Karnataka ULB poll results in graphics

Results of the elections to urban local bodies in Karnataka have just been announced.

And with loads of data at my disposal, seemed like a good time to play around with graphics and some of the online tools I've chanced upon recently.

Given that the BJP government has been in power in the State for the last five years, its lacklustre performance and the good showing by the opposition Congress is being read as the tide turning. Especially with State elections just a couple of months away.

Yes, there's a mandate for the Congress, but this graphic seems to suggest a more drastic loss for the BJP and the Janata Dal (S), the BJP's ex-alliance partner.

The total number of seats up for grabs is 4976. Results have been declared for 4952 (Tardal with 23 seats boycotted the elections; no nominations were filed for one seat in Chickballapur).

Among the seven city corporations that went to polls:


No party has got a majority in the Mysore City Corporation council. (This one was easy, I don't get bragging rights.)


More to follow as I get around to doing it!

Update: Some more elections visualisations (definitely more expert-like!)

• Congress tipped for major gains in forthcoming Assembly elections.
• Visualising Karnataka ULB polls (love the map!)

When a newspaper joke gets lost online

Every newspaper worth its salt has an online presence. Which is fantastic. And probably obligatory. But a print media company is doing more harm than good to itself if its system automatically uploads print articles to the internet.

Because print simply doesn't translate well online.

The art to page layout - using large headline fonts and pictures, and top to bottom positioning to denote news prioritisation - is lost when even the tiny 8-inch long story buried in the bottom left corner of the page gets its own web address.

And missing context can ruin what the paper stands for.

Take the example of this unfortunate article on The Hindu.  It appeared, presumably as a small column with a thumbnail in the lifestyle supplement of the paper, part of a regular 'how to' section, which is usually formatted to indicate that it's a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek, humorous column.

While the humour in this piece is admittedly questionable for any medium, the point is completely lost on online visitors, who see an absurd, grammatically incorrect headline ("...get any girl to go out with you") amidst stories of drought and politicking.

Isn't that shooting yourself in the foot when the whole point of your recent marketing campaign was about how The Hindu "stays ahead of the times" without dumbing down news?

Being part of the team that's put in a lot of work into the print edition, it's a real pity to see the message lost in translation.

Every holiday has a story

A torn backpack even before I boarded the connecting flight was the extent of my worries when on holiday to Sikkim. Then the earthquake hit.

Yes, I felt it and yes, things shook.

Shopping in Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, that Sunday evening, I later learnt that I was just 64 km from the epicentre of the earthquake that measured 6.8 on the Richter scale. A day later and we might have been at the very same spot.

Someone said later that it went on for about 35s. It felt like a minute.

It was loud. A-cement-mixer-outside-your-window loud. Even if you ignored the screaming.

I wasn't screaming. I was being dragged out of a souvenir store by an alert friend - the best person I could have shared a quake experience with, thanks B! - while saying something about not having paid for the pretty coin purses that I seemed to have run out with.


Mobile phone networks died before the world even stopped shaking, but data services stayed reliable, tweets, IMs and emails were dispatched. "All fine."

People ask me if I was afraid. After the fraction of a second it took to realise that I wasn't going to be buried in rubble (yet), I really wasn't. Adrenalin, a boringly practical instinct, the remarkable - if misguided - conviction of one's invincibility, and a pocketful of cash are perfect for situations like this.

Expunge oneself of the souvenirs that never were: check.
Call Dad, ping friends, email editor with an offer to be available for information: check.
Stock up on water, a torch, biscuits and chocolate: check.
Get ready to spend the night out on the road: sure, can do.

Running through this mental checklist, all I could think of was how when I got home, I should blog about the pressing need for universal mobile phone charging stations and public telephone booths. With time to readjust my personal lines of right and wrong, I was convinced I would be justified in breaking into an electronics store if the situation got any worse.

It didn't, and I met too many nice people in Gangtok to be guilty of misdemeanor or have to to live on the street.

A couple of hours later, safe inside a new friend's home that was warm in so many ways, I realised just how shaken we all were. (I blame two aftershocks, a dying phone and the sight of broken photo frames.) I felt I ought to be reporting this, but wasn't sure I wanted to. I found my legs unusually unsteady, clutching onto a water bottle was stupidly comforting, and I wasn't sure I wanted to take off my shoes and jacket just yet. What if we had to run out again? Even two days later at the airport, the sound of every plane taking off made me jump.  

Surprisingly, maybe because I was watching much of it unfolding with a sense of distance, I ate and slept very well that night. It was as if I hadn't a concern in the world.

M.G. Marg, Gangtok, the morning after. 

Maybe I didn't. Things could have been so much worse.

Stop the Presses!

I spend my evenings - six days a week - at work at a newspaper, labouring lovingly over news copy that, I am acutely aware, will only be served cold with someone's morning coffee.  

