Scarlett Keeling: Goa's Lost Innocence

About a month ago the half-naked body of a 15-year old British girl was found on a Goa beach. Initially police said that Scarlett Keeling was only the most recent casualty of Goa's live fast and die partying lifestyle. Their initial crime report siad that she had dies of a drug overdose and drowning.. It took two weeks of agitating by her mother to get the police to preform a second autopsy. Their findings were that Scarlett had been drugged, raped and left to die. The mother has accused the police of taking part in a massive cover-up of her daughter's murder.

Nerlon Albuquerque, the sub-inspector who initially led the investigation has been suspended from duty, while the BBC reports that a senior police official hints and a broad internal conspiracy.

"It is a very complicated story. It has wider ramifications," a senior police official, who prefers anonymity, said.

He hints at influential local politicians being involved in the flourishing drug trade on the beach. - [via BBC]

Yesterday the police announced that they had solved the Keeling case and arrested two men who were said to have been in compromising positions with Keeling before her death. Placido Carvalho and Samson D'Souza have both been arrested. MSNBC reports

"The first arrested accused D'Souza has confessed to his role and has also named four others involved in the murder," Kumar said. The others named by D'Souza would be arrested after evidence against them was established, Kumar said.

But despite the confession, several questions remain--not the least of which were if the interrogations were fair, or if D'Souza confessed only under duress. Sources on the ground in Anjuna tell me that local people believe that D'Souza is only a scapegoat being used to pacify the media interest.

In a few hours I am catching a plane to Panji to report on the Keeling case and dig up whatever I can. For now, at least, the Goan Paradise seems to be lost.

Chennai's Great Newspaper Throw-Down

Chennai is gearing up for a newspaper slog fest that promises to leave journalism by the wayside and more billboards on the roadside. In the next month or so, the Times of India is coming to town with a major advertising campaign and super-low introductory rates. Its move into an already crowded media market is forcing the current players to reevaluate their positions.

Part of the reason, of course, is that the Times of India arrives full coffers and is already poaching the best reporters from the established Chennai papers. Indian Express's Jaya Menon--an extraordinary journalist in her own right--will be heading up the office as bureau chief and star reporters from the New Indian Express, the Hindu and Deccan Chronicle have been lured to the new offices by higher salaries and promises of plush assignments.

But no matter how talented the Times of India's editorial team might be, the future of the paper won't hinge on the stories that they break. Chennai is India's last great media market before the big newspapers start duking it out in second tier cities. For the next couple years, papers will be competing for readers as fiercely as possible before the losers are forced to close up shop.

And what sells newspapers better than sex?

When the Deccan Chronicle entered Chennai in 2005 it learned that the quickest way to turn a buck wasn't to fund an outstanding reporting team, rather all it had to do was paper the city with pictures cute Indian babes cavorting on the beach. Under the tag line "News Made Exciting" the paper ran high on celebrity news and sex scandals (and some occasional good reporting from senior staff) and its circulation in Chennai alone rose to more than 300,000 in just three years.

Former Rediff and Tehelka reporter and current assistant editor at the Council on Foreign Relations Basharat Peer laments that Indian editors consistantly bury hard hitting stories in favor of tabloid fluff in order to move newspapers

Privately, editors in India will say that cover stories about how Indian men and women behave in bed after age thirty sell more copies than cover stories about torture. [link], via sajaforum.org

It is unlikely that Chennai will be able to support four major English language papers over the long haul, and editors that I've spoken with are nervous about what happens next. As talent migrates towards the Times of India, papers like The New Indian Express are trying to differentiate themselves before the shakeup. For the last couple months the paper has included a sexed up 40-page Friday supplement called Indulge and has lately been winning the design wars for best above the fold layouts.

Even with some positive signs, the paper has the most to lose when the Times of India enters the market. With its drab offices far outside the city in Ambattur it has to work hard to keep talented people from fleeing to greener pastures--among them Sushila Ravindranath, Sunday Express editor has shifted to the Deccan Chronicle.

All that aside, for readers, this is a great time to be in Madras. For the next couple years the industry is going to be full of energy as the papers try to out-compete themselves for your attention. Lets just hope they run some actual news stories next to the full-page babe inserts.

The New York Times Effect

It's the gold standard for newspapers. It has a daily circulation of more than 1.1 million and its staff columnists collect Pulitzer prizes like carnival trophies. The stories that it runs on its front page set the agenda for every other news organization. The New York Times is a news behemoth. And this is something of a problem.

We've all heard about the New York Times Effect on restaurants and movies. Journalist Seth Godin writes that when the Times wrote a positive review of his neighborhood cafe business spiked and the line of customers pushed past forty. The spike in business lasted more than a week. A good review can make a business soar, a bad one can push it into the gutters. But the Times has a different effect on journalism. The newspaper has something of a monopoly on stories and it sets the rules about what stories can and cannot be told.

In order to convince a magazine or newspaper to devote precious page space to a story, the idea first needs to jump through several difficult hurdles. First the piece needs to be relevant to the readership and to be genuinely interesting. Second the story has to feel fresh--this means that other major news outlets shouldn't have covered the subject recently.

The first barriers is hard enough to get across. Editors have very definite ideas about what sorts of topics are relevant to their readers. Many stories get killed in their infancy before they even start. But the second barrier can be even more troublesome. Since many news stories are interrelated, how does an editor decide the bar for what counts as fresh?

