News Chase: Thrills, frills & perils of news reporting - Thomas Kannamala, Teacher's Edition, Paperback

• ISBN-13   9781980796831 | 978-1-980796-83-1
• ISBN   1980796831 | 1-980796-83-1
• Format   Paperback
• Author(s)   Thomas Kannamala
• `News Chase’ A novel on the thrills, frills and perils of News Reporting Book review by P S Joseph, Former Editor, India Today (Malayalam) `Customer is always wrong, especially when dealing with traffic cops,’ writes T. Kannamala in his online novel `News Chase’. I am inclined to believe the author. Mr Kannamala had been a crime reporter for over 30 years. A highlight of his career was when he volunteered to assist the Tamil Nadu police to compile a book on `100 year of crime branch CID.' The novel News Chase on the thrills, frills and perils of news reporting, takes off when Rajiv Menon, deputy chief reporter of the India Mail group of Newspapers, discovers a classified crime dossier of recent origin among the century old police records. Later, he came to know that the Police Chief had deliberately planted it to check if Menon would dare to open it for news. The top cop had a special plan. Now, let me share a few inside information about the author T. Kannamala, aka K M Thomas, before I proceed with this review. Nearly for a year, police teams had regularly delivered crime records from the century old police archives to him. The Tamil Nadu government, on the initiative of the then Additional Director General of Police Ms Archana Ramasundaram IPS, wanted to publish a compendium of major cases investigated by the state crime investigation department for 100 years. After reading the 300 odd pages of News Chase, I am certain that the news peg `the dossier plant’ had occurred to the author, while editing the old crime stories. A new colour and depth have been introduced to many of the real life incidents in the novel with his role as the crime reporter of a leading newspaper, the president of Chennai press club, and a guest teacher of journalism course. What strikes me most is the presentation. Kannamala writes straight forward prose with a neat drama so that we could read as if it were all fiction. The book is replete with hilarious, comic and tragic incidents. They include the death of a child after a scorpion in the shoe stung him, why the cub reporter who exposed it lost his job, exposure of chit fund fraud, airport blast, drunken pilot, headless ghost, herbal petrol, fraud in the Public Service Commission recruitment, and granite export scam are particularly impressive. It is the twists and spins in the narration that keep this book a compulsive read. In the novel, a common thread that connects the journalists, judiciary and the policemen is the frustration with the system that encompasses each over a period of time, as brought out clearly in the hilarious ending of `muster roll scam.’ Scorpion sting story is a message to cub reporters, who court disaster in their immature haste to produce `scoops’. For readers who like thrillers, this is book is a real treat which has taken shape mostly out of real life experiences. It is also a ring side view of the perilous world of news gathering, and reporting it. possibly for the first time in English by an Indian author with hands-on experience. It is a magnificent effort to place caution boards for those who imagine that news reporting is fun, as portrayed in films, and TV serials. I have no hesitation to say that Menon’s key note address in the epilogue to the journalism students, passing out from the JKR University, is a master piece to be read every day by anyone who wished to enter this profession. The exposure of the author for over 35 years as a newsman, editor, publisher, teacher and leader of the press club fraternity shine through the entire book.