Reporting excellence

The quest to record the best work of outstanding media persons continues. This evening’s second Ramnath Goenka Awards, which commemorates the life of a great newspaper proprietor who saw the media as the ultimate custodian of people’s liberties and well-being, will recognise a broad spectrum of media practitioners whose recent work bears the stamp of both excellence and relevance.

Journalism, which is unrelentingly about the here and now, is by its very nature ephemeral. Today’s breaking news is tomorrow’s pulp. In that ceaseless movement of discarding the old and reaching out to the next big thing, it is easy to forget or overlook work that deserves both space and recognition; work that has attempted a new level, exposed a new truth or spoken a new language. If, through these awards, we succeed in ensuring that crucial moment of pause to acknowledge and reward outstanding work, work which could in turn could set benchmarks for future journalism, we would have achieved our objective in instituting these awards — the country’s most prestigious recognition of its kind. Since change is the only constant in this business, the RNG awards, too, have evolved to include new categories and areas of scrutiny. For instance, at a time when reporting on issues of human well-being is not quite in the best of health, coverage of a sectoral issue of national significance — HIV/AIDS — will figure on the awards radar for the first time. By doing this, we also hope to encourage media professionals to explore roads less taken.

It is fitting that the man who will preside over the awards function this evening is one who has never stopped exploring fresh trajectories. President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has always been an interested reader of this newspaper, not to mention an extremely interesting contributor as well. His exposition of PURA or Providing Urban amenities in Rural Areas, which combined a futuristic vision with an instinctive humanity, was his contribution to the ‘India Empowered’ series that was carried in this newspaper. Kalam’s tenure as the first servant of the republic will shortly be coming to an end, but his engagement with the world of ideas will, we believe, continue for many more years to come. Years that should also witness the increasing emergence of quality journalism, which it will be our honour and delight to applaud.