Last week I pitched a story that aimed at exploring kidney scandal in Delhi where a notorious organ broker kidnapped unsuspecting workers and stole their kidneys. Other publications had already covered the scandal, but I had new information from the WHO that two American insurance companies were paying for organ transplant surgeries abroad—an issue that raises important ethical questions about the future of transplant surgery.

I got two responses from editors. An editor at a major business publication said:

“And I could swear I read a story like this recently in the NYTimes, although I could be hallucinating. It’s a great idea for someone, though, and a very well-considered pitch.”

And another from a top technology magazine said that the editors loved the idea, but the story seemed too familiar:

"BTW this is becoming a common problem. People in this office are
longstanding voracious readers. Everything is too familiar."

I had seen Amelia Gentleman's coverage in the New York Times of the kidney trade, but so many publications had been writing about the subject that I had to double check to see if indeed, she had covered the width and breadth of the issue in the article's 1000 or so words. The article is quite good, but is little more than day one coverage. There is no investigation into the very sinister international side of the crime. Certainly there was no reference to insurance companies that might have footed the bill for the expenses.

The problem isn't actually the fault of the Time's reporting staff, rather it's the weight that people put on Times articles. In my years as a reporter I have had more stories rejected because of previous NY Times coverage than because of prior coverage in any other publication. It doesn't seem to matter as much if TIME magazine or or Newsweek run cover stories on a subject, just so long as the NYT hasn't sent reporters to the field.

For reporters on the Times staff, the situation is precisely the reverse. They can cover any story they want, not matter how tired the subject is. Right now the Times is running a series of stories on sports scholarships which is basically the same exact article written over and over again by different reporters. Last week, Amelia Gentleman covered the sharp increase in Indian surrogate mothers selling pregnancy. The issue had already been a cover of TIME magazine in Asia, Marie Claire, The Christian Science Monitor, the BBC, a major special on the Oprah Winfrey show and dozens of other publications. I'd known about this story for more than two years before the NYtimes reported on it. It is such a familiar story that it should have never gotten past an editor's scrutiny.

The heart of the problem is that every editor I know reads the NYtimes religiously. No matter what their beat is, they see the paper as a direct competitor of their own publication. The times, on the other hand, thinks that it is peerless and can run any story it wants to. In the end, all this does is reinforce the NYT's position as a canonical newspaper. It gets to recycle the best original content from other publications, and then, once it has done so, stops the news coverage of that particular subject.

As an independent journalist, it is hard to always be in the shadow of the New York Times Effect.

My Shower: Where Electricity and Water Really Shouldn't Mix

There is a glaring contradiction between the skyrocketing price of real estate in Chennai and abysmal quality of construction and infrastructure. We've had out share of problems with the state supplied electricity to our apartment--ranging from city-wide brown outs to meter men from the Electricity Board and telephone pole explosions right outside my window. But once you take a look at the wiring inside the apartment you finally get a real picture of how on the verge everything is to collapse.

Take a look at the construction of my shower. You can see in the picture above that the pipe that leads to the spout connects to a small hole in the concrete where there are three different circuit breakers. Inside the wall, the pipe splits into at least two different pipes, and I believe that the stains around the windows show that there is at least some leakage inside.

The circuit breakers were installed to power the electric water heater and also shunt power into my bedroom to power an air conditioner and my computer setup. The water heater isn't particularly energy efficient, I've noticed that when I keep it on, the electricity meter downstairs starts moving at three or four times its normal rate.

So now I have to wonder if the shower that I've been using for the last two years, is actually some sort of crude execution device simply biding its time until the inevitable. Lettering imprinted on one of the breakers says "15 AMPs 256 VOLTS". I wonder if that is enough to give me a gentle stimulating shock, or enough to fry me instantly into a tandoori kebab.

The thing is, I've seen setups like this in apartments across the country. A photographer friend of mine in Delhi had a small house fire when his water heater exploded during one of the humid months. Even brand new places keep electric circuits perilously close to the water supply. We've got roughly a year and a half to go living here in Chennai. Any bets on whether we make it out?

Back to India for the Children of Immigrants

Preetha Narayanan moved back to India for a year and a half on a scholarship.

Thousands of Indians born in America have found a new home in the land that their parents abandoned. This week for NPR I reported on a new trend among second generation Indians to return to India in search of opportunity. Part of the draw is that Indians born and raised in the states often feel conflicted over their identities--on one hand they feel like they feel set apart from the American mainstream, while on the other they aren't sure how well they they fit into India, either. Inevitably, when they move to India, many in the second generation find that they have more in common with other Americans than they do with local people. And some people, find that disheartening.

But there are some clear advantages to moving. In addition to new visa schemes like the PIO and OCI cards that allow people to cross borders and work without too much government hassle, returning Indians also find that they can seriously advance their career. S. Mitra Kalita, a newspaper editor at Mint in Delhi, says that simply moving to India threw her into the ranks of senior management almost immediately. It would have taken her years to get to the same position working at newspapers back home.

And it's not just the second generation moving back. I'm increasingly meeting people here in Chennai and Bangalore who have been educated in the United States and even worked there for a few years who have decided that moving back makes a lot of sense. In the 1970s and 1980s most people assumed that moving to America would lock them into the west--returning wasn't even on the table. Now, it seems, many people are able to bridge both worlds.

Here's the story on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87884391