This does sound good, and leaves us with a warm, fuzzy feeling. A tribute to the dear departed AND a meal for the poor. Sounds like one of those win-win situations that neo-liberal capitalism keeps reminding us about.
But just for the sake of debate, may I ask: * Should the same principle apply in every case where we could cut out the middle-man. Or is there some other principle on which we make the decision? * Do we see our newspapers as serving society today, or not? Or is it a mixed bag? * If they aren't serving society, is it because they are making too much money in advertising? Or is the crisis actually traceable to somewhere else (i.e. they're too dependent on big advertisers, cover prices of newspapers have not grown over the years so readers barely matter now, readers are not influential enough in keeping check on the system, growing political and/or industrial control over our media, the rise of a class of professionals within the media whose interests may not tally with those of the wider society, etc, etc?) As you know, I've been living off the media (in a way) for the past quarter century. At the same time, I have a love-hate relationship with the Fourth Estate (or should we say Froth Estate, as it is increasingly turning out to be?) Some of us journalists put together a book called *In Black and White*, which is available as a free download in the interest of public debate: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11523/11523.txt Keep in mond however, that this is still ajournalists'-eye-view perspective of the debate. Citizens' voices on the media are yet to be adequately heard or even voiced. Being the contrarian that I am, let me point out however that even if media payments can be small in this part of the globe, my work there has created enough of a surplus to allow me the time to focus on issues I love working on. In that sense, I would not say an advert in the media is necessarily a waste of money-that-could-be-put-to-better-use. What I would agree is that our media has a long, long, long way to go before they can claim to be taking care of wider social needs. FN -- FN +91-832-2409490 or +91-9822122436 f...@goa-india.org Books from Goa,1556 http://scr.bi/Goa1556Books Audio recordings (mostly from Goa): http://bit.ly/GoaRecordings On 27 June 2012 21:32, Cecil Pinto <cecilpi...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Earlier this month my Kuwait based friend, Ulysses, wrote to me saying > that it was the First Death Anniversary of his father, Anthony > Menezes, and he needed to release some adverts in the local Goan > newspapers. These adverts would be to remind people about the > Anniversary Mass. I got him in touch with an advertising agency who > gave him the rates which worked out to about Rs. 5000/- for a small > advert in the O Heraldo and similar amounts in other papers. Ulysses > was all set to release adverts in three newspapers when I > intervened... > > ------------------ > > Read the whole post with photos at: > http://cecilpinto.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/the-prayers-of-orphans/