For some reason, the reporting desk was given the lowest priority. I had to handle the reporting-desk single handedly for months together. Besides, also perceptible was the same instability at the top during those couple of years, around the mid-nineties. We saw as many as four to five mainly outstation deputy editors come and go. Hardly anybody could withstand the internal politics and rivalry. We were grappling in darkness in the absence of the required guidance. There wasn't any motivating force. Meanwhile, Julian also made her foray into reporting after working in the magazine section for couple of years. The post of Chief Reporter was vacant for quite sometime following the resignation of Julio Da Silva. His perceived closeness with BJP had probably started long before he joined BJP, to contest Cuncolim constituency on that party's ticket in the 1998 Goa assembly elections. But ambition cost him both a career and a (political) seat. Meanwhile, Ashley do Rosario rejoined the Herald after a stint with The Navhind Times ended. After keeping him without designation for awhile, Ashley was finally given the post of Deputy Chief Reporter. To some of us, this trend -- of using designations as carrots or baits, and apparently handed out in a manner far from fair -- was demoralising, specially since we had run the show when nobody was around. Personally, one was never comfortable with mainstream reporting. My biggest 'weakness' was politics, or rather, a healthy skepticism about it. I always hated politics, more so the superficial level at which it gets reported in newspapers. Unfortunately, politics has long been the mainstay for our newspapers. This lopsided stress on politics in the media, especially in the Goan media, has not only undermined other genuine and more critical issues, but also given undue encouragement to petty politics and crooks. One always wanted to focus on the more real issues of the people. But routine stories prevented devoting time to such a venture. Special stories of such a nature would usually imply going out of Panaji to the villages. Pressure of covering routine events prevented me to leave Panaji to chase these stories. Instead we had to cover some insignificant press conference of politician X or Y, or somebody else.