My experience at the Statesman

Yesterday, I was asked to leave the office and not come back by an editor at the newsdesk. It was after a heated exchange with two of them. I was asked to do Pg 3 by the executive editor. On Fridays I usually do Pg 9 - which I believe was taken over by the office in Bhubaneswar on the 5th of June.

Pg 3, my page - was largely complete. I had to place the stand-alone photograph in the centre of the page, and the header - a bust with a quotation on the top. I was prevented from doing so by Sylvia Gomez and TJ Singh - senior editors. Sylvia, who was apparently trying to hurry me up - was not aware of which page I was doing. Her concern apparently was that the designer needed to format the pictures and was rushing me to give the page to him quickly.

The pictures for all of the pages are stored in F drive which is accessible to every terminal in the office. In other words - no one needs to wait for me to hand a page over to them to format pictures however the newspaper requires.

I do not believe that she wanted that page released as when I was placing the pictures, she asked me to finish the headline I was writing. When I attempted that she asked me to place a dummy headline and just hand the page over to the designer.

Bear in mind that in the recent past Sylvia has not even been checking my pages, which are usually cleared by TJ Singh.

Who, overhearing our conversation came out of his cubicle and inquired as to what was happening, and asked me to be done with it.

On the 5th, Friday - I did not receive any pictures with my stories. I downloaded a few (upon being requested by the reporter and placed them). It is usual practice to place an in house (reporter filed) picture as the stand-alone image in the page when it is used.

While attempting to identify which one had not yet been used on another page Sylvia again intervened, and at this point was saying nothing other than that she had to leave and I was holding them back (she had no problem leaving for the past many months when I was the last sub-editor to leave the office).

Given that there was another senior editor in the office, one who does usually check pages released by me - I found her insistence uncalled for. And her actions, served only as an impediment to their release.

She is not the first senior editor to behave as such. Atanu Chowdhury, who was employed by the Statesman earlier ( I do not know if he is still on the rolls) served pretty much the same function, though often more blatantly. 

Abuse is common parlance in the building. Being cursed at, I have understood - is par for the course. Atanu was once assigned a page (which he did not do) and palmed it off to me. I was doing other pages and told him that I would not as it was his responsibility. Apart from being screamed at he picked up a chair to hit me with. Upon informing him that such an act would be assault, he dropped it.

While selecting a picture for the stand-alone section (under Sylvia's instructions) TJ came out and said I should write the headline first. There was obviously no way at this point that anything was going to get done on that page.

The day before, I had again written to the Editor of the newspaper - Ravindran Kumar informing him (incase it slipped his notice) that the backlog in payment for sub-editors has mounted to five months worth of wages again. This is the third time in my tenure with the company that this has resulted. 

We, sub-editors had actually met Ravindran Kumar a few months ago, before the onset of the pandemic. At which point, he had even said we would receive increments. I have worked in this organisation without a raise for about a year and a half (since 18 September, 2018).

In the letter I sent to the editor, no other colleague I asked would have their name placed in it (even though it directly affects their conditions of employment). Also, Ravindran Kumar - the editor has not responded to any of the communications I have sent a him thus far.

When I came into work at the Statesman newspaper office in Kolkata on Friday the 5th of June. I was informed that I would not be doing Pg 9 as the office in Odisha - under the charge of Ravi Krishnaswami would be handling the page that day. In compliance I forwarded the leisure section containing the cartoon strips, the need to know section bearing emergency phone numbers printed in our paper every day, and the crossword. I also forwarded the wire stories received from the Press Trust of India. And sat down to finish Pg 3.