage them to write their memoires - a chore for journalists programmed to
and primarily preoccupied with chronicling the lives of others. So it was
more than well deserved, when the University of the West Indies conferred an
honorary Doctor of Letters on Therese mere months before she died, and just short
of her 85th birthday last year - maybe too long in coming but not
too late.
In fact, it was just
when I was about completing my first degree, that Therese approached me to be
one of the founding journalists with the plans in progress of starting a new
daily newspaper. I had newly returned to the Guardian and gnawing newsroom dissatisfaction having previously left the 'old lady of St Vincent Street' to be groomed in television
production by another stalwart of national journalism - Dale Kolasingh - who
thrusted, and entrusted me with, among the gamut of productions if Booktalk, Survival, the agriculture programme and the investigative The AVM Special Report among others, as well as Cross Country - the
flagship programme of his production house, AVM Television. Cross Country was,
one may say, the audio-visual equivalent of my Discover Trinidad and Tobago
column, inclusive of the trials of a transition from being a columnist/writer,
where its virtually just you, the writer and your text, to writing for a
television production where the writer is but a subset of a process that
includes producer, director, sponsors, cameramen, editor, librarian, presenter
- to name a few. With Ed Fung and Irma Rambaran as compatriots, it remained
close to journalism heaven. Kolasingh, incidentally, also encouraged me to use the prize I had won for social commentary in The BWIA Media Awards for excellence in print journalism for one of the Discover Trinidad and Tobago series - an airline ticket to one of the BeeWee airline's destinations - to visit the United Nations office in New York and he set up a guided . our of its operations for me there, a marker of the birth of another passion - to change the world which my more recent social outreach activities evolved into.
The Beginning of Newsday
Therese Mills was 65,
the age of retirement and in fact had retired from the Guardian for all of
three months when she reincarnated with rejuvenated zeal to head our team that
began Newsday. Ray has a rib-tickling tale of our first encounter - he the
editor; me the flagship journalist laying down the rules to him with my unofficial title of 'the good news' reporter
of Newsday which was billed as the ‘good news’ paper. Newsday's first lead story was my article headlined '5000 Lives Saved' through the national suicide hotline - when
others chose to focus on the murders and political mayhem of the day. Advertising companies used our slogan '....and now for the goood news...' to identify their product with our offerings.
Newsday
was a response to the national outcry at the pervasive negativity of the existing
news environment - not unlike what obtains today - which beggars another
question which I'll address shortly.
For three months we
delivered, as our ad stated, on the promise in the initial prospectus
reproduced on this page 'for a new beginning in daily newspapers'.... attempting to make news off good news defy the newsroom adage 'good news is no news'.
The Good News
With our birth, the national
atmosphere, as inside Newsday, was much like that Wordsworthian heavenly bliss
in the description of the dawn after the smoke of the French Revolution had
cleared in Europe; or closer home, like the dawn after the sweeping victory of
the National Alliance for Reconstruction in 1986 election or the closer one of
2010.
The awakening was just as poignant too as it all changed within three months as the story continues!
It begs further reflection on how much a media house is but a chronicler, to merely inform, and how much it can or should attempt to transform the society in which it functions, and what are our place and roles and responsibilities as journalists and the chief protagonists of this tableau....
...More...to be continued
The media revolution ...
Related
Links:
Gender Bender Mia Mottley takes political helm in Barbados
https://goo.gl/xL3DEd
Murder and the Museum: http//goo.gl/FHs3Fr
my-discoverie-columbus-lost-and-found https://goo.gl/ixGu7y
Pat-bishops-last-struggle-killings https://goo.gl/tQUySt
Them-red-house-bones
The Triumph of Gollum in the Land of Shut Up Suicide of the
Fellowship of Partnerships Book 11. A Sequel Futuring the Agenda Forward https://goo.gl/HU3rp3
Celebrating Jamettry The Sacred and the Sacriligious
Changing the World with Ideas goo.gl/Pa6jAk
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/2017/08/creating-revolution-through-knowledge.html
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com
/from-beirut-to-port-of-spain-how-west.html
The-price-of-passion-awards-and-rewards
my-date-with-narendra-modi-dat-merkel
affair
Things-that-make-me-go-steups-stars
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/2016/12/things-that-make-me-go-steups-stars.html
Murder She Wrote: Death Written in
Stone in Dana Seetahal Assassination
Creating Centres of Peace in
Trinidad and Tobago
The Price of Independence:#DanaSeetahalAssassination
Conceive. Achieve. Believe
Demokrissy: Wave a flag for a party
rag...Choosing the Emperor's ...
Oct 20, 2013 Choosing the Emperor's New Troops. The dilemma
of choice. Voting is supposed to be an exercise in thoughtful, studied choice.
