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Some long-term staff members share their thoughts...
Little did Shakun Mohnani knew that the job she took 23 years ago to kill time would eventually develop into one of the most important roles in Gulf News.
Mohnani arrived in Dubai in February 1985 when she was 25 years old. After six months, she decided to apply for a job through a recruitment agency and eventually landed a position in Gulf News in the classifieds department.
"They first offered me a half-day job but I was not interested in that because I wanted to kill time. This was in December 1985, when the classifieds section was relaunched," she says. Eventually she was offered a full-time job to sell advertisements.
Mohnani and her colleagues soon had to fend for themselves when their manager left the company after 15 days. "It was like starting our own business, and it was all trial and error. It was not easy because the competition was already very well established, and pushing for sales was difficult because Dubai was not as cosmopolitan as it is today."
A few months later Gulf News head office moved out of Airport Road and relocated to Shaikh Zayed Road, which at the time was considered to be far away as Dubai ended at the Trade Centre. "We moved to the new building in February 1986, which had sand all around it. Coming from the hustle and bustle of Bombay and Hong Kong, the thought of commuting to an office on Abu Dhabi Road where there were no street lights or buildings was a bit scary. What was even scarier was the U-turn at the Metropolitan Hotel. However the new office was extremely impressive."
Acquiring advertisements was starting to become an easier task as the newspaper was building a strong reputation and so the classifieds automatically grew with it. The department gradually fell into place when a third manager, Anne Miller, joined and set systems in place for four years. "We tried many ideas and once tried selling sizes and shapes of various kinds to create the shape of a Christmas tree. It was a nightmare trying to get the advertisements printed out," she says.
"Clients did not have fax machines and would drop by with handwritten advertisements and then have a cup of coffee. The relationships with colleagues and clients used to be friendlier, and it was like a big family."
The classifieds section at Gulf News has expanded and reinvented itself over the years, as it first started out with eight pages in the tabloid-format. On December 15, 1990, classifieds finally became a separate supplement to the newspaper.
"Even though there was a lot of tension because of the war in Kuwait, the property market, cars and amount of job vacancies were picking up. A few years later, we moved out the job advertisements and made the Appointment section. Now there's no looking back," says Mohnani, who is currently Group Advertisement Manager.
She says she could never get used to the three-hour siesta where staff would leave work every day from 1-4pm to have lunch at home and take a nap. "We used to have many office parties where we would celebrate Christmas and Diwali. We still do it but now we are more deadline-driven, and it is not as laidback as it used to be. We used to try to kill time but now we have more responsibilities."
As new technology was incorporated, it gave Mohnani and her colleagues more time to sell. "Dubai was growing at a remarkable rate and we grew along with that, which eventually paved the way for the GNAds4U," she says.
Previously, there were several limitations as the pages were only printed in black and white but that has grown to 72 pages of colour. In addition to the six sections published every day, with more than 400 pages, GNAds4U has also contributed to the newspaper's growth.
GNAds4U is the online search engine where readers can search for advertisements of their choice by a click of a mouse. The site receives an average of 30,000 visitors per day who view approximately 890,000 pages. In June 2008 there were 26.6 million page views.
"I feel classifieds has been handled like a family business and not like a proper job. We have the freedom in work-related issues so we're free to do what's best for the company. Behind the success of this range of classifieds products is an efficient, committed, positive and a very hardworking team."
Pazhaniappan Kalathilparambil (Pazhani), 52, a senior printer, is one of the people who has played an active role in the daily production of Gulf News almost from the start. He does not leave work until the newspaper and all its supplements have been printed, bundled up and are ready to be distributed across the nation and beyond.
Pazhani joined Gulf News on June 1, 1980, and has been working in the production and printing department for 28 years.
"One of my teachers from college worked at Gulf News in the accounts department. I was living in Kerala at the time and one day he rang me up and said there was a job opening as a helper in the production department. I have been working with the newspaper ever since," he says.
He shared an apartment with another family in Jumeirah and when he got married in 1982, he managed to bring his family to Dubai five years later. "As a bachelor I would spend my free time watching television and reading books because I was a member of the library at the British Council."
Back then the newspaper was new and its circulation was still growing. "We had only one shift a night that would work on the 16 pages of Gulf News. Now we have grown and have three shifts. I have seen the paper develop over the years and remember how things changed," says Pazhani.
One of his daily tasks as a helper was preparing the printing press and starting it up so it would be ready for production. He has since been promoted to senior printer and Pazhani's duty now includes coordinating and working with people from other departments to make sure it starts on time.
"During the earlier days, we would get to work at 8pm and not leave until 3.30 in the morning. But now we use the latest technology and printing is faster, even though there are many supplements," he says. These days the only reason production will ever start late is if the plates (used to transfer an inked image onto newsprint) are late or if there's a problem with the machine, Pazhani explains.
There were only five people working in the department when Pazhani first joined. "During the early days it was like a family and all the departments were very close, but now that feeling has gone since the newspaper has got bigger," he says, adding that today there are more than 35 people from diverse nationalities in his department.
Over the years he has seen the end of many printing presses. The most memorable one was the manually operated Hunter machine. In the early 1990s Gulf News purchased the Albert Frankenthal machine which made the job a lot easier as it was faster, and would automatically count the number of newspapers published.
The machine the company now uses is fully computerised, the right commands have already been entered. The machine prints out the correct font and colours, and cuts the pages according to specifications. "Technology has certainly changed my job, as well as other aspects of my life. When I first arrived here, I never made frequent phone calls home as it was expensive. I would only make calls to Kerala in case of an emergency because it used to cost Dh7.50 a minute. I wrote letters instead. But nowadays I can call my family twice a day."
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