WordLatte - Book Launch
26-March-2015
"Today we celebrate the stories of XIC Journalism, from straightforward reports to meandering narratives, interviews and thoughts, opinions and musings.”
The above was the motto of the class magazine launch of and by the Journalism Batch of 2014-15 on 25th March, 2015 at the Xavier Institute of Communications. The digest, titled ‘Word Latte’, is the collaborative effort of the Journalism class as part of the Print Production module. The Chief Guest for the event was Mr. Saurav Majumdar, Managing Editor of the Forbes India. A veteran business journalist, Majumdar, has previously worked as resident editor with Business Standard and as deputy executive editor of The Financial Express. Also present were Jehangir Mistry, the Dean of XIC, Director Fr. Lawrence Ferrao, and Journalism Course head Yogesh Kamdar along with a number of faculty and staff members.
World Latte, a features magazine was the result of a four-month long module under the guidance of Sandra Vaz and Sunita Wadekar Bhargava, aimed at giving students a first-hand experience of bringing out a publication. Both our mentors gave us a taste of the pressures of a magazine newsroom working under a deadline. But from writing that first draft of our stories, to editing and designing and finally the excitement of seeing the printed product, our journey was exciting, infuriating and satisfying in equal parts. Simply put, Word Latte is a concoction of the ideas of the journalism class, with some steaming hot perspective and a shot of humor, brewed together in numerous sessions with our professors and served in the form of a digest.
The launch saw the classroom become a cafe, with coffee being the predominant theme of the program, in keeping with the magazine name. Hosted by Zenia D’cunha and Yuvraj Malik, the event began with the digest being unveiled by the Chief Guest from a king-sized coffee mug. This was followed by the Making of Word Latte, where Varsha Meghani, Mrinalini Krothapalli, Saahil Singh and Nikita Noronha spoke about the process of organizing the content and layout of the magazine. There was a Making video as well, a light-hearted take on an otherwise taxing procedure. Meanwhile, in keeping with the theme, the guests were served coffee and cookies.
This was followed by the speeches by the guests present who shared their thoughts with us, not only on the digest but also on our role as future mediapersons. One line by Mr. Majumdar especially stayed with us, when he said that we as journalists must write and not become the story. He also advised us to never to take ourselves so seriously, that we forget to maintain the humor needed to work in the field of media. The entertainment of the evening was provided by the talented in-house musicians Sapna Mathur and Akshit Harsh who performed an original composition specially written for the World Latte launch. There was an awards ceremony too, albeit a tongue-in-cheek one, conducted by Suyash Upadhyaya and Karthik Janakiram. The evening ended with a vote of thanks by Angad Singh Thakur.
The module lasted for a couple of months and the launch a couple of hours, but on behalf of the XIC Journalism class of 2014-15, i can safely say that the experience of creating Word Latte will stay with us for a long time.
by
Zenia D'Cunha (Journalism Student)