Local government is the foundation for good governance so even if one wants to
reform the ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Old Casked Rum:
The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Demokrissy - Blogger
Apr 07, 2013 Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 -
Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. So we've had the rounds of
consultations on Constitutional Reform? Are we any wiser? Do we have a sense of
direction that will drive ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Valuing Carnival
The Emperor's New Tools#2
Apr 30, 2013 Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2....http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
See Also:
Demokrissy: Winds
of Political Change - Dawn of T&T's Arab Spring
Jul 30, 2013 Wherever these breezes have passed, they have
left in their wake wide ranging social and political changes: one the one hand
toppling long time leaders with rising decibels from previously suppressed
peoples demanding a ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Reform, Conform,
Perform or None of the Above cross ...
Oct 25, 2013 Some 50 percent did not vote. The local
government elections results lends further proof of the discussion began in
Clash of Political Cultures: Cultural Diversity and Minority Politics in
Trinidad and Tobago in Through The ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Sounds of a party -
a political party
Oct 14, 2013 They are announcing some political meeting or
the other; and begging for my vote, and meh road still aint fix though I hear
all parts getting box drains and thing, so I vex. So peeps, you know I am a
sceptic so help me decide. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy:
T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian
Jun 15, 2010 T&T Constitution the culprit | The
Trinidad Guardian · T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian.
Posted by Kris Rampersad at 8:20 AM · Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare
to Facebook ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Related:
Demokrissy: To vote, just how we
party … Towards culturally ...
Apr 30, 2010 'How we vote is not how we party.' At 'all
inclusive' fetes and other forums, we nod in inebriated wisdom to calypsonian
David Rudder's elucidation of the paradoxical political vs. social realities of
Trinidad and Tobago. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: DEADLOCK: Sign of
things to come
Oct 29, 2013 An indication that unless we devise innovative
ways to address representation of our diversity, we will find ourselves in
various forms of deadlock at the polls that throw us into a spiral of political
tug of war albeit with not just ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: The human face of
constitutional reform
Oct 16, 2013 Sheilah was clearly and sharply articulating
the deficiencies in governmesaw her: a tinymite elderly woman, gracefully
wrinkled, deeply over with concerns about political and institutional
stagnation but brimming over with ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy:
Trini politics is d best
Oct 21, 2013 Ain't Trini politics d BEST! Nobody fighting
because they lose. All parties claiming victory, all voting citizens won!
That's what make we Carnival d best street party in the world. Everyone are
winners because we all like ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
New Media, New Civil Society,
and Politics in a New Age - Demokrissy
Jan 09, 2012 New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in
a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. New Media, New Civil Society,
and Politics in a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. Posted by
Kris Rampersad ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: T&T politics:
A new direction? - Caribbean360 Oct 01, 2010 http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Oct 20, 2013 Choosing the Emperor's New Troops. The dilemma
of choice. Voting is supposed to be an exercise in thoughtful, studied choice.
Local government is the foundation for good governance so even if one wants to
reform the ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Old Casked Rum:
The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Demokrissy - Blogger
Apr 07, 2013 Old Casked Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 -
Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. So we've had the rounds of
consultations on Constitutional Reform? Are we any wiser? Do we have a sense of
direction that will drive ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Valuing Carnival
The Emperor's New Tools#2
Apr 30, 2013 Valuing Carnival The Emperor's New Tools#2....http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
See Also:
Demokrissy: Winds
of Political Change - Dawn of T&T's Arab Spring
Jul 30, 2013 Wherever these breezes have passed, they have
left in their wake wide ranging social and political changes: one the one hand
toppling long time leaders with rising decibels from previously suppressed
peoples demanding a ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Reform, Conform,
Perform or None of the Above cross ...
Oct 25, 2013 Some 50 percent did not vote. The local
government elections results lends further proof of the discussion began in
Clash of Political Cultures: Cultural Diversity and Minority Politics in
Trinidad and Tobago in Through The ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Sounds of a party -
a political party
Oct 14, 2013 They are announcing some political meeting or
the other; and begging for my vote, and meh road still aint fix though I hear
all parts getting box drains and thing, so I vex. So peeps, you know I am a
sceptic so help me decide. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy:
T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian
Jun 15, 2010 T&T Constitution the culprit | The
Trinidad Guardian · T&T Constitution the culprit | The Trinidad Guardian.
Posted by Kris Rampersad at 8:20 AM · Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare
to Facebook ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Related:
Demokrissy: To vote, just how we
party … Towards culturally ...
