In 2007, colleges were given an opportunity to join Papyrus, a pioneering initiative by Deccan Chronicle and NetLink Technologies Limited to enable schools and colleges to create and publish their own online newspapers. Around the same time, the then School of Journalism and Mass Communication, under Dr. Venkat Pulapaka was thinking about starting a college newspaper along the similar lines. That
is when a group of engineering students came together to pamper their inherent, and shared, passion for writing. Interestingly, the Faculty of the then School of Journalism and Mass Communication had no doubts about their potential. They trained them rigorously for three months - headers and captions, colons and semicolons, editing and proofreading - nothing was left untouched. It was decided upon that any interested student can join the team. A lot of students approached and each meeting brought new faces and obliterated the old ones, and after about a dozen meetings and workshops conducted tirelessly by the Dept. of Journalism and Mass Comm., the team finally had 11 members. That meeting, rewarding them for their hard work, SRM University asked the team to name the much awaited University newspaper. Keeping in mind the essence of the newspaper, the students finally came up with the name ‘Spectrum’. The first issue of Spectrum was published in December, 2007 with a circulation of 10,000 copies. Six years on, with the present readership of approximately 90,000, Spectrum definitely has come a long way. There were glitches and hurdles along Spectrum’s way, just as any new start-up might face, but the team of students led by the Dr. Venkat Pulapaka stuck together through all of that. Meetings started with trying to figure out how many pages could be published, what the columns would be, what will be the writing style, page design and photography and ended in disagreements. Eventually, it was left to ten 2nd years to carry on Spectrum, with Moen Sen as its first Editor. Since the team had seen how favorable it is to the work and to the team to have the right team spirit, the team decided to recruit new students and planned the recruitment process. In this process, Dr. Venkat Pulapaka had to leave the University due to some personal reasons and from then on, Dr. Sridhar Krishnaswami has taken over the reins of Spectrum. Spectrum has had the most diverse team working for it. The core Engineering team is guided by the Dr. Sridhar Krishnaswami, Dean, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication and all the Faculty of the Department. The students of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication are regular reporters too. The group functions like any organization, striving to do well and to meet deadlines every month, a fresh bout of enthusiasm for every release. Copies of Spectrum, now the pulse of SRM, reach out to the staff and students in five campuses, viz. Kattankulathur, Ramapuram, Vadapalani, Trichy and Modinagar. Articles and reports in Spectrum cover a wide range of topics including success stories of staff and students, academic developments, infrastructure development, entertainment, conferences, workshops, awards, events, interviews, sports and research. Team Spectrum meets every week to indulge in brainstorming sessions and to identify what’s new in this vibrant campus of ours. We discuss and allocate work, deadlines are set, and work begins. This is a broad overview of how we work, accompanied by a lot of fun. This is consistent organizational working at its best. Spectrum has been the best thing to happen in college, and goes on to define college life for all of us, the team members of Team Spectrum. Dedicatedly working for something and seeing the results being acknowledged and admired by a University has its own incomparable charm, but two things that drive us more than anything else are our passion to write, and the pleasure of working with one another. So, that is all about Spectrum and its history and stay tuned to this page for further updates.
