`NEWS IS AT THE PRESS OF A BUTTON TODAY!’

Says ‘Indian Express’ chief editor Raj Kamal Jha at the International Center Goa on April 18, 2026

THIS one I couldn’t resist for I find media and media people endlessly interesting and I don’t know why the public doesn’t take more interest in their trials and tribulations, travails of the life and lifestyle they lead! Anyway, this is to say the dapper looking editor of “The Indian Express” Raj Kama Jha was here in Goa at the International Center Goa on April 18, 2026 to talk, discuss and throw light on “The Future of Journalism, Potential & Challenges.” Does journalism have a future as we knew in the old black and white days?
If you’re asking me black and white will never die for it’s still so much more reliable and mistakes may be rectified the next day in print the very next day! People still trust printed word more and can be read at leisure too. Don’t laugh, I’m the generation which was forced to move from typewriters to computers almost overnight in the 70s and thought I would never make it…those were the days when news editors drilled into the heads of their reporters that every copy must attend to the five Ws in the first paragraph of any report they do – at least What, Where, When and Why and How could come in later paragraphs.
Is all this passé now? According to the honorable Raj Kamal Jha, No, the 5 W’s are the gold standard of any good reporting in journalism however it is presented, even in today’s instantaneous very visual journalism in digital modes of technology. Of course, there is a lot of heartburning for many media people still in the black and white print mode but see how they’re catching up. Jha spent the better part of his talk putting into perspective yesterday’s and today’s journalism switching from print to electronic and digital platforms. Never has the fourth estate been so visual and vocal which is tempting for we’re sensory human beings first…the challenge is not to get carried away but to find the middle path even in today’s very visual and talkative social media screens.
IT is something which is bothering a lot of us, he admitted, this beginning of the day and ending of the day with a smart phone; but the challenge is to find a happy middle way sooner or later. It is up to us not to get totally enslaved by social media and its variegated offerings of platforms and apps and much else. Digital media comes with a whole new bunch of vocabulary.
To sum up the interesting tidbits of what I remember: The building blocks of communication are moved by the power of technology now, there’re no news room and there’s no need for old fashioned journos, for the phone is everyone’s news room and the hand phone has become the recorder of history. Jha had an analogy: Say life is a river in Goa and we know there’s a boatman who will ferry passengers across at 7am for a fee. Say this “bridge”is freed now! Now with each phone everyone is a bridge, a recorder of history. News is free instantly and the phone has become a most important tool of communication even as we live in a divided world…”Our definition of reality depends on who we are!
We may forget the bad and concentrate on the good news, it’s up to us to decide whether we want to see negatives or block them out. The world of Facebook, X, Instagram is a much bigger news room and the powers-that-be don’t have to be fair if they don’t want to be! The editor-reporter relationship was sacred once and sources of news were sacred too…marketing too was sacred. All that has changed, remove the word sacred now!
It’s a new kind of freedom we are dealing with and at the “Indian Express,” Jha said, they’ve come to terms with it and are dealing with the truth, “We do good journalism. At

Indian Express’ we focused on this, tell your stories which nobody knows…tell compelling stories.”  The biggest challenge is still free speech for each one of us and we just have to find the engine of truth, “We want to do good journalism from the middle ground, the school playground…” We can disagree but can still be in the same room, readers demand more. Not million views but who told you what that you don’t want to hear…do what is right, reclaim middle space and do good journalism, “win faith by story after story, small things, get it right in 50 stories…Ritu Sarin did it right at the

Indian Express’ for 35 years! No mistakes.”
Today we have a bouquet of sources and may disagree with respect. The bottomline: We can do good journalism, so set the bar, journalism is not a profession for wealth, there’s no holy cows even if big business today is less tolerant. Said Raj Kamal Jha, “Sue us, we are 96 years old! Do not tamper with the 5 W’s.” All this and much more to chew on and cheer up about, for the future of journalism is not in doldrums as many might like to think. Maybe the “Indian Express” is planning to come to Goa in a big way one of these days and may more Goans subscribe to it!
This is to say it was an altogether enervating evening well spent with an interesting Q&A which followed. I may add here that so pernicious are the charms of smart phone even for children that some countries are seeing how ruinous it is, everywhere we see folk glued to their phone screens absorbed in God alone knows what! Some countries are actually banning hand phones for anyone below 16 years old, an excellent idea. In India parents keep their kids quiet with a smart phone in hand! That’s a terrible story and society must take a call on it.
The ICG lawns was packed with many familiar faces; director Yatin Kakodkar welcomed everyone, saying media must always inform and empower society even as technology and revenue models change. Anil Gupta who gave the vote of thanks, confessed to his 81 years and the surety that people will always believe in print media more than ever before, for in black and white you cannot delete, it’s there for posterity!
ON that note it’s avjo, selamat datang, poite verem, au revoir, hasta la vista and vachun yeta here for now. Remember to call at the Purtumentachem Festival at the INOX Courtyard down Campal promenade (ESG complex) over the weekend, May 1 to 3, 2026. It’s Chief Minister and Chairperson ESG Dr Pramod Sawant and Vice-chairperson ESG Madam Delilah Lobo’s special baby…you’ll find all kinds of Goan goodies here put out by the self-help women’s groups and NGOs…mancurad ripe and other mango varieties, other fruit, beverages, masala dry and wet, palm jaggery triangles/slabs, coconuts, jackfruit, pickles, spring onion jumka, dry chilies, dry kokum solam, dry mango peels, coconut oil and much more. All things Goans stock up for in anticipation of the monsoon season. It’s so blistering hot maybe the monsoon rain will arrive sooner than later this year, I wish!