Journalists Switching Careers Not Uncommon

Options No Longer Confined to Corporate Communications or Technical Writing 

I have often felt that that those who made no headway in journalism drifted into public relations/corporate communications and that unsuccessful lawyers ended up as corporate counsel.

The merits, or otherwise, of the assumption aside, it is not without reason that people quit a career they have been passionate about. Even successful professionals do switch careers midway.

Cisco, for instance, has just hired a former senior journalist to work on the communication strategy for one of the groups within the company. He is Andy Houlihan who had served as a senior broadcast journalist for BBC, Fox Networks and Sky News and interviewed top leaders, including Tony Blair and Nelson Mandela. His other prior roles included managing communications for the British Parliament and then for the U.S. House of Representatives.

The charm with journalism is that you will not be weighed down by the might of the person you talk to for you have nothing to fear. Can you say that in corporate or executive communications? As a journalist, you are fully in command, and your role has a larger purpose – that of keeping people informed. As a corporate communicator, your role can hardly be as lofty. In business, you lose the sense of objectivity you cherished as a journalist. 

But, as I said at the beginning, people do not give up a dream career just for fun. My intention here is not to proselytize or sit on judgment either.

Why did I Abandon Journalism?: In my case, I had a clear sense of career direction even when I was in my high school. That distraction-free focus saw me take up a job with an English language newspaper even before my Master’s degree results were out.

But after more than a decade in the industry working for some of the best-known newspapers in the region and writing for leading publications worldwide (including some in the U.S.), I officially quit full-time journalism in 1997, when I joined engineering giant Bechtel Corporation as a Technical Editor. My main aim was to acquire new skills in an environment where media monopoly was cutting into the options that journalists had.

If you discount the two+ years I spent at Microsoft Magazine prior to that, my dalliance with journalism should be taken to have actually ended in 1995. As my job as its Deputy Editor was only to write about Microsoft and its products, it will be erroneous to term it a journalistic stint in its true sense.

It was Bechtel which marked my foray into the bid management side of business, leading me to cutting-edge technology companies such as Hewlett-Packard (on a project in Monterrey, Mexico), Lucent and Cisco (since August 2005).

Will I have been happier now if I had hung on to journalism? Well, I am not totally cut off from journalism as I blog fairly regularly and contribute thought pieces to the press occasionally.

— G Joslin Vethakumar

Will the Real Directors Please Stand up?

Practice of giving fancy external titles to staff shows there is neither honesty nor integrity in the fake new world of business

About two decades ago, when Indian film actor late N T Rama Rao was the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, he suddenly decided to wear only saffron robes to the legislature. Prone to dabbling in dramatics in public life, his intent was obviously to give himself the image of a saint or sanyasi – someone who has renounced all worldly pleasures.

To mock his decision, a few legislators started going to the legislature in nothing but ochre clothing.  Seeing all this, one of the opposition leaders then, P Jaipal Reddy, said in jest: “Now the real sanyasis will wonder whether to stick to saffron clothing.” This attire is something only saints have been traditionally donning in India.

Different breed, that of the corporate variety: Now, in my last 14 years in Singapore, straddling many multinationals, I see a different breed of people trying to pretend to be who they are not. I am talking about the fancy external titles that many personnel hold. While this is largely prevalent among those with customer-facing roles, others are not immune to this practice.

Executives, particularly in hierarchy-centric Asia, do not like to talk to mere managers (“We don’t like to deal with also-rans” appears to be their warcry). So, these ordinary mortals are given name-cards with lofty titles – Senior vice-president, director, executive director and so forth.

Never mind if this compromises on the integrity of companies, all they want is to push their ware in whatever way possible.

But, don’t we know that “you can fool some of the people all of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.” 

With all and sundry having attractive external titles, those who actually hold them will not be amused by the practice. But then they may also be projecting themselves as someone higher than what they really are. The result is that titles are increasingly becoming farcical.

This then only goes to establish that hardly anything (except perhaps lies and deception) is real in the big and fraudulent world of corporate affairs.

— G Joslin Vethakumar

Singapore ranked best place in the world to live in

Sydney is next, Copenhagen fifth, Vancouver 7^th and Dublin 10^th

Amid the recent escape of a terrorist from prison in Singapore came the news that the Lion City has been ranked the world’s best place to live in, followed by Sydney and Melbourne. I have no doubt it is. Snow and good weather alone are not enough for cities to top the chart. You need to be able to live right, feel safe with no sense of alienation of any hue and savour a healthy mix of the best life can offer.

Asian expats who have lived the world over also chose Copenhagen, Canberra, Vancouver, Wellington and Dublin as being among the top ten places worldwide.

But the surprise was Chennai emerging as the highest ranked Indian city, notching the 26^th place within Asia (not worldwide), with Mumbai coming in at 30^th and Delhi 37^th. Whatever happened to Bangalore, personally my best choice within India!

For more information check out http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/332815/1/.html

— G Joslin Vethakumar