Sipping his tea late at night in the café of a Dubai hotel, a newspaper consultant, who has worked with a number of Indian newspapers and has a rather close knowledge of the newspaper industry in the country, asked me directly, “What is the reason that after so many years since Indian independence with the freest press in the world, there is not one newspaper in the country that is world class?” I felt more inclined to change the conversation into what the person was doing in the Arabian sands. But the question struck me as not being totally presumptuous or condescending, or inaccurate.
Journalism is a difficult business to assess and there is no metrical measurement that we can apply to newspapers. But that does not mean that value judgements can be relegated to the world of the subjective and all assessments suspended. An intensely human process like journalism that is manufactured on a daily basis may not be amenable to Six Sigma or the eight steps that an ISO certification is based on, but there are at least some basics that can help us decide whether certain standards are being maintained. To begin with, here are six that we can honestly ask of our newspapers and one would like to find out how many Indian newspapers have them in place.
Let us begin with a style guide. When I was doing my research on coverage of violence in Gujarat about three years back, I asked journalists from The Times of India, Indian Express, Asian Age, Gujarat Samachar, Sandesh, Gujarat Today, and others, if there was a style guide in place. Anything more than a sheet of paper on language use and punctuation that is photocopied and posted on a cork board? The answer was a resounding no. Newspapers in India do not as a rule have a style book. If there is one, it was designed ages ago and these are not shared with the staff. Expecting uniformity of treatment when it comes to writing or subbing in the absence of a style book is foolish. And yet that seems to be the norm.
Is there a standing design guide for a newspaper? Many newspapers of late have brought in international designers and some of them have a practice of leaving design templates for the desk or designers to follow. But are these guides part of the newsroom, especially in multiple edition newspapers? The issue here, like that of the style guide, is that uniformity of treatment, the sine qua non of standardization and hence quality, is not possible unless it is a shared resource. It would be nice to hear how many organizations have put this in place.
 How about a library that journalists can use? I have but anecdotal evidence to this effect, but the libraries in news organizations are quite pathetic, especially in the state editions. In fact, even in the head offices, the libraries are tucked away in one corner without either qualified librarians or experts looking after the operations. The Telegraph library that was shifted out of the ABP building because of a fire has not been restored back to the premises where journalists work. The Times of India office in Ahmedabad has an apology for a library that till three years back did not have more than 50 books, and one is being generous about the figure. The Indian Express in Ahmedabad did not even have that. Most often by library is meant a place where not books and information resources, but old copies of the newspaper are kept.
 If not a library, what about an ethical policy for the newspaper employees? At least in the case of the library there are budgetary allocations to be made and money to be spent. In the case of an ethical policy, all it requires is the good sense of some senior editors to sit down and craft a policy. Again my own research and enquiries suggest that ethical policies are not there. When asked whether the journalists in their organizations or they themselves were aware of the codes drafted by the Press Council, senior journalists, and research protocol requires confidentiality, rubbished the Council. And that would be swell only if they had some knowledge of codes or if their organizations had some in place. Disregard is only possible when there is awareness; contempt when ignorant betrays folly.
And finally since there are always things to be learned, one can reasonably ask if there is any upgrading of skills or training of journalists provided by news organizations? It is fine to send journalists on some foreign government junket and call it skill upgrading. It is another thing to allocate resources in their own budget to improve skills or build new ones. Most organizations that even have the mildest pretensions to being world class do so, but most Indian media organizations would not be able to produce any evidence towards such effort. Unless a case is made that once incubated journalists come fully formed from the head of their Zeus like organizations requiring no further knowledge or skills and hence they need not be given any resources, one would hope for some training.
 It may well be that there are some organizations that can in all honesty answer the questions raised here in the affirmative. But more likely is the fact that most would find deep inadequacies in all these departments. The fact that someone believes that there are no world class newspapers in India is no reason to accept it. But if indeed one feels that there may be some merit in that statement, or that efforts should be made to be of a quality that is sought to be emulated elsewhere or at least that standards have intrinsic merit, then these questions need adequate, fair and immediate attention. It is no point praising our country for a free and vigorous press. That is a function of our political structure. It is the institutional competence that is moot, and there can be little argument that there is a world of scope for improvement there.Â
