Academic literature on the topic 'Stringers (Journalists)'

What should be considered ‘adequate’ preparation and support for journalists and media workers in difficult, remote and hostile environments? One would assume there would be numerous sources of feedback and contributions measuring the suitability of the training, as well as providing information regarding what improvements are necessary to ensure journalists are provided the best possible pre-deployment preparation. However, after working and observing developments in this area over several years, three main issues have presented themselves. First, there is little investigation or analysis being conducted into these training programmes. Second, there are few independent organisations working to standardise the training and support provided to journalists. Finally, the extent of training and support to the local correspondents, fixers and stringers in developing countries, that most international media organisation depend on in these locations, has become an unfortunate casualty of shrinking international news budgets.

ABSTRAK Penulisan ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui bagaimana praktik stringer dalam melaksanakan peliputan di Kota Bandung serta mengetahui bagaimana sikap stringer dalam memaknai profesinya. Metode penelitian menggunakan metode deskriptif kualitatif yang berusaha mendeskripsikan seluruh keadaan yang terjadi pada objek penelitian dengan menggunakan data dari hasil observasi serta wawancara bersama informan. Hasil penelitian menunjukan bahwa praktek stringer tidak hanya terjadi di daerah saja di kota besarpun praktek ini masih ditemukan. Meskipun dengan jumlah yang tidak banyak, di Kota Bandung sendiri terdapat 4-5 stringer yang masih aktif bekerja kepada kontributornya. Tugas dan peran stringer di lapangan sama seperti kontributor, hanya saja stringer tidak mendapatkan hak intelektual dalam pengakuan karya jurnalistiknya. Cara stringer memandang serta memaknai pekerjaannya menjadi bias, sebagian mereka menganggap sebagai hal positif namun sebagian lagi menganggap sebagai hal negatif. Menjadi seorang stringer dapat dijadikan kesempatan untuk mengasah kemampuan serta proses pembelajaran menjadi wartawan nantinya, namun pada prosesnya dilapangan menjadi seorang stringer akan banyak menemui permasalahan.Meskipun stringer banyak membantu kerja kontributor di lapangan, praktek mempekerjakan stringer telah menyalahi kode etik jurnalistik. Kata Kunci : Stringer; Kontributor; Peliputan; Televisi ABSTRACT This paper aims to find out how practice stringers in carrying out coverage in the city of Bandung and find out how stringer’s attitude in interpreting his profession. This research method uses a qualitative descriptive. Descriptive method that attempts to describe all the conditions that occur in the object of research using data from observations and interviews with informant. The result showed that stringer practice did not only occur in regions in the big cities, but this practice was still found. Although there are not many, in Bandung there are 4-5 stringers who are still actively working with their contributors. The duties and role of stringers in the field are the same as contributors, only stringers do not get intellectual rights in recognition of their journalistic work. The way stringers look and interpret their work becomes based, some of them consider it positive but some consider it negative. A Stringer can be used as an opportunity to hone skills and as a learning process to become a journalist later, but many problems that occur in the process of working stringers in the field. Although stringers help contributors work a lot in the field, on the other hand the practice of employing stringers has violated the journalistic code of ethics. Keywords: Stringer; Contributor; Covering; Television.

