To cover the big event of the settlement between the government and the Mizo National Front what became known as the -Mizoram Accord- June 1986 there were several reporters in the remote North East Aziwal, the capital of Mizoram.
The Central Telegraph Office in the capital had one or at best, two telegram official to send them to indented destination. No wonder there was scramble of journalists at telegraph office. Today anyone of hearing a telegram of one thousand words would be dismayed. Being an outstation correspondent for most of the nearly forty-year career there is nostalgic feeling about the demise of telegrams. An example of what used to be a press telegram is on the top. It was filed from Aziwal in the wake of the Mizoram Accord. (Desk copy attached)
Telegram was the only way for the despatch for outstation journalists. There is well known story as to how a correspondent blocked his rival’s message by adding pages from the book to his story to delay others in the queue. Though nothing of the kind happened with me but in one case a rival being cleaver had prepared his story of swearing in ceremony overnight as all the details were known.
The CTO was on the way to the Rajniwas in Aziwal he broke from the group to file his story before others and before the event. No sooner, he stepped in the premises he realised that he had got the detail of the story wrong. The ceremony took place in open lawn instead of the “well chandeliered hall” he had mentioned!
The present day journalist writing about the end of 160 years service have hardly realised what the service meant for newspapers before the advent of telex, fax, internet (emails) and SMS by mobiles. The present reporter are covering incidents almost in real-time. No, wonder the young journalists writing about the end of “telegrams” era have not included ‘themselves’ or the newspapers in the articles and stories. They do not know about it and for the matter present day newspapers readers do not know the impact telegrams had in newspaper production.
The reporters of newspapers posted in the State capitals and districts were armed with Press Bearing Authority Cards provided by the newspapers and authenticated by the issuing CTO. Using the credit card for inland press telegrams, the correspondent typed the dispatches.The newspaper paid up on quarterly basis. If the despatch was marked BGQ it meant an ordinary telegram and the tag BGXQ meant express. The Post and Telegraph was doing a favour to the newspapers by charging two and four paise per word!.
There was another category BGFQ ‘Flash’ which had to be fifty words.The reporters counted the words every fifty words on their typed copy, which was generally in l lower case as it was sent in capital letters by the telegraph office. Comma, full stop were spelt out “a” was ‘aaa’ and “not” and “no” ‘were repeated so that they were not missed. After 199 words second page of the telegram started with “mtf” -more to follow which meant that report continued in the second telegram. The reporter signed after writing down the total word count at the end to help the department to calculate the telegram charges. It was different era of newspaper reporting.
(Writer is a senior journalist. Views expressed in the article are his own)