This week in Behind the Byline... a series on journalism in Goa

[Frederick Noronha]

In journalism, we are taught that 'the journalist is not the story'. Nonetheless, as I look back, in the evening of my career (even though one has no plans to retire, health permitting), after quite some initial reluctance I pushed myself into sharing some thoughts and experiences with my colleagues and others this weekend. Have thoroughly enjoyed my career, and the opportunities it gave me to be relevant to people I didn't even know... At the same time, I understand my own many failings and the limitations of the profession too. The function is open to all. If you have the time and inclination, do come. And if you can't, I'll almost certainly have a recording somewhere out there in cyberspace for you....

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Veteran journalist Frederick Noronha to feature in GUJ’s ‘Behind The Byline’ series

Veteran journalist Frederick Noronha will be celebrated in ‘Behind The Byline’, know your GUJ member series, on Friday, July 18.

Noronha will be in conversation with Gerard de Souza (Goa Correspondent, The Hindustan Times and former general secretary,  Goa Union of Journalists) at the GUJ hall, Shram Shakti Bhavan, Patto, Panaji, 4pm.

At the age of 19, Noronha started his journalism stint in 1983 as a trainee at Herald, when it was just shifting over to being an English-language newspaper. He resigned from Herald as Chief Sub Editor in 1987 and later worked with Deccan Herald till 1994.

He also worked with India-Abroad/Indo-Asian News Service in 1994.

Noronha quit all his full-time jobs as a working journalist by choice and took up serious freelancing. As a columnist for The Navhind Times and The Goan, he has expressed his views on varied subjects extensively.

Known as Rico among his friends and FN in some online circles, Noronha has been in the field long enough to have filed copy via telex and fax, India Post and modem, and stuck around through fibre and social media storms. He has always sidestepped the full-time newsroom in favour of stubborn freelancing, carving out a niche for himself covering the under-reported, the slow-moving, and the sometimes unfashionable stories others passed over: books, software, publishing, and people on the periphery.

A co-founder of BytesForAll, an early South Asian network on ICT for development, Noronha has also been a long-time advocate of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS), seeing its political and ethical stakes beyond tech. He’s archived vast stretches of India’s digital public discourse—especially through mailing lists and forums—and helped localise and contextualise tech activism in Goa and India.

In 2007, Noronha launched Goa 1556, a publishing house named after the year the printing press arrived in Goa before anywhere else in Asia. Since then, he’s edited, published, and distributed over 180 titles, most of them highly local, many of them filling gaps the mainstream overlooked.

Noronha is also one of the most persistent digital facilitators around, moderating Goanet for more than 25 years, maintaining a sprawling ecology of mailing lists and now WhatsApp groups that link journalists, techies, diaspora networks, writers, and public historians. He’s an informal archivist of Goa’s changing cultural, political, and publishing landscape.

Noronha’s academic background includes a PhD on 20th-century publishing in Goa (Goa University, 2020), an MA in English Literature (University of Bombay, 1987), and journalism diplomas from Sweden and Germany (West Berlin).

‘Behind The Byline’, know your GUJ member is a monthly series initiated by the Goa Union of Journalists, where a senior GUJ member of repute is introduced to its members and the general public.

Goa Union of Journalists

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PS: A request -- no congratulatory or other messages over this, please. Not accomplishing anything new here. I also do not believe in the label of "senior" before "journalist'.  It's not a celebration. Rather, a looking-back at the last four decades, hopefully with some bluntness... --FN