En. Throughout over fifty years of stringent censorship, Burma’s ethnic media, exiled news agencies, citizen journalists, bloggers and even state-sanctioned periodicals revealed a surprising level of diversity and dialogue coursing beneath the surface of state control. Today, under the promise of legislative reform, this diverse media activity stands at a historical crossroads, with underground and exiled prac- titioners returning to above-ground production inside Burma. This article describes percep- tions of risk during the years of the dictatorship from the journalists’ points of view, and why they continued their work under threat of incarceration, exile, and death. The article then examines the historical context that led to journalists’ prominent place in Burma’s demo- cratic struggles. Finally, it contemplates the future risks they and their work may face in the new environment, and proffers some aspects for the international community to consider. After decades of struggle, a move to civilian government has created an opening for media organizations to surface above ground and/or to return from exile. However, the position of journalism is far from secure. Journalists are still subject to arrest and harassment, and still face danger in areas where armed conflict continues and Burma Army soldiers operate far from central control. Amid an uncertain transition to civilian rule, there are no tidy endings to the story. As well, the landscape has opened up for Western powers to export their own vision of commercial/corporate media practice in the name of ‘democratic development,’ without regard to already-successful indigenous journalism structures and methods. Within this overall context, I will argue that without a complete grasp of the diversity and strength of existing grassroots media, there is a danger that international media development assis- tance may blunt the edge of a style of risk-taking journalism that unabashedly holds power to account, and that seeks social justice, not profit.

In the context of the ongoing financial crisis in U.S. professional journalism, philanthropic foundation-supported nonprofits are increasingly proposed as a solution to the under-provision of civic-oriented news production. Drawing on an analysis of the social composition of boards of directors and interviews with foundation officials and nonprofit journalists, this article examines both the civic contributions and limitations of foundation-supported nonprofit news organizations. Foundations are shown to place many nonprofits in a Catch-22 because of competing demands to achieve both economic “sustainability” and civic “impact,” ultimately creating pressures to reproduce dominant commercial media news practices or orient news primarily for small, elite audiences. Further, media organizations dependent on foundation project-based funding risk being captured by foundation agendas and thus less able to investigate the issues they deem most important. Reforms encouraging more long-term, no-strings-attached funding by foundations, along with development of small donor and public funding, could help nonprofits overcome their current limitations.

Veteran journalist Marvine Howe’s book on Morocco is unique in its genre.Though she worked for Radio Maroc and as a stringer for the New YorkTimes and Time-Life in Morocco from 1951 to 1962, Howe has coveredseveral topics related to that country since and returned for a serious “Tourdu Maroc” with two old friends in 2001. Her book, with its countless interviewsof political and cultural personalities before and after her departure inthe 1960s, is more than simply journalism. Howe has invested a lifetime ofstudying Morocco and its people. This book, addressed to a general audience,reads like a comprehensive “state of the union” survey of Moroccotoday, in its variegated political, cultural, ethnic, religious, and economicaspects – all in a lucid and often elegant prose. Howe has kept upwith all of the majorworks onMorocco over the years,both in French and in English, fromJohnWaterbury’s The Commander of theFaithful (1970) to Fatima Sadiqi’s Women, Gender, and Language inMorocco (2002). Even the more recent book by Shana Cohen and LarabiJaidi, Morocco: Globalization and Its Consequences (2006), shares many ofher conclusions ...

All inaccuracies and distortions of the language use in modern British media, revealed by Simon Heffer in his book «Strictly English», enable the author of the article to draw a distinct demarcation line between King's English, the English of the press, on the one hand, and the English of the upper classes of Great Britain, on the other. The errors in the press, such as confusion of words similar in a sound form or spelling, the use of foreign words in the wrong meanings, distortions of names, etc. testify to the deterioration of education at some universities of Great Britain. They also point to the lack of a classical education based on the study of foreign languages, Greek and Latin, in the first place, which facilitates learning foreign words and mastering complicated grammar structures and subtleties of modality in the English language. The language of the press is clearly opposed to the language of the upper classes by methods of communication. If the former is characterized by direct and straightforward ways of communication, the latter manifests indirect and hidden ways of interaction. Cultivated by the upper classes and the aristocracy, this code is based on the categories of words which originate ambiguity in speech or texts and raise the eternal question «What is meant by this or that? ». In journalism these categories of words are labeled as «killers» of meaning. They include foreign words which considerably obscure understanding, abstract nouns that serve to create distance and insincerity in communication, adjectives which very often veil the real state of things, serve as a means of linguistic manipulation, especially when used to describe emotions, opinions and feelings. Here, also, belong euphemism and metaphorical meanings of nouns and verbs. The author concludes that, despite stringent prohibition for journalists to use these categories of words in the media, journalists and professional writers would only benefit if they were aware of them as well as of social connotations of words marked as U - non-U words in the book «Noblesse Oblige» by Alan Ross, Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford. Heffer's book allows to clearly see the demarcation line between the English of the media and the English of the upper classes of Great Britain based on play upon words and various implications to express individuality and sense of humour, intellect and social exclusiveness.

