Living through paper's 'trying times'

Dubai: It was a one-man show for T.L.George when he had to draw illustrations for the 16-page Gulf News tabloid back in the early 80s.

After spending over two decades at Gulf News, the memories of the good old days are still fresh for George, an Indian from Kerala, for whom the journey so far with the newspaper that has just turned 30 has been no less adventurous.

"I joined in July 1979, I was a 28-year old bachelor and used to live in Nasser Square. Today I am a husband and father of two sons who attend college. In those days no one came across as a stranger in Gulf News as we knew each one of them by their first name but today unfortunately things are not the same. I don't know who is who. My colleagues in Gulf News from the good old days moved to greener pastures while I continued to stay with the newspaper that I have grown to be comfortable with," said George.

His journey to the company started while he was on a visit visa and found out about a job opening for an illustrator. Back then, he was the man in charge of drawing all the illustrations in the paper and its advertisements, as well as providing illustrations for supplements such as Junior News and Al Juma'a, which has been renamed Friday magazine.

Carefree

"Everything had to be done by hand and it would take me at least an hour to get an advertisement ready for publication. I would use a ruler and get the correct measurements so that I could cut and paste it on the paper."

After a while, more illustrators gradually joined the organisation until there was a total of 20 in one department.

"Work became easier once we started using computers, and what would take me an hour to do before now takes only a few minutes."

Reminiscing about old Dubai, George said that he misses Nasser Square a great deal.

"Everybody used to be very carefree and we did not have to worry about crime taking place. I shared an apartment with friends, and while we slept we would leave the door unlocked so that anybody could walk through at their own leisure. We never worried that we would get robbed or anything like that."

George, now 59, works at Gulf News in the marketing department.

"Even though things have become easier, such as receiving advertisements in CD format and e-mail, I miss the days when Shaikh Zayed Road was only a two-way road that hardly had any cars or building."

Similarly, recollecting his experience, D. Venkatesh, a service manager in the operations department, said that when he joined Gulf News it was a transitional period for the newspaper from being a tabloid to becoming a broadsheet.

"Transition times are trying periods, be it with people or with companies, it requires grit, determination and patience to see the testing times through," said the long-time staffer.

Venkatesh joined the company in 1985 and was just 21-year-old when he came to Dubai from Chennai. Having previously worked in India for the Indian Express newspaper as an electronic engineer, he was hired specifically to incorporate new technology to the company.

"I joined while the newspaper was changing its format from a tabloid to a broadsheet. During my first few months there, I would be setting up new equipment at the office on Shaikh Zayed Road, which was almost completed at the time."

The most dramatic change was when the newspaper changed the way it received its pictures and stories from newswires. In 1987, Venkatesh explained that they received their pictures through the telephone lines.

"We would have a big black box that would print black and white pictures 24 hours a day, and a man would have to keep refilling the photographic paper. We could not choose which pictures we wanted, so we would have to get everything. Whenever the local newswire would send Gulf News a picture, they would call me up and let me know how many pictures they had sent. For ten years I would talk to the same person and never once see his face."

Advanced

Gulf News started publishing its first colour pictures in 1985 but this was limited to the front page. The second stage of development came with the introduction of the internet.

"Before the internet came to Dubai, the newspaper was already using it through a dial-up connection that we had with a Norwegian-based company. That way, we were able to get a number of stories and pictures and we could select which ones we wanted to use."

The company also acquired a larger press machine that could print out more pages and handle colour. At the time of the Gulf War in 1990 Macintosh computers were popular on the market.

"Instead of cutting and pasting, we were then able to do full-page pagination. We only had six computers but now we have well over 200. Technology has advanced a lot since I first joined, and nowadays it does not really matter what computer you have because they all use the same software."