Ramesh Lamsal

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an art, but a habit.
-Aristotle

I had come across the name of The Rising Nepal (TRN) during my school days. But I never fancied I would one day work for the oldest English daily in the country. However, destiny had a different plan for me. In the late 1990s, Prakash Rimal, then a senior reporter at TRN, sent me words to meet him if I cared to work with the newspaper. We had been English teachers at then reputed Galaxy Public School. When I met him, he said if I knew someone who had fairly good English and would like to work for the daily, I could ask him/her to join. I talked to Govinda Bhattarai, who happily consented.

We used to walk all the way from Maitidevi to Bhugol Park. On the very first day, we began volunteering for the daily, Rimal and a couple of other staff handed us a press release and asked us to turn it into a news report. We read and reread the release and found that it was alright grammatically. We just didn’t know what to do with it.

Rimal and Ambar Mainali, another proficient reporter with the daily, realised our predicament and came to our rescue. Narayan Upadhyay completed the versatile and affable trio of TRN reporters (current editor Bhimsen Thapaliya and Raj Kumar KC were comparatively more reserved), who enjoyed admirable professional and personal bonds, post-reporting momo meets and, from time to time, late-night escapades. They taught us that a news report begins with the most important piece of information so we needed to restructure the press notes that landed at our desk. Gradually, we came to know about Five Ws and One H and ABCs of journalism, the pyramid structure of the news report, and due verification of news sources.

Typewriter Days
In those days, there were only two computers at TRN, only in the Features section; the reporters worked on typewriters. So we needed to learn how to type, hence I borrowed a typewriter from a friend of mine – Umesh Lamichhiane – and began practising. It didn’t turn out to be as difficult as I had presumed.

But there was another catch. Though TRN required new reporters, the management was not quite ready to hire us right away; neither was there any certainty about recruitment soon. "It's up to you guys to decide whether you like to keep volunteering or discontinue," Rimal told us. We couldn't afford to keep working for an unspecified period without any remuneration, so we decided to discontinue. Luckily, some months later the daily opened vacancies and we sat for the test and passed it. In the interview, I was asked to state the difference between ‘dateline’ and ‘deadline’. As a student of English Literature and Economics, I failed to define ‘dateline’ properly. But one of the interviewers reassured me, saying, “It doesn’t matter much as long as you can write correct English.” I was selected for the job.

Back to the newsroom, Rimal was an excellent mentor but quite a strict supervisor; it was pretty difficult to please him with the kind of news reports that we could produce. A hardworking man, he made painstaking efforts to improve on our stories – on some occasions, he would agonize for hours to make the lead more forceful and enhance the overall quality of the news report.
Once Hemlata Rai, a colleague who, like Rimal himself, left the daily some years later, told him, “There is nothing in the story printed today that I had written except my byline, you had rather put your byline instead of mine.” That was typical Rimal mode of working when he was in high spirits.

But if anyone failed to produce news reports as assigned, he could be downright rude. Govinda Bhattarai faced his wrath once, “If you want to work, work seriously, otherwise, you may leave.” Rimal taught us a lesson early on that there is no shortcut to good work; maybe this is the reason why I expect my younger TRN colleagues to invest more time in what they are doing and produce better results.

Business Beat
As time passed by, I was asked to focus on Business and Economy. Once I wrote a byline story about the initial public opening of Taragaon Regency Hotels which had received an overwhelming response from the public. In those days, we didn’t usually put a headline to our news reports, but in that particular case I gave a headline something like “Taragaon Regency creates a whim in share market’.
Chief Reporter Yuba Nath Lamsal went through the story and I submitted it to the desk. Arhan Sthapit, who has since left TRN for a post at Tribhuvan University before moving to other institutions, and Bijendra Man Shakya, I think, both seasoned editors having good knowledge of economics manned the desk. The story was given a good placement.

But the next day, Murari Siwakoti, a man of few words known for his well-written and impactful editorials, in his gruff voice asked me, “What does the headline of your story mean? Is the word ‘whim’ right there?” Then I realised I actually meant to say ‘wave’ and not ‘whim’. I felt ashamed of myself but I also got a lesson that I should not take for granted the meaning of the words I use. Since that day, I double-check the meaning of any new word I am using.

Hari Uprety was another no-nonsense editor at TRN who looked after the Friday Supplement. He assigned the new cohort of reporters to write front-page articles for the Supplement on a rotation. He gave us the topic and ideas to come up with about 2000-word features; when he read the articles, he gave us feedback about the things to improve on.
Uprety's grooming gradually gave us the confidence to write longer articles. Like Rimal, he didn't like frivolity on part of the reporters and cautioned us to work wholeheartedly and produce good articles. Govinda once quoted him as saying, "Boss, your article reads like a 2000-word chatter", chatter being the weekly column where editors and reporters gave a snapshot of their feelings about something in about 100-200 words. Sadly, this popular column has been discontinued for the last few years for irrational reasons.

Political instability has been a perennial problem in Nepal, which has a serious bearing on everything, including the operation of the GC and its publications. As perceptive poet, Bhupi Sherchan, said 'yo hallai hallako desh ho' rumours circulated from time to time that the GC should/would be privatised and its shares sold to the public, etc.
In the 1990s and 2000s, major political parties - NC and UML – whenever in opposition, said the state should not run a newspaper and voiced for GC's privatisation but when they rose to power they kept quiet about it; they rather wanted the national dailies to disseminate information in their favour. We at TRN always wondered about the future of GC and the newspapers, not least about ourselves. But the privatisation rhetoric seems to have taken a backseat for about a decade now.

I worked part-time as an English Lecturer and I never thought that I would last long at TRN; I always thought I would go back to the university. That didn't happen as vacancies were few and far between at TU, yet I stuck to teaching as late as 2015 when I quit out of personal choice and have been giving full time to TRN. In retrospect, I think I should have devoted all my time to the daily right from the beginning; that way I would have done a much better job for the daily and myself.

For the last couple of years, I have been working as a Copy Editor. When COVID-19 gripped the country, I had more free time at my disposal which I began devoting to reading and further improving my editing skills. Better late than never, I realised that the best I can do is focus all my energy on what I am doing. Naturally, this gives me a sense of satisfaction and contributes to my wellbeing, too.

All Is Not Well
However, all is now well with GC and TRN in terms of editorial and marketing. TRN is indeed a brand to reckon with in the context of Nepal, and there is a lot of goodwill around, but we have been unable to exploit this potential thanks to managerial and editorial complacency. The most glaring gap is that the newspaper is not easily available or accessible for many people who wish to keep a tab on what it has printed.
Moreover, we live in a digital age, but we, TRN in particular, are all but absent in the digital realm. There is an urgent need for orientation and training for editors and reporters to fare better on this front. Besides, there is a need for long-term planning to make the newspaper more readable and influential.

The management headed by new executive chairman Bishnu Prasad Subedi, has pledged to do everything necessary to make Gorkhapatra smart; this is the right time for us to think anew where we want TRN to be five/ten years down the road and what each of us can and should do. Let's work out a realistic strategy to make TRN more visible physically and digitally, and more vigorous intellectually.

(Deputy Executive Editor Lamsal discharges his duty as a copyeditor )