To commemorate the completion of two years of publication, we plan to publish the background info about our magazine and clarify our stand on various issues.
FAQ for Chronicle
Q-1: What is the Chronicle?
The Chronicle is a monthly news magazine published by IT-BHU Alumni Organization. It is published around 20th of each month. The first issue came out in June 2005. The magazine is available online on www.itbhuglobal.org/chronicle. So far the magazine has been published every month, except in Dec 2005 & Jan 2006, when the server (itbhuglobal.org) was down.
The chronicle, as the name suggests, is meant to chronicle (record) the events happening around the IT-BHU institute and IT-BHU community. It faithfully records all events happenings related to our college, our community and engineering education in our country.
Chronicle is emailed to 6,000 registered alumni of IT-BHU Alumni Organization each month. It is open for general public to view. A significant number of readers are from other engineering colleges, and we welcome them.
The magazine team can be contacted at chronicle [AT] itbhuglobal.org.
Q-2: How was the idea of chronicle started?
The idea was started around May 2005, when a group of alumni volunteers expressed the concern about lack of information exchange among IT-BHU community, including students/alumni/faculty/administration. Although discussion forums such as itbhuglobal.org, yahoo groups and reverberations magazine existed, they were lacking mechanism for uniform information collection and distribution within community.
Q-3: How is the chronicle published?
The chronicle is published in a team effort, where each member has his/her pre-assigned task. The work schedule includes, collecting info from the institute and faculty, scanning national/international news media for alumni news and general college & education related news, planning for news and articles for next month’s issue, conducting interviews, and finally uploading on the web server.
The uploading of articles on the server is by MovableType Personal Publishing System. It allows to edit the article, its font & also provide way to upload files and images on the server and has many other features as well for the easy usage.
After the uploading is complete and the issue is ready to publish, an announcement is made on itbhu yahoo groups. The issue is also emailed directly to about 6,000 registered members of IT-BHU Alumni Association.
Q-4: What is the publication policy of chronicle?
The chronicle is an independent publication for the benefits of IT-BHU community, which includes students, faculty, alumni and administration. Although some of the chronicle team members are also active volunteers of alumni association, the chronicle does not reflect the views of the alumni association. It is chronicle’s policy of not to take sides.
Chronicle believes in free information transfer across the society. It publishes news from the public news media where the permission to reprint is not required. Chronicle encourages everyone to freely copy any article, photo or event from its published issues. Its team members are constantly scanning various newspapers, magazines, blogs, etc. to collect news & articles related to our community.
The chronicle aims for being educative, informative and entertaining. It subscribes to 4 golden pillars of journalism, namely: accuracy of news, identifying source, style/structure, and grammar/spelling.
Q-5: How is the interview conducted?
The interview is an important section of chronicle. The idea was started when so many of our distinguished alumni could not get enough media coverage, which they deserved. Because of open format, articles in chronicle gets prominent place in Google search for names/key words. The interview is also meant to inspire our students. It is chronicle’s wish that our students should not only shine in engineering field, but also in management, business, finance, arts, social service, political leadership, etc.
Chronicle conducts 1-2 interviews per month. First the list of possible candidates are selected and approached. If the person agrees, he is provided with a questionnaire to reply. The questionnaire contains about 6-10 questions with hint answers and type of reply expected. This makes the task of interviewing easier. The interview is conducted mostly by email exchange and sometimes over phone. After receiving the reply, a draft is prepared and sent to the person for final approval. We have found that alumni respond well and with open heart for their college magazine than in a public news media.
Q-6: How the chronicle compares with national magazines?
While we cannot compare ourselves with mainstream national or regional news media, we are in a different category. Our aim is to act as a platform for information exchange for our limited community; hence the articles are of that specific interest. Because of this some of the news about our college and about engineering education in India published by us, may not be found in other news media.
However, because of our open format (no login needed), our news are prominently displayed during Google search. Each year, our alumni rank swells by few hundreds, and we believe that when that number reaches a critical mass (say, about 20,000) from the current 6,000, then we shall have the same exposure as any mainstream media.
Q-7: What are the chronicle’s future plans?
The chronicle is among very few monthly news magazines published by alumni of colleges in India. However, we want to take it to next level, by introducing new sections, expanding our coverage, etc. It is our desire to bring it to the level of international alumni magazines such as, Harvard Crimson (http://www.thecrimson.com/) published by students/alumni of Harvard University and Yale Alumni Magazine (http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/index.html) published by students/alumni of Yale University.
It is our wish that we shall continue publishing the chronicle as long as our institute exists. The chronicle, as its name states, will faithfully record all the events around us for the use of future generations.
Apart from itbhuglobal.org, the chronicle plan to publish a copy of its future issues on other web sites.
Q-8: What are the concerns for chronicle?
The chronicle needs more help to achieve its goal. For example, it needs more volunteers to handle increased load of articles, to collect and edit more news, to conduct interviews, etc.
We also need more flow of information from faculty and institute. We need more reporters who can cover events, cultural programs, seminars, etc. and provide us with details.
Q-9: How can I contribute for chronicle?
Any kind of help from anyone will be helpful to us. We need people to send us news about their departments, batches, hostels, branches, etc. Please email to us at chronicle [AT] ithbu.org. Please respond by 15th of a month (but not later than 20th) for news/articles to be included for the issue of that month.
The chronicle team is here to serve you and the magazine belongs to the entire IT-BHU community. We welcome any comments/criticism to improve our publication.
Q-10: Who are the volunteers working for the chronicle team?
The following are the volunteers for chronicle team:
- Ankit Khanna (Applied Physics 2010)
- Varun Murali (Mechanical 2008)
- Sai Santosh (Chemical 2008)
- Vikalp Agarwal (Civil 2008)
- Arun Kumar Mishra (Electronics 2007)
- Pushpendra Kumar (Mechanical 2007)
- Sourabh Tripathi (Ceramics 2006)
- Arun Tangri (CSE 2006)
- Rajat Harlalka (Electrical 2005)
- Keerty Nath (CSE 2004)
- Animesh Pathak (CSE 2003)
- Anshuman Singh (Electrical 1998)
- Yogesh Upadhyaya (Chemical 1977)