J Station

When the competition is from TV, radio and online, you never have an exclusive story.
So it is always how different you tell the story from a different angle counts.

But local and neighbourhood newspapers are lucky to have such exclusive stories.
An interesting local story may not interest a national newspaper reader. But it will interest the localities and the people who have their roots in the neighbourhood as well.

When I was on an assignment to write about a store which specialises in ghee, I did not expect to come out with a multi-angled story.

It was a festival season. Naturally, ghee is consumed in plenty in all forms of sweets. The story on a ghee store is a favourite for all the weekly supplements of broadsheets. And a story with a colourful picture for tabloids.

My story was just one of the tens or twenties of such stories for the week, when I began. But when I read it again after completing the story I found it contained a lot of things.

• To which level butter is heated up to get the right form of ghee that is used to make sweets. (For other uses, the temperature differs!)
• Why the store procures the butter from a particular geographical location of the state. (The variety of grass, the cows eat up matters!)
• How his employer wrote off a part of his business to the current owner in appreciation for his sincere efforts.
• What is the role of the female members of the family in the business.
• How the demand – supply which varies from season to season is managed.
• How the door-delivery logistics is handled.
• What is the pattern of dividing the business among his sons and nephews, who lost their father. (Sons are in branches and the nephews manage franchises)

And, not the least is another lead about his neighbour who runs an exclusive weekly magazine on Law!

This experience is one of the many anecdotes I can quote on ‘expect the unexpected’, while working on the so called ’small stories’!