PRESENT IMPERFECT. Journalism, seriously?

This was the week of the Lutyens virus. It started with Lutyens’ Spice, a Twitter handle that popped up seemingly out of nowhere. In the first few tweets, it was established that Lutyens’ Spice was a Delhi Journalist, who was willing to let unprintable political stories have a 140-character existence. Word of Lutyens’ Spice spread quickly among other Delhi Journalists and everyone ran for their phones to follow the handle. But then, before you could say Cardamom or Cinnamon, another Twitter handle turned up. Lutyens Masala. This was followed by Lutyens Insider and then Lutyens something else or the other, and within a couple of hours there were more Lutyens on Twitter than ministerial bungalows in central Delhi. By the end of the day, these Lutyens accounts abandoned all attempts at political gossip and inside stories and focused exclusively on speculating and uncovering which journalists were operating behind each of these Lutyens accounts.

This recasting of priorities isn’t surprising, for if there is one thing that Delhi Journalists are fascinated by, it is other Delhi Journalists. A generation of Delhi Journalists have become what can be called Opinionators — they can terminate you with their opinions and they will be back. Comment columns in op-ed pages are now largely reduced to Opinionators arguing against each other. As soon as one is published, it is uploaded and then re-upped (sic) every few hours on Twitter, so more people can join in. Camp loyalties are constantly under surveillance and followers chime in expectedly with appropriate words of approval or criticism. The next day, a counterpoint is published in another paper or blog and all of it resumes all over again. This goes on for a week, by which time each side is convinced they have triumphed. Forward and onward then, to the next Opinion.

Contrary to how it may sound, none of this is fun. It isn’t easy being a journalist anymore — in Delhi and elsewhere. Access is hard, influence is nearly non-existent and our enigmatic new prime minister and his iron-fisted control over his colleagues makes everything more difficult than it ever was. Media has transformed in the last decade and nothing works like it used to. It’s bad enough that important stories are increasingly harder to break; that TV news channels would have reported it before the newspaper arrives, that Twitter and Facebook would be full of it before the TV cameraman arrives. It’s virtually impossible to be the first. What is worse is that when you do manage to get your hands on an important story, it has to compete with links such as ‘Five ways to blast stomach fat’ or ‘Katrina wears a bikini.’ The reader, who was a large unknowable mass out there, is far easier to track now, yet she manages to remain a mystery. And so journalists write what they think is important and eventually come to believe that only what they think is important.

If the political journalist is working under circumstances that are dire, the business journalist is worse off. With public relation companies planting several dozen gatekeepers and hawkishly hovering each time a journalist meets a CXO, absolutely nothing of relevance is accomplished. Often, PR companies suggest ‘one-on-one interactions’, which only means you’ll be served tea from sparkling china cups in a sparkling office and the CXO, trained as he is in this, speaks several thousand words, all of which taken together tell you nothing. Throw in a ‘strategic’ in every other sentence and a ‘paradigm’ alternatively and everyone pretends that it is time well spent. Last week, on a Diwali mahurat trading show on a business channel, I watched as Beaming Anchor asked Ace Fund Manager what his investment tips for the viewers were. Ace Fund Manager filled the studio air with a prologue that lasted four full minutes, stating many disclaimers and several warnings. And then proceeded to give his top two pieces of investment advice — open a demat account and buy bluechip stocks. You have to concede, as stock tips go, even a poodle could have given better advice in a shorter time. Beaming Anchor, polite but dogged, pushed and pushed for an actual stock tip. Ace Fund Manager, now trapped in a I’m-smarter-than-you game, repeated his two meaningless tips. Now, I am aware investment managers are often disallowed by their companies to name specific stocks. In which case, they should let go of some television glory and stay home. Yet, everyone’s trapped in their roles. The TV channel, left with very little choice and a large number of programming minutes to fill, will ask Ace Fund Manager back, knowing he will come back and spout nonsense again. And viewers will sit down and watch it for 30 seconds before picking up their phones and clicking to see what Deepika Padukone is up to.

With journalism caught between so many constraints, the state of the profession is seriously fraught. It is only a question of time before a young ‘serious’ journalist realises there is very little serious journalism going on. You can either play the game or get out. And if you choose to play the game, there is only one successful role model today. The man who is recognisable by his first name alone, who thunders into your living room announcing not some namby-pamby prime time, but a Super Prime Time. If he’s successful, it is because he interpreted the term media circus rather literally. And appointed himself its ring master. The first step to successful journalism today is to discard every single principle you learned. Then get out and buy a dark suit. And teach yourself to shout.

(Veena Venugopal is editor BLink and author of The Mother-in-Law . Follow her on Twitter >@veenavenugopal )

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