Notes

We started off by asking Ave Cleto Afonso about how the media was when he started -- with the Portuguese newspaper 'A Vida' in 1964. But he started giving an update of the media just before that too.

Till 1961, the newspapers were censored. After that, the first newspapers without censorship were an "altogether different experience". In 1961, all the major papers were in Portuguese. Three in Panjim -- Heraldo, O Herald (today's
English-language Herald) and the eveninger Diario de Noite. In Margao, A Vida and Diario de Goa.

At that time, the Marathi press didn't have any daily publication. This situation continued for awhile after 1961. Heraldo closed

Heraldo closed down immediately, after its editor had some differences with the new administration. O Heraldo continued, Diario de Noite continued for a couple of years more, A Vida continued till May 1967 -- after the Opinion Poll.

In this discussion:

* The nature of the Portuguese papers in Goa.
* How did low literacy and censorship affect the Goa Press.
* The role played by determined, individual journalists.
* Why censorship could not break the independent journalist.
* Caste and class in the Goan media.
* The pressures on Portuguese papers in Liberated Goa.
* The politics of dissent in Salazar's Goa, and its impact.

"The Portuguese newspapers (after Liberation) and also those working in those papers had the handicap of having to prove their nationalistic credentials almost at every point of time," says Afonso, one of the "youngsters" in the media in the Goa of the 1960s.

But some fell to the wayside, simply because they couldn't keep up with the times, feels this journalist from the sixties-turned-academic who taught Philosophy at Dhempe College in Miramar since the 1970s till some time back.

A number of journalists from the 1960s are also remembered.