News about news reporters may not have that much attraction for newspaper readers. Most of the daily newspaper readers are not aware of the process involved in the making of news reports which fill the daily’s sheets. The lives of journalists, the unsung heroes and heroines of the media industry, fade into oblivion once they retire from service or walk into the autumn of life.
This is the reason which prompted PA Mahboob, veteran journalist, who authored “Untold Stories by Journalists” which is being released by Congress leader A K Antony, whose profession as a politician was launched from Ernakulam. This is the first comprehensive account of how journalists in Ernakulam district built the first-ever Press Club building in the country.
In modern times, scribes rush to the government with petitions and memorandums seeking hike in monthly pensions, medical benefits and accommodations, journalists of yesteryears struggled to meet both the ends of life together. Most of them were the carry forward products from the freedom struggle movement, according to P Rajan, octogenarian journalist and chronicler of Kerala politics, who played a major role in making the dream of scribes in the district to have a building of their own.
“This is the first ever Press Club building in the country, having completed the construction in 1968. The then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi inaugurated the four-storied building on December 15, 1968,” writes Mahboob quoting from various news reports that appeared in the editions of December 16, 1968.
What makes this building unique in many ways is the cost of construction, the speed with which it was built and the fact that the journalists who did not seek any financial aid from the State Government for the building.
“The plot of land on which the building stands was bought from the Kerala Government paying the prevailing market rate. The cost of construction was met by a lottery. We journalists spread out across the State to sell the lottery, each ticket costing Re one. The first prize was Rs 10,000/- and a Herald Car,” reminiscences P Rajan, the lone surviving member of the journalistic fraternity of those days.
Besides being the first ever Press Club building in the country, this institution is the one that pioneered the concept of Meet-The-Press. Politicians that include Prime Minister, union cabinet ministers and former heads of State had participated in the Meet-The-Press programmes organized by us and this later caught up with the rest of the nation,” said Mahboob, who literally started his journalistic profession as a primary school student with the Press Club.
“I have seen my late father, himself a journalist and his fellow journalists sharing space on the footpath as well as in the verandah of a studio near the Ernakulam Guest House, the favorite accommodation of VIPs frequenting Ernakulam. Those days I used to ride a bicycle to Ernakulam to help my father,” said Mahboob.
The 369-page account has been done in the characteristic style of reporters, without any embellishment or adjectives. “That’s how we reporters file our copies from the Press Club and it is the professionals in the newsroom who make it in readable format. There was no newsroom staff for this book,” said Mahboob with a smile. The book is not about just how the building was constructed. It has many incidents like “behind the news”, accounts of how reports developed over the time in that era when telephone was a rare commodity, cars were luxury while Akashwani was the only source of news.
