Team RevSportz is now in Australia, and many have had good words for us, and me in particular, for sending colleagues to cover the tour Down Under. And in the same vein, some have mentioned that senior journalists don’t often give opportunities to younger colleagues to travel on marquee tours.
These comments don’t really give the full story.
First, when you are part of an organisation, you are competing with others in the team. You need to showcase your talent and prove a point. If you are a senior resource and being paid top dollar, more so. Your organisation will have certain expectations of you, and it often happens that you will need to travel yourself to fulfil them. Also, the call isn’t that of the sports editor. Rather, it is a collective decisiom taken by the management. Even if the sports editor wants to send a younger colleague, the management often overrules such a call and looks for immediate gains. Rather than team building, TRPs and numbers are the immediate ask. That’s where younger colleagues lose out.
These things have happened multiple times with me in the past. Despite my keenness to send someone, things did not work out because sport wasn’t priority for the organisation. Again, sending more than one person was always considered a luxury, and hence wasn’t considered. That’s where younger colleagues tend to be overlooked. If there is one event in a year where a sports journalist travels to, it would inevitably be the senior person who got the nod.
For the Latest Sports News: Click Here
That’s where RevSportz comes in. I realised that one has to take bold calls to make sure that future generations want to become sports journalists. That we get the best people wanting to cover sport. Sometimes, the call could be wrong. But you need to be ready to own up to the mistake. At RevSportz, we are.
Also, you need to showcase coverage for people and corporates to take notice. Stand out in matters of quality. Yes, there are other digital platforms which have more numbers than we do. And I am perfectly fine with that. Sensationalism sells, and often gets more numbers. The media works on kite-flying at times. We aren’t competing with them. We will not. That we covered the Paralympics is proof of what we stand for. We want viewers who love sport to watch us. Not the toxic, jingoistic, sensationalist riff-raff who masquerade as sports fans. And because we are credible and have done good work, the brands that define the Indian narrative have come forward to support us. That’s where we stand out.
I have said to teammates that this social-media obsession with numbers often stands in the way of quality work. That they need not be in this rat race. It will not help. It is this vision that will define RevSportz going ahead. We will cover multiple sports with equal passion. We know, for example, that D Gukesh’s world-title chess clash will fetch us less numbers than the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. We don’t care, for Gukesh’s match is equally important from the perspective of Indian sport. That’s where we can make a difference, by creating legacies and shaping narratives that we can be proud of.
Also Read: Tendulkar’s 114 as a teen in Perth – What lessons can modern-day India take from it?