Apr 30, 2010 'How we vote is not how we party.' At 'all
inclusive' fetes and other forums, we nod in inebriated wisdom to calypsonian
David Rudder's elucidation of the paradoxical political vs. social realities of
Trinidad and Tobago. http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: DEADLOCK: Sign of
things to come
Oct 29, 2013 An indication that unless we devise innovative
ways to address representation of our diversity, we will find ourselves in
various forms of deadlock at the polls that throw us into a spiral of political
tug of war albeit with not just ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: The human face of
constitutional reform
Oct 16, 2013 Sheilah was clearly and sharply articulating
the deficiencies in governmesaw her: a tinymite elderly woman, gracefully
wrinkled, deeply over with concerns about political and institutional
stagnation but brimming over with ... http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy:
Trini politics is d best
Oct 21, 2013 Ain't Trini politics d BEST! Nobody fighting
because they lose. All parties claiming victory, all voting citizens won!
That's what make we Carnival d best street party in the world. Everyone are
winners because we all like ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
New Media, New Civil Society,
and Politics in a New Age - Demokrissy
Jan 09, 2012 New Media, New Civil Society, and Politics in
a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. New Media, New Civil Society,
and Politics in a New Age | The Communication Initiative Network. Posted by
Kris Rampersad ...http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: T&T politics:
A new direction? - Caribbean360 Oct 01, 2010 http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Others: Demokrissy: Old Casked Rum:
The Emperor's New Tools#1 ...
Apr 07, 2013
Old Casked Rum: The
Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T. So we've had
the rounds of consultations on Constitutional Reform? Are we any wiser? Do we
have a sense of direction that will drive ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Valuing Carnival
The Emperor's New Tools#2
Apr 30, 2013
Valuing Carnival The
Emperor's New Tools#2.
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Wave a flag for a party
rag...Choosing the Emperor's New ...
Oct 20, 2013
Choosing the Emperor's
New Troops. The dilemma of choice. Voting is supposed to be an ... Old Casked
Rum: The Emperor's New Tools#1 - Towards Constitutional Reform in T&T.
Posted by Kris Rampersad at 10:36 AM ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Carnivalising the
Constitution People Power ...
Feb 26, 2014
This Demokrissy
series, The Emperor's New Tools, continues and builds on the analysis of
evolution in our governance, begun in the introduction to my book, Through the
Political Glass Ceiling (2010): The Clash of Political ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Envisioning
outside-the-island-box ... - Demokrissy - Blogger
Feb 10, 2014
This Demokrissy
series, The Emperor's New Tools, continues and builds on the analysis of
evolution in our governance, begun in the introduction to my book, Through the
Political Glass Ceiling (2010): The Clash of Political ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Futuring the Post-2015
UNESCO Agenda
Apr 22, 2014
It is placing
increasing pressure for erasure of barriers of geography, age, ethnicity,
gender, cultures and other sectoral interests, and in utilising the tools
placed at our disposal to access our accumulate knowledge and technologies
towards eroding these superficial barriers. In this context, we believe that
the work of UNESCO remains significant and relevant and that UNESCO is indeed
the institution best positioned to consolidate the ..... The Emperor's New
Tools ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
Demokrissy: Cutting edge journalism
Jun 15, 2010
The Emperor's New
Tools. Loading... AddThis. Bookmark and Share. Loading... Follow by Email.
About Me. My Photo · Kris Rampersad. Media, Cultural and Literary Consultant,
Facilitator, Educator and Practitioner. View my ...
http://kris-rampersad.blogspot.com/
@BJP4India #BJP @Priyankachopra #PriyankaChopra#merkel
@EmmanuelMacron #EmmanuelMcrona #JohnTrudeau @travelchannel @usatoday
@BBCWorld @BBCWorldHaveYourSay @TEDtalks @TEDNews +britishcouncil@engageats.co.uk @britishmuseum, @britishcouncil,
@britishlibrary, @Royal_Gov_UK, @justintrudeau, @helenclarkeUNDP, +Google for Nonprofits @googleartsandculture,
@econculture, @commonculture, @writersdigest, @nytimes, +PBS NewsHour +Breaking News +BBC News +news@news.ideastap.com +info@takingitglobal.org +Open Society Foundations @richardbranson,
@billgates, @melaniegates, @gatesfoundation, +G Singh, @clintonfdn, @WJClibrary,
@clintonglobal, @librarycongress @google, @googleresearch @yahoo,
@yahoonews, @yahoomovies, @ABC, @CNN, @REUTERS, @ABC, +Kamla Persad-Bissessar , +Prakash Ramadhar, +John van Tiggelen,
@FoxNews, @UKinCaribbean,
@WBCaribbean, @TheEconomist, @wef, @economictimes, @business, @businessinsider,
@wsjbusiness, @wsj womenshealth, @wsjmag, @people,
@fortunemagazine, @ellemagazine, @oprah, @O_magazine,
@OWNTV, @oprahbooklist, @voguemagazine, @twitterwomen, @womenintheworld,
@UN_Women, @womenatforbes, @womensmediacentre @womensenews,
x