Not that I was totally unfamiliar with the birth pangs of newspapers — having joined the Herald as a trainee when it was a few months old and Newslink when it was in a similar position. But, birth pangs or whatever, there's nothing like competition to add a little excitement. It shakes up established players, and all the poaching for staff only pushes up salaries and gives hitherto ignored journalists their day in the sun.
I too was offered more money — more than double my last salary drawn in the Herald — which I had quit a few months earlier in less than happy circumstances. Meanwhile, just as Gomantak Times was about to be launched, Rajan Narayan in his inimitable style launched a broadside against the to-be-launched newspaper. For days, he wrote about how the Maharashtrawadis were planning take over Goa's English-language media. Never mind that most of the to-be-launched paper's staff were old Herald hands.
However, GT — as the paper was later referred to — seemed on to making great progress as we neared launch date. For the first time in the history of Goa's English-language media, we had newspaper designers working on what the paper would look like. A two-man team from what was then Bombay was paid a princely sum of Rs 25,000 to come up with the new design.
But that was where the good news stopped. The company which had sold the Chowgules the desk-top publishing equipment for the new newspaper had amazingly been able to convince the management that there was no need for paste-up artists. So there we were, trying to put together a newspaper without artists or computer operators or journalists who could do screen-based page layout.
There were no dummy runs; in fact, on the night before the first edition, I was forced to call one Herald's former paste-up artists to come in and help produce the paper. Today, all this may sound strange — given the technological innovations of the last decade — but then it was crazy, particularly given that the Chowgules had a fully functioning newspaper Gomantak and should have known better.
Then to the issue of staff recruitment, and and one of my pet peeves.
Goan newspaper managements have always hired journalists from outside the state — at exorbitant salaries — believing them to be better than local talent. And so was the case with GT, where my then chief-sub colleague, a sub from the Times of India, was paid twice as much as I was. But just because they are imported, foreign talent isn't always good or suitable for the job at hand. This Bombay veteran was such a miserable creature that on launch night, with editor Mohan Rao shouting his head off, one was forced take charge and ensure that we got the paper to the press.
But no mention of this paper's launch can be complete without a mention of the role Gomantak editor Narayan Athawale played. While generally supportive of the idea of the newspaper in the early days, including recommending the hiring of staff whose knowledge of the language was less than adequate, he almost knocked the paper off its feet before it was launched.
For this the late Mr Rao was to blame; but it was an innocent mistake. A few days before the launch, Mr Rao asked Mr Athawale to write a piece for the new newspaper — it remains the only one he ever did.
And with good reason.