In early 2000s, I was working in Public Relations Department of Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) of Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL). One of the roles I had was to supervise writing of daily news, which was then video recorded and edited in our in-house studio (RSTV) for daily telecast to people living in Rourkela through linkage with a satellite tv company. It was translated and produced in Hindi and Oriya (Local language) also, apart from English. The content of news was primarily based on events and achievements of Steel Plant & Steel Township. One or the other PR team members used to go to these events for news, photo and video coverage. Each day, 3-4 news items were prepared.
So that is the background for you. The tricky part was making news for Sundays. Since each of us wanted to enjoy our weekly off, we used to prepare 3-4 news items for Sunday news in advance on Friday and Saturday. But that was very difficult because number of events was limited. As the weekends approached, we used to scramble for news stories and Saturday used to be very hectic and nerve-racking.
I came up with an idea of having a Weekly Roundup of News, instead of daily news on Sunday. That way, we would still have to write, translate etc. but the hassle of finding new stories for Sunday every week would be gone. I was very excited and shared the idea with my boss. He rejected it outright. I was crestfallen but boss is boss.
I sulked and sulked for a few days. Then after a few days, as the weekend approached, I decided to put in an extra effort to try to sell my idea once again. I collected news items from Monday to Friday, and wrote a weekly roundup of news to put down in writing what I had in mind. I took it to boss and explained the concept once again to him, but this time with a sample of the weekly news roundup ready. He read it and understood my idea. He allowed me to go ahead and since then we had a Sunday weekly round up, instead of Sunday daily news.
That is what I meant when I said, go the extra mile to sell your idea.
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