Nalaka Swarnathilake

The premier news bulletin of Swarnavahini channel, 'Live @ 8' marked its 8th anniversary last week.Started on July 7, 2000 the programme over the years has undergone many improvisations in its quality, content and presentation for the better. This has been proved with its ranking number 1 news bulletin by Lanka Marketing Research Board (LMRB) rating throughout the last ten months. At an event organized by the EAP Networks at Sapphire Hotel last week, news reporters, provincial correspondents and other artistes behind the success of the news programme were felicitated. The EAP Group also felicitated ten of their viewers who have provided news captured with the camera in their cellular phones.

Nalaka Swarnathilake, the Chief News Editor of Swarnavahini, the live wire behind 'Live @ 8' speaking to the TV Times said that the success of the programme was his team of 40 which included reporters, editors, technical artistes and provincial correspondents who work dedicatedly to make a successful news bulletin at the end of the day.

"Starting from 8 am we prepare ourselves to present a successful, informative and interesting programme and this includes collecting news from our provincial correspondents, on the spot news reports from staff reporters and also the latest addition, collecting news from our viewers who send news captured with their phone cameras," young Nalaka who joined the news group in 2001 as a news editor said. Nalaka was appointed to the top post of Chief News Editor last October and since then many a novel feature has been added to the news segment.

Queried about the news reading which is different to traditional news presentation, Nalaka says "Some of our media institutions have stereotyped the news presentation in which the news presenters sit straight in a rigid posture looking straight the camera. But we don't see this in BBC or CNN and there the news presenters are more relaxed. So breaking away from this convention we allowed the news presenter to be more relaxed and also added a prologue to the ordinary news item,".

The Chief News Editor also noted that the division of the news bulletin in two parts and the rhyming titles like 'Rata Gena Ata', 'Attata Kiyanna', 'Rata Hadana Thena' and 'Kelibimen Atata' given to them have attracted viewers.

According to Nalaka the motto of his team is to try to uncover things that are hidden and give priority to the issues that are closely associated with people.

"Our main aim is to report news for the people and we work with this objective in mind," the Chief News Editor said.