Prof. Baldev Raj Gupta, Member, Press Council delivers a lecture on Paid News and Writing for Mass Media

On February 1, 2019 the School of Mass C o m m u n i c a t i o n ( S O M C ) organized a one-day workshop on Writing for Mass Media and Guidelines for Paid News. The resource person for the workshop was Prof. Baldev Raj Gupta, Member, Press Council of I n d i a a n d Director, Buddha I n s t i t u t e o f Advanced Studies, Noida. An esteemed academician, Prof. Raj Gupta has worked as an editor at Express News, as an Editorial Advisor at Dainik Bhaskar and as a political editor at EMS Web. The workshop began with the lighting of the lamp by the Chief Guest Prof. Gupta, Chancellor Prof. Gurdip Singh and Pro Vice-Chancellor Dr. Ravikesh Srivastav, along with Deans of all Schools. In his speech, Prof. Gupta acquainted the students with his work experiences and spoke about the recent changes in the media industry, especially highlighting the field of print media. He elaborated that earlier the media only focused on one dimension that was political in nature but now it has expanded to all genres like agriculture, entertainment, tourism, health, education etc. He opined that media now follows a different philosophy. 

The workshop was further split into two sessions. 

In the first session, Prof. B.R. Gupta explained the art of headline writing and later indulged the students in an impromptu headline writing session in order to develop fluidity in their writing styles while keeping their headlines precise and on-point. He helped the students understand the nuances of news writing, including headline writing for newspapers. 

In the second session he threw light on the menace of paid news, PCI guidelines related to paid news and changing trends in the Indian media industry. He discussed the perils of fake and paid news in India and how it harms the news ecosystem. He added that a journalist should not manipulate the audience by providing false news. The workshop was an inspirational experience for the students to improve their news writing skills.