AbstractSince 2015 rights-based NGOs, lawyers, feminists and journalists have endured the most stringent crackdown since 1989. Simultaneously the Xi Li administration has pushed forward a series of laws, policies and regulatory changes to enable service-oriented NGOs to apply for government contracts to provide welfare services. This seemingly Janus-like policy of welfarist incorporation can be traced back to the Hu–Wen period, often described as a lacklustre period, despite significant efforts to tackle issues of poverty and inequality. This article argues for a more balanced appraisal of this period by exploring in depth the complex politics underpinning efforts to pluralize welfare provision by involving service-oriented NGOs. It explores three sets of politics influencing this policy process: inter-institutional politics; state/non-state actor politics; and domestic/external politics. Furthermore, it considers processes of gradual institutional change adopted by key political actors to achieve these ends.

Political lobbyists are a part of government decision-making processes, and many countries have stringent regulations to ensure their activities are somewhat transparent, especially as some use ethically questionable tactics. In New Zealand, however, there are no similar legislative regulations and lobbyists can stay undetected while trying to influence policymaking. More concerning, however, is that the results of this study indicates that lobbyists are also able to skirt around scrutiny in New Zealand media because of current journalism practices. This research’s content analysis indicates the media neglects to identify lobby organisations, thereby allowing them to operate without detection of their agenda, leaving the public unaware of who is influencing decision makers.

