It must be admitted that over the years, journalism has been turned into a prestigious and lucrative part-time option for many of the rural correspondents. A few years ago, a former editor mentioned to me that he was on a trip to a remote village in Goa, when he decided to attend a function in the locality. The place was packed to capacity and he was forced to stand behind occupied chairs. To his surprise, the chief guest happened to be the local correspondent of his own newspaper! This enthusiasm towards 'extra-curricular' activities sometimes translates into political affiliation. In a recent event which established the BJP-journo nexus in Sanguem, a correspondent with a Marathi newspaper and member of the Sanguem Patrakar Sangh was been unanimously elected president of the Sanguem Unit of the BJP. Similarly, the president of the Sanguem Patrakar Sangh and a correspondent with an English-language newspaper, was appointed the BJP booth president of Tarimol-Sanguem. In most cases, reports sent by correspondents to the news desk, in the past, specially when there was no one in particular to look after this responsibility, simply lacked form and content. Illegible words either scribbled on scraps of paper or sent as distorted faxed messages were among the most popular methods deployed to communicate their reports. In some cases, only a skilled pharmacist could decipher the words used by some correspondents. Under such conditions, the sub-editor assigned to such reports had the arduous task of converting them into decent stories. Quite often, the easiest way out would be to forward the raw report to the dust bin. A sub-editor flooded with such reports and working under pressure would invariably exercise this option with considerable frequency. Then in June 1998, it was my turn to handle the correspondent network under the fancy and wordy designation of "Chief of News Bureau". In reality, I had to play God in the laboratory. This meant subjecting numerous correspondent reports to various quality control tests each day and, in some cases, creating sense from nonsense, before they were ready to be read by thousands of readers in and around Goa. Under such circumstances, I had anticipated that my association with correspondents would not to last long, that is, if I wanted to maintain my sanity in the profession. But this was not meant to be. The days turned to weeks, months and eventually years. And, before I knew it, my interaction with rural correspondents went on to complete half a decade. I have since handled thousands of reports either sent to me through post, fax, emails or even dictated over the phone. In most cases, the reports may have initially appeared trivial or insignificant, but a little refinement and some cut-paste commands have succeeded in giving a new look to the report. And with encouraging results.