Friday, May 20, 2011

And I woke up to see my photo in the Newspaper

It really sounds great that you wake up one fine morning and you get to know that you have your photo in the newspaper. For me it happens way too frequently.

Having journo friends who call me up at odd hours to get a sound bite on something or the other to which i happily oblige. And then the off and on msgs about what picture to be used, to which they normally take my facebook pictures.


And then there are times when I come in P3 because of some theatre or art show, or some odd happenings around the city, to which mostly am unaware until i get a msg from some long lost friend who goes "Hey long time, I saw your photo in the paper about X event that happened at Y".


But this particular Msg that I got one day took me off guard. A relative msgd me saying I have come in the front page of Bangalore times. And I was expecting it to be the event I had attended the previous day. But then when he told me that it was the picture of me in a bike, I was taken aback. I rushed out of my house to buy the paper. And there it was staring right out of the front page of the Newspaper, a Grinning Photo of mine sitting on a Bike.




I did look good but what suprised me was i had no hand in it.

Read through the article and I saw that it was about this Art of Bicyle Trips. A culture trip that i had participated in months ago. There were quotes about the Trip orgainzer and other people who had participated in the trip. I contacted Pankaj Mangal who had organised the trip and asked him why is there my picture in the article, and why was i not informed about it. He claims that Nirmala the journalist was supposed to get back to him on what picture she would be using and confirm before it would be published. He was however not informed and the article was published.

I tried contacting Nirmala Govindarajan, but was of no use. TOI office number that was listed just does not respond. Tried to dig up my contacts with my journo friends who worked in TOI long ago, but still could not get any help.

If Nirmala and Pankaj do read this post, i just wannt to ask them, how can Nirmala take a picture from my album without notifying me?
When i went on the trip i never signed any form that states that the pictures from my album will be used for publicity of any form.

Pankaj Mangal, just one call from you could have saved you all this trouble. atleast i dont have to wake up to see my grinning photo in the paper.

3 comments:

cheth said...

haha nice pic though! :P

Garima Obrah said...

Hi

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We are organizing the World's Largest Tweet-A-Thon! and would like to invite you as a panelist for the same.

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We would like to invite you as a panelist for a 30 minute session wherein you can participate from any part of the world.

If you're interested, kindly email us your contact information so that we could provide you with more details about the event.

I look forward to hearing from you.Please mail us at garima@theviewspaper.net

Regards

Garima Obrah
The Viewspaper

Man on the moon said...

This is the sad state of journalism in India, there is no concept of privacy, respect for and individual's property. Making that coveted call for permissions is a lil too much to ask. I been on both sides, and it's sickening.