News media possess an orchestrating, manipulating power over the public debate; they create the framework in which we discuss events and learn about ourselves and our surroundings. At the same time, news products provide much of our foundation for knowing about the world we inhabit. However, we lack empirical knowledge about the process of writing news texts, i.e. knowledge about the choices made by journalists as to what to communicate and how to communicate it, in other words, the decisions they make as regards content and linguistic form, respectively. Revisions made during writing yield insights into the progression of a text, providing a signficant element to the understanding of how journalists juggle content and form in their mediation of knowledge. Thus, (NN 2016) of journalists’ revision activity when producing a text. The study was designed as a multiple case study and explored different aspects of revisions occurring during three specific instances of professional text producers’ ordinary writing practices as they unfolded in their natural setting in an editorial office of a major Spanish newspaper. Placing the research agenda at the center and with a view to presenting a description as comprehensive as possible of the revisions made during the writing processes, the study applied a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, i.e. keystroke logging, participant observation and retrospective interviews. For each journalist, the study investigated the characteristics of the revisions of content and form separately. In this sense, the study examined time of occurrence during the writing process, revision type, such as addition, omission and substitution and the possible relation between timing and revision type. Moreover, the study analysed the distribution of revisions between content and form and the differences between and similarities shared by the three journalists. To operationalise the content-form dichotomy, the analysis builds on Faigley/Witte’s (1981) taxonomy. Accordingly, content revisions add new content or omit existing content that cannot otherwise be inferred from the extant text. By contrast, revisions that only affect the form of the text neither omit nor substitute original content that cannot be inferred from the extant text as it is, nor do they add content that cannot already be inferred. When tracking the text production process as it unfolds in computer-based writing, the continuous revisions made as part of the ongoing text production process become visible to the researcher. At any given point during writing, the written text can be revised at its leading edge, where new text is being transcribed, and in the text already written, i.e. after the text has been transcribed. This distinction between revisions according to their location, i.e. in the text currently being transcribed (pre-contextual revision) or in the text already transcribed (contextual revision) is relevant when the effect of a revision (content or form) is to be interpreted; generally, only the effect of contextual revisions is interpretable on the basis of keystroke logging alone. The approach to the analysis of revisions was inspired by the online revision taxonomy developed by Lindgren/Sullivan (2006a, 2006b) in collaboration with Stevenson/Schoonen/de Glopper (2006). However, the taxonomy proved to be insufficiently accurate to be operationalised, and too coarse to categorise all interpretable revisions in the data. Consequently, a stringent and nuanced analytical framework was developed based on existing theory and the data. This framework places the revisions made during text production on a continuum of semantically meaningful context. At one end of the continuum lies the potentially most complete semantically meaningful context represented by a sentence concluded by a sentence-completing character, and at the other end, the semantically non-meaningful context. In between the two ends, the continuum holds semantically meaningful contexts that are potentially less complete, such as semantically meaningful sentences without sentence-completing characters and semantically meaningful phrases. By introducing an interpretation as to whether a revision is conducted in a semantically meaningful context, the analytical framework distances itself from a more objective categorisation of the location of revisions at the leading edge or in the transcribed text. This allows for a systematisation of the contexts in which the effect of revisions at the leading edge can be interpreted and the contexts in which the effect of revisions made in already transcribed text cannot be interpreted. The exploratory and qualitative nature of the study provided a detailed analysis of the journalists’ revision activities, and it offered nuanced insights into their text production. The results showed a relatively homogenous picture, including certain variations, in which the form of the text was revised significantly more often than the content, both during the ongoing text production and, in particular, during the systematic review of the potentially final text in which content was only infrequently revised. Revision types and their effect on the text during the ongoing text production and in the systematic review of the potentially finalised text reflect the diverging purposes of these two phases: the first phase serves to generate cohesive and coherent text for the article, and the second phase aims to evaluate and, especially, to reduce the volume of the written text. The overall tendency of the analyses and the details which it reflects can be used as the basis for new studies and can help generate hypotheses about how other text producers, both in similar and different contexts, write and revise theirs texts and how they juggle content and form in their democratisation of knowledge.

This thesis is principally concerned with three books of reportage, Stringer: A Reporter’s Journey in the Congo (2014), Bad News: Last Journalists in a Dictatorship (2016), and the shorter e-book, The Road Through War: Anarchy and Rebellion in the Central African Republic (2016). The thesis also draws on several journalistic articles, magazine pieces, blog posts and essays. The books and articles were written between 2005 and 2015, a period during which I lived primarily in Central Africa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.

Globally, upholders of the fourth pillar of democracy have been consistently exposed to security issues and gender discrimination. Many journalists and media professionals are having to pay with their lives in trying to get information. In spite of nations having constitutionally accepted accordance of operational freedom for the press, governments have failed to ensure a protective environment for decades. India, unfortunately, figures on the list of nations where journalists operate under tough conditions. The global state of journalist safety and security is outlined here. Analysing India-specific study findings and information generated through survey of journalists, this chapter argues the need for stringent policy regulations stipulating time bound delivery of justice and fast tracking of trial proceedings, for cases of violence against journalists and also highlights the probability of discrimination in distribution of work and disparate payments emerging as principle problems women journalists' face.

This chapter focuses on international journalism research, offering the following suggestions: First, scholarship on international journalism should be prepared to more directly and publicly critique the ethnocentrism that has long plagued international correspondence based in the English-speaking West, and that continues to be a problem in the digital age. Second, scholars of international news work need to be prepared to interrogate the structural inequalities that inform journalistic labor on an international scale, inequalities that have not disappeared with the rise of digital technologies. Third, scholars of international journalism need to more directly engage not only with big-brand correspondents, editors, and news executives, but also with the freelancers, stringers, and local fixers who hold these international news professions on their backs. The chapter ultimately argues that journalism scholars should be building more bridges between journalism research and journalism practice.