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Showing posts from April, 2006

No money in writing

I tried to start out as a free-lance journalist and found out that the owners of newspapers (and publications) are prepared to publish, but they are not willing pay anything for any article. The situation is just as bad if one is working in newspapers - the employees of newspapers are underpaid and their effort is never appreciated. The fact that someone who can write is never paid explains why there no Pakistani novelists. Creativity is being killed. First the cinema was destroyed and now the publication industry will disappear. In local advertising agencies, copywriters are considered the most worthless of all the employees. The publication industry is resorting outright plagiarism and with the Internet it has become easier to copy entire articles and columns. So the value of someone who wants to make a living out of writing simply does not exist, because nearly all the publishing houses would print things for free - so they do not need people who want to be paid for their articl

Press barons on the loose

There can one of the two possibilities - either the government is league with the All Pakistan Newspapers Society so that the people working in newspapers should not get the 7th Wage Award, which has been pending for five years now or the other is that government is too terrified of the newspaper barons that they do not have the courage to defy them. Or the government is too inept to deal with such matters. The APNS is becoming increasingly daring and making statements that it wants the laws meant for the newspaper employees removed. Its like saying that law against murder should be removed because, it inconveniences the murderers and they should have the freedom to kill anyone they like and it should not be considered a crime, once it is not considered a crime, the police will never arrest them, they will never appear in court. Since it is not a crime they will never be imprisoned. They can just go on killing without any remorse or pity. The present government is adopting ultra-rig