https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/05/18/star-reporter-with-no-income-what-pawan-jaiswals-death-tells-us-about-the-state-of-rural-reporters ‘Star reporter with no income’: What Pawan Jaiswal’s death tells us about the state of rural reporters yTanishka Sodhi18 May, 2022
Journalism doesn’t pay their bills, they have little or no institutional support and rely on commissions from ‘finding ads’ for papers.
The death of a journalist is barely a blip in the news cycle. Over 600 journalists have died of Covid in the last two years, and thousands more die every year of other causes.
But journalists like Pawan form the backbone of journalism, gathering news for big studios and publications in metropolitan cities. They receive little credit or money, their roles reduced to terms like “stringers” – an army of underpaid, and even unpaid, news gatherers who are vital to the news business.
Blackmailer and extortionist: The sordid side of being a stringer in India https://www.newslaundry.com/2020/02/14/blackmailer-and-extortionist-the-sordid-side-of-being-a-stringer-in-india
Often poorly paid or forced to get ad revenue for their media houses, some stringers resort to unethical, even criminal, ways to make money.
By Manish Chandra Mishra 14 Feb, 2020 It’s a sordid story often repeated. Neeraj Soni was formerly the bureau chief of a daily based in Madhya Pradesh. He claimed the newspaper’s management would routinely set his editorial team targets to bring in advertising revenue. In turn, Soni said, he would ask his stringers to get “incriminating stories” about local businessmen or government servants, then “blackmail” them into buying ads in the newspaper in return for not running the stories. If the money exceeded the target, it would be distributed among the stringers since the company had no budget to pay them.
Stringers are expected to pay deposits for the mic ID, and this amount varies between cities and channels. A reputed TV channel can charge up to Rs 1 lakh in big cities, and marginally less in smaller towns. A block-level stringer has to pay around Rs 10,000 for a mic ID, the amount goes up to Rs 25,000 for a district-level stringer.
While TV channels mark this deposit as “security money”, it is non-refundable.