– P Purnachandar
If not for us, the district special pages from the newspaper would disappear.
(Ravi, a stringer from Nizamabad, in an interview)
Introduction
Correspondents and reporters are the regular employees of the media house who work towards collecting information, making it into a story and publishing it as news. They are very few in number, have an identity within the organization and the news they report is given importance. Reporters and correspondents make sure that the news reaches the media houses. Reporters, depending on the situation, send different kinds of news from different localities to the media house. Correspondents work with a set location and agenda regarding a particular story.
There is a third kind of newsman, the stringer who is unlike reporters and correspondents. He works without any regularized salary and is paid a small remuneration when the news collected is published, according to the length of the column in centimeters. This is called a ‘line account’. Stringers are important newsmen who send news to the media from the specific localities they are assigned to. The print media house recruits them under a news agency. They don’t have recognition from the organization. Often, the news they collect is given no importance.
The system of stringers was started after the 1980s. This was when district editions began to be published to give importance to local news. Stringers as local operators provide district news without difficulty.
Qualifications
The more prominent newspapers explicitly require that stringers should at least be qualified as graduates. What is implicit is that they should have a two wheeler, camera, cell phone, laptop with internet, a pen drive and CD writer. Even through the organization doesn’t demand all this, these ‘additional qualifications’ are necessary for the job. They should also be able set up an office in their locality. Stringers are expected to adhere to the policy of the organization. They should be able to go to the location of the incident at any time. The news writing should include all the relevant information.
In a small newspaper organization, 10th standard/intermediate passed, or degree pass or fail candidates are also recruited. However, here too, it is essential for the person to have a camera, a two wheeler and a cell phone. In these organizations too stringers need to abide by and behave as per the organizational policy. Here, along with collection of news, the ability to get advertisements is an added requirement.
People enter this profession because of unemployment, poor educational qualification and also because they are unable to pursue higher studies. Alongside these reasons, some people also join as stringers because they think that being a journalist is the right thing to do in order to bring their local social issues into public light, to ignite the people’s enthusiasm about their issues and to bring them to the notice of local officials and public representatives.
Importance to society
Because he is a local person a stringer establishes contacts with lot of local people. He is considered as an important person in that place. He becomes familiar with the local politicians, officials, and social activists and other people of a public profile. He is well versed with the key issues of his locality and the social, economic and political problems in it. He is also aware of illicit activities in the locality and knows who are the people involved in these activities.
The stringer writes in a simple way and also highlights the local news. He writes about almost all local issues and news. These would be about drinking water problems, roads, drainage, streetlights, government welfare schemes, development activities, crimes related news and so on. The district newspaper special pages are generally filled with these news reports.
Some sections of the people also find the stringer useful in seeking information about their personal problems such as those related to ration cards, to pensions for old age, handicaps, and to widows. He often helps people around him. By helping one or another person almost every day he gradually evolves to be a focal point in the community.
Informal worker
Reporters often write our stories in their own name, because of which we lose credit for our work and also are not paid the line account.
(Raju, a stringer from Hyderabad in an interview)
In prominent print media organizations stringers have a duty to collect news and write at least 3 – 4 stories a week. As part of the job they also do surveys to find out the rate of success of government welfare programs and write stories based on them, they also do case studies on individuals, organizations and government schemes. Based on this they write a story about the reasons why government schemes are failing. These primary news papers have special agents (other than stringers) for ads and circulation related work.
The conditions are different in smaller news houses. People who are not aware about the working conditions of small print media organizations usually think that the stringers do only the work of “collecting news”. In a majority the small print media houses they do a variety of tasks such as,
- Collecting news and features, writing stories
- Bringing in advertisements
- Getting individuals subscribers to the paper
- Collecting bills
- Surveys
- Case studies
- Sending news to the TV news channel of the concerned newspaper.
All this is the ‘informal work’ stringers do for small time news organizations that employ them.
In the smaller print media, stringers have a target of 1 – 2 lakh rupees advertisement revenue per year. Beside this there are also several special targets during Dassera, Diwali, the New Year and of course during the elections.
To reach this target the stringer follows a clever strategy. He writes stories about important leaders, their meetings and so on, thus establishing a relation between the paper and the leader. This also results in followers of that leader getting in touch with the paper. The stringer thus connects the party, its leader and party members to the paper. Thus, he attracts advertisement revenue from the party by writing stories and news articles about it and its special events. However, because he is dependent on advertisement revenue, he sends only news articles of this ‘informative’ positive kind. He does not write any negative or critical news about these parties because of the loss of this revenue stream.
Stringers rely on important local functionaries and individuals like sarpanchs, corporators, contractors, government employees and so on. They also make the party leaders instruct party workers to subscribe to the paper. By using such strategies they raise the circulation each year by around 20 to 200 subscriptions.
In spite of the fact that stringers do so much work for the organizations, they are considered as part time workers, whose names do not appear on the organization’s formal employee rolls – they are in short, informal labour.
There are part time correspondents even in All India Radio and Doordarshan. Even people who collect news information from entire districts are considered part time correspondents by Government. The only reason for which the private media organizations call such employees as part timers is to deny them the legal right of a full-time employee.
(Prabanjan Yadav, Asst Professor Journalism and Mass Communication,
Telangana University, Nizamabad)
The irony is that the news in district pages increases due to stringers, more people subscribe, circulation and advertisement revenues increase, the media house flourishes and salaries are increased – all this because of the stringers, and yet the stringers don’t reap any of this benefit.
If stringers weren’t there the news network would collapse.
(Prof Rajaram, HoD Dept of Journalism,
Telangana University, Nizamabad)
Relationship with newspaper
Print media organizations majorly have two different kinds of employees.
One, the working journalist: anybody from an editor to part time news correspondents.
