Television news anchoring has become a sought after career in India particularly after the flood of news channel launches in the past decade that also threw up multiple job opportunities for passionate youths.

While much has been written about journalism in India there has been a crying need to have a book on news anchoring that would not just help media students to understand anchoring but also explain what it takes to build a successfulcareer out of it.

To fill in this need gap, NDTV India news anchor Richa Jain Kalra has penned down a book titled ?The ABC of News Anchoring: A Guide for Aspiring Anchors? that would go a long way to help journalism students gain useful insight on what actually it takes to become a successful news anchor.

The book published by Pearson has a foreword written by NDTV chairman Prannoy Roy. The 130-page book spanning 30 chapters has been divided into four parts. It focuses on various aspects right from basics of anchoring to more nuanced subjects like secrets of being a good anchor.

The book begins with the writer breaking several myths that people have about anchoring and the biggest one of them all is that news anchoring is equivalent to news reading. According to the writer, to become a good anchor it?s paramount to have on-field experience as a reporter.

It then goes on to explain the qualities that an anchor should have while also outlining challenges that come with a career in anchoring. The writer believes having knowledge of current affairs, command over language, impressive personality, and a good voice among others are key to becoming a successful anchor.

In the chapter ?An Anchors Role?, the writer elucidates the entire news process starting with how reporters add flesh to raw news, which finally goes on-air after fine tuning information to a proper script.

The writer also sheds light on the ?breaking news? phenomenon at length in the same chapter with couple of good examples one being the example of former Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy?s death when anchors had a tough time managing the story due to lack of authentic information.

She also explains how anchors in a TRP-driven market need to create engagement with viewers by making even mundane news bulletins interesting by putting emotions in words. There are other challenges that anchors have to confront like erratic job timings, lack of holidays and heavy work load.

MUMBAI: News media company NDTV and real estate company Nirmal Lifestyle have returned with the second season of Marks for Sports campaign, which aims to create awareness about the importance of sports in a child?s life.

To give the campaign a boost, the parties have announced a Fittest City contest involving six cities namely Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Bangalore and Hyderabad. The aim is to see which city has the maximum number of people to cross the fitness threshold.

Nirmal Lifestyle chairman & MD Dharmesh Jain said that the aim of the contest is to spread the fitness message. The contest has various parameters like physical camps, surveys on health habits, government statistics and testing the fitness level of children.

?Our aim is to change the way India thinks about fitness. We already have tie ups for homes with companies like Discovery, US Open. But we wanted to extend our association with sport to beyond complexes. Therefore we entered into a 10 year agreement with NDTV for Marks for Sports," Jain said.

The contest will see each city having its own ambassador from the world?s of sport and Bollywood. Bipasha Basu is the city ambassador for Mumbai, Virendra Sehwag for Delhi while Ranbir Kapoor continues to be the national brand ambassador for the Marks For Sports compaign.

Jain said that the company sought the expertise of IAAF to find out why India wasn?t faring better at the Olympics.

Research showed that children in foreign countries like US start taking sports seriously between the ages of 12-15 while in India, children stop taking part in sports once they reach that age.

"Therefore it was important to introduce sports in a school?s curriculum. Our aim is to make the fittest city contest an annual feature," Jain contended.

NDTV will be supporting the initiative through televised debates. Besides, Nirmal will also organise sports events and an online campaign to create awareness about the contest.