Considerable time and effort goes into making a newspaper. A bunch of reporters, photographers, sub editors and editors are working odd and/or long hours, following a tradition of news gathering and dissemination fine-tuned over decades, as a regal masthead never fails to point out.

All that work for nothing.

The said masthead has only borne witness to a news cycle that only gets shorter. And Thursday's story with Wednesday's data that I painstakingly corrected and placed in prime position on what will be Friday's newspaper, just so you can read it on Friday evening after work, is then just a jaded retelling of something you already saw on the tele or your RSS feed.

So, it is exceedingly heartening - I thanked the lord and everything - that a major newspaper breaks this floundering tradition with a clarification of what a print-based news organisation can do to turn its fortunes around.

When The Guardian gets ready to "double digital revenues" and "spend 80% of its focus on digital", I am hopeful that it is an example of how newspapers can break the "breaking news" cycle to put the emphasis back on good journalism, without the "deadline" excuse for shoddy reporting. Or for rehashed press releases.

From editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger:

Every newspaper is on a journey into some kind of digital future. That doesn't mean getting out of print, but it does require a greater focus of attention, imagination and resource on the various forms that digital future is likely to take.

The article continues:

Based on research that showed that half of readers read the newspaper in the evening, the aim was to create a title that would be "as relevant at 9am as 9pm". It would focus less on breaking news and instead aim to emulate "Newsnight not News at Ten".

Seems obvious for any newspaper, no?

Nothing tells a story like words and pictures. Whether on 20 sheets of paper delivered at your doorstep or via scrollable text at the click of a mouse. Surely it is common sense for print to converge with online/ digital journalism?

Tasty journo titbits

A story that provides opportunities for food tasting is always welcome.

Especially if it involves eating Bangalore's famous K.C. Das rossogollas.

I came back in a good mood, and with a matka full of rossogollas. They were polished off, the matka washed and dried, long before the story made it to print. See? Empty.



The story as it appeared in The Hindu, November 25, 2010.

(It's a pity colourful print layouts are lost in the automatic transfer of articles online.)

Coffee and something new

It's taken me a while to post this:

My story, as it appeared in The Hindu, October 14, 2010.

This has been one of my favourite assignments so far. Sunalini Menon, coffee taster, founder of Coffeelabs and, as the article says, "quality control expert" is a charming lady.

Her workshop/ lab was absolutely fascinating as well. Take a peek at the items behind her in the (unfortunately tiny) photo with that article.

A pity both the photographer and I weren't coffee drinkers. I of course, have a 50% success rate of telling coffee from tea, but that's our secret.

Learning on the journo job

Another civic story done and dusted. And this one has my voice on it.

This piece is about the Namma Metro construction along MKK Road in my side of Bangalore.

(Why, thank you, I know I sound lovely!)

Apart from giving me a chance to fiddle with sound and to stare for hours at audio squiggles (oh joy!), there's some learning that the experience brought -

• There're so many civic issues in everyone's backyard. 
• In a case where people will lose their homes and their livelihoods for the sake of snazzy new constructions and urban infrastructure projects, I cannot bring myself to pick a side, but I would know where my sympathies lie. 
• That everyone, every time, will learn to live with it. Despite all protests, life goes on. 

Many years ago, I read about how the concepts of karma and fate ("hane bareha" as Granmum says) are integral to the Indian societal make-up, and responsible for holding back economic and scientific progress. Then, I was inclined to dismiss it as a eurocentric statement, full of scientific and ethnic bias.

I would still contest that this 'passivity', as it may appear to some, is unjustly held responsible for holding the nation back, just because it doesn't conform to the ideas of competition, standards of achievement, and all's-fair attitudes that characterises the globally favoured paradigm of development.

However, I have now come to acknowledge the existence of the notion. It is hard to ignore the 'What can we do, that's written in the stars' explanation and acceptance of one's lot in life.

I'm still not sure that's a defeatist attitude though. It could also alternatively be seen as simply the lack of choice. Or just pragmatism and maturity.

Reporting in Bangalore - Tannery Road widening project

I've had the chance to get involved in civic issues and do a bit of reporting recently. The hunt for my first story in Bangalore took me to Tannery Road, where I spoke to residents and property owners protesting road widening along the stretch.

Here's the story on Citizen Matters - Tannery Road businesses strike out at TDR 

Coming up...the real story behind the story.  From Our Own Correspondent style.

Meet the Star

Look who got a cool 500 words to write about herself in the paper. 

Education Times Bangalore, The Times of India, 2 Nov, 09.

Note that I also got not one, but two pictures. Neither of them embarrassing. (Have a friend who picked one for me and Photoshop that did the rest, to thank for that.)

Also note the quote that makes the headline.

 I'll admit - it's not just Mum that thinks I'm a natural at this stuff. I'm a Me fan too.

*Bows*

(The link to the page, pdf format.)