Two, non-journalist newspaper employees: People who work in advertisements, circulation, accounts, printing and marketing.
By collecting news for the organization and by working on ad collection, circulation and so on, as stringer works both as a working journalist and non- journalist employee. However, the media organization treats them as employees of a ‘news agency’, thus never letting them become part of the media organization.
The News network organizations that contribute news to the media organizations are called ‘news agencies’. Almost every media organization has its own news agency. The employers show the stringer as someone related to the news agency and not to their own media organization. They are not even provided with any appointment letter when they join the organization. By doing this the organizations take all possible measures to ensure that stringers cannot act legally in any way.
(Narendar Reddy,
Journalist Union leader, Hyderabad)
One of the major problems that stringers face is job insecurity. The state of affairs is so bad that the organization can sack stingers with a single phone call. As one stringer puts it, “Our job is like a nose that can fall off any time because of a sneeze”.
The second major problem is of not having a fixed salary. Some newspapers pay on the basis of a line account and some simply don’t pay. However, no newspaper organization pays as per the line account according to legal requirements. All the newspaper paper organizations exploit stringers.
It is because of these problems that the journalist unions have protested against the exploitative acts of media organizations heads. In response to this, the government has established wage boards since Independence. The GO accepting and notifying the J.R. Majithia Wage Board Recommendations (2011) explicitly states that all working journalists should be eligible for variable pay, and categorized by default under the lowest group (6) of the working journalists.1
As per the law the authority of deciding salaries of the journalist and the non-journalist employee is vested with the Wage Board appointed by the central government. Central Government notifies the recommendations of the wage board. It is the responsibility of the state governments’ labor commissions to make the notified wages implemented. To monitor this, the state government has established a three party committee consisting government officials, print media organization heads and journalists.
On the field
Stringers face a great deal of difficulty working in the field. They need to travel to location whether the weather is harsh and sunny or raining heavily. During natural calamities, and communal riots, stringers need to go out to collect news in spite of all difficulty. Though there are accredited journalist passes which can be used for bus and rail travel, stringers hardly get to use them because of the unavailability of buses on time. Thus they invariably use their two wheelers at their own expense.
A day before or on the early morning of a given day a stringer tries to gather all the information regarding events and meetings in his locality through calls to officials, locals and other stringers. Every day the stringer goes through all the local newspapers including the newspaper he is working for and checks his news articles to see if he made any mistakes.
We witness the result (printed item) of yesterday’s hard work (news reporting) today.
(Santosh, a stringer from
Hyderabad, in an interview)
The stringer is sometimes praised for his contributions, whereas at other times where he writes about corruption and stuff he is criticized and even threatened.
The stringer sometimes reaches the scene of crime before the officials and police and tries to collect information by talking to the local residents over there. He would also find details from the police officer who registers the case. Finally he would also collect the postmortem report from the doctor, and using all this information, he follows the case till it ends.
The stringer expresses sympathy for the students in his locality who are excelling in their studies and writes stories aiming to get the financial support to them, with such titles as “Blessed by Goddess Saraswathi but not by the Goddess Lakshmi”. He also writes about children of backward classes with health issues and about aged parents abandoned by children. One or two such ‘human interest’ stories are seen in the newspaper every other day.
The local public personalities and people who look for publicity for their meetings or events give Rs 100 or 200 to the stringer so that their news is carried. Other people give him cheap gifts. He is also provided food along with others when there are meetings or events. Most of the times it is difficult for the stringer to get even water to drink, and most of the days on the field he would starve with no food on time.
For the collection of advertising revenue, stringers perform all kinds of tough tasks. They travel to meet the subscribers ten to fifteen times. This adds to the additional petrol and cell phone expenses. The debtor may refuse, or act tough. Thus, sometimes there may be a lot of stress and anxiety related to this fieldwork in one form or another. Their health suffers and stringers end up with blood pressure, diabetes and ulcers because of irregular food habits and repeated bouts of hunger, and work stress. They are also more than usually prone to sunstroke in the summer months. In their rush to meet news deadlines there are also accidents and deaths.
Family
The kind of work a stringer does to the newspaper has severe a impact on his family. He is bound to attend duty at any point of time—day or night. Reaching any place or time to cover an incident is his primary duty. When a stringer reaches home to rest is decided by situations beyond his control. This deprives him of quality time with family and it is difficult for him to involve himself with his children in their homework and other things. Even when family members and relatives are seriously ill, it is extremely difficult for a stringer to give time for them. This affects the relationships with their relatives and family members. However, with his creative writing the stringer helps the newspaper to become closer to the reader and he also plays a vital role in businessmen and leaders to the newspaper.
Conclusion
The newspaper organizations benefit hugely from the stringers in various ways, but at the end of the day stringers are largely only at a loss. A stringer’s work towards gathering of ads makes sure of salary payment of all the people in the newspaper, but he doesn’t get a salary. He plays a major role in increasing the circulation and makes sure the existence of newspaper in the public space, but he doesn’t have a space of his own in the organization.
In a newspaper organization stringer is a second class citizen.
(Kasula Prathap Reddy,
Senior Journalist, Hyderabad)
The killing of a stringer either by sand mafia or in police-naxalite encounters becomes a major sensation. But their deaths that occur due to sunstroke or ill health do no attract any attention. In such situations the organization doesn’t bother to get in touch with the family. Considering it as a normal death they don’t even pay any compensation to the family.
The kind of attention the organization would have on finding a replacement for a dead stringer would be the first priority and there would no bothering about the family of the dead stringer. It is this inhuman attitude that the newspaper organization leadership has towards stringers.
(Prof Rajaram TU)
P Purnachandar was a short term fellow
at Anveshi in 2013
purnachandar8@gmail.com