What makes a free-sheeter tick: Ask any good physician and he (or, as per the recent trend in MBBS graduation, she) will tell you that one's circulation must be good. Whether it is blood, air or free-sheeter, your health depends on its 'circulation'. There is no other way. A well produced free-sheeter is easier to circulate because it is free. Once it has attracted the attention and reached the hands of a potential reader, it will be glanced through even if it is not read in detail. That is a wonderful way to deliver a well-designed advertisement to a potential buyer of any goods or services. It makes more sense for a local shopkeeper or institution to advertise in a 'local' free-sheeter than a state-wide newspaper with ten times bigger circulation (and, subsequently, far higher advertising rates). Most free-sheeters have a circulation of 3,000 to 5,000 copies, a figure which ranks better than some mainstream newspapers in Goa. A free-sheeter is a better vehicle, less expensive and less bothersome to handle than a 'flier' inserted in a newspaper for local distribution. A flier is often discarded unread. Not so with a free-sheeter. It pays to advertise in a free-sheeter. The advertisements pay to keep the free-sheeter alive and free. Miguel Braganza Consultant Editor & Horticulturist, Mapusa Goa. Chapter 15: Journalism in Goa: An outsider looks in Shiv KumarShiv Kumar is a Mumbai-based journalist who occasionally para-drops into Goa for some sun, sea and opportunities to tilt at a few windmills there. A journalist, a freelance and subsequently as a full-timer since 1992, Shiv Kumar was the Goa correspondent of The Indian Express from 1998 to 2000. After moving back to Mumbai, he is with the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS). Today, happily there is a vast talent pool of journalists among the Goan Diaspora that is making its mark in news media across the world. The movement of journalists from Goa to newsrooms across the globe is perennial. The Middle East and the West are popular destinations but then so is Mumbai: a popular stepping stone to this peripatetic breed. Reporters, deskies, the butterflies flitting through the features pages... one can count first generation migrant Goans everywhere. As a rookie reporter in Mumbai in the 1990s, lesson one was about Goan journos fresh off the boat (the Bombay-Goa steamer was a recent memory then) gladly beginning at the bottom despite having done duty in one of Goa's three English-language newspapers. Editors marveled at the `material' coming out of Goa with well-rounded exposure in a city where people are quickly slotted into different 'beats'. At first, one wondered why someone with several years' experience in the profession was willing to take the bullshit dished out by preppies all for a measly six grand gross monthly. And just when we got used to seeing their bylines, off to the Gulf the Goenkars went.