BAJMC student wins 3rd place in print competition

By Pranavi Ambati
Omji Dubey, a third-year BAJMC student, has added a feather to his cap by transferring what he learnt in his classes to the practicality of a print-journalism based competition. The senior year undergrad won third prize at Mood Indigo, hosted by IIT Mumbai.

“I came to know about the competition through a friend. Not all college fests have journalism-based competitions. I found this to be a unique chance and, hence, participated in it,” he said.

Although ‘Sustainable Future’ is a topic rarely addressed in mainstream Indian news, it was the ‘problem of plenty’ that Omji faced at the competition. “On researching, I found that sustainability was an expanse of ideas – not confined to recycling and pollution control, as otherwise understood,” he stated.

According to the instructions, the newspaper page was to be filled with 5 different sections: Story, Caricature, Advertisement, Article and Empty Space, which could include any newspaper element.

Thus, for the ‘Story’ section of the page, he wrote of ‘EcoBack’ – a fictional mobile case that is recyclable. With consumers changing their smartphone cases with changing seasons, it is an issue undoubtedly worth addressing.

Under the ‘Caricature’ segment, he fleshed out a satire on the nature of the big industrialists jumping into the rat race of promoting sustainable innovation, all while continuing harm the natural resources.

Advertisements are highly integral to the newspaper industry; they bring in the most revenue and can be considered as the backbone of the print media. Thus, the art of designing and placing the print ad too was a parameter of judgement. For this, Omji chose to create an advertisement for an eco-friendly dental hygiene kit ‘Eco-Kit’ that is a gift for the reader’s loved ones.

But nothing is more central than the editorial content to a newspaper. It is the very reason that even in the day and age of technology, the printed word has more credibility associated to it. Correspondingly, the ‘Article’ segment was not constricted by the theme. Thereby, Omji chose to write a news article on ‘Godi Media’.

Having addressed the mandatory requirements, it was the ‘Empty Space’ that was to be tackled. Without any second thought, he chose to go ahead with another advertisement. “I have created various graphics throughout my course, which has honed my multimedia skills – it was therefore, any easy task for me,” he explained.

Which font to use, how to align the text, where to place the advertisements and what headlines to give – it was his learnings as a BAJMC student from Semester-1 that guided Omji in creating his page, which won him the third prize. It was the experience that made understanding the rules and execution easy. Thus, he found himself to be pretty confident when he created the page and got a few of his friends to affirm the same.

“The competition was in December, and the result came out on April 14. I had almost forgotten about the event until I heard the news. I was happy and it feels like I have reclaimed confidence,” he said.

Despite the win, Omji’s biggest take-away is that there’s always scope for improvement, no matter how perfect one feels their work is.

A word of advice for his juniors: Journalism is as interesting as you invest in it. Even if a subject doesn’t interest you, you must not skip paying attention to it. It is a journey of exploration where you will eventually realise what you are best at – be it news writing, creating video stories or making podcasts. So stay patient and explore everything!

(The writer is a Semester II student of BA (Journalism and Mass Communication) programme.)