FEEDING THE NEWS

Swaran Singh Danewalia
Bathinda
On the evening of September 88230;
Swaran Singh Danewalia held a lonely vigil on a cotton farm overlooking the railway track near village Katar Singh Wala in Bathinda district. It paid off.
The following day, Danewalia, India TV8217;s stringer at Bathinda, had a story that exposed theft from trains that ferried oil. Danewalia8217;s visuals showed a group of people, including women and children, filling buckets of oil from the train. Within hours of the channel running the story, a probe was ordered and Danewalia is happy with the response his expose got.
Danewalia, now 42, has been in journalism for years. What started as a hobby in school days, when he joined a photography club in his school, turned into a profession. 8216;8216;I have no formal education in videography. It was my interest that drove me to this field,8217;8217; says the Political Science postgraduate.
Danewalia says he does about five stories a week on average for India TV8212;he is paid Rs 1,000 for every story, besides travelling expenses.
Though he thinks fondly of all his stories, his personal favourite is a story he did a couple of years ago exposing a rice scam in FCI.
He may be happy working with the channel he8217;s now with, but he looks back at his 10-year-old career with one regret. 8216;8216;I8217;m still what I was ten years ago8212;a stringer.8217;8217;
8211;Navjeevan Gopal

Vinod
Mahajan
Meerut
January 2004, Meerut
When Vinod Mahajan started working at a petrol pump in Meerut more than 20 years ago, he never imagined that life would take a complete U-turn one day. Today, at 48, he is known more as a journalist than as a small-time gas station attendant who later dabbled in several failed ventures.
In 2004, his news story on Gudiya, the wife of a prisoner of war who married another man after her husband didn8217;t return from the war front, hit national headlines. The big break came four years after he joined a television channel as stringer for Rs 1,000 per story. 8216;8216;A two column story had appeared in a Hindi daily about an Indian soldier about to be released by Pakistan. I set out to explore and it turned out to be much bigger than I had imagined,8217;8217; he remembers.
His quest led him to another big break a year later when his story on Imrana, a Muslim woman who accused her own father-in-law of rape, put him in national spotlight again. This time, he travelled to Muzaffarnagar for the story.
And though there has been much criticism of the visual media8217;s treatment of the stories, Mahajan argues that he simply did his job. 8216;8216;When we started, we didn8217;t anticipate that the stories would turn out to be so important. We didn8217;t intend to harm anyone. But if the media is accused of going overboard, I would say that our highlighting the issue only helped matters get better,8217;8217; he says.
But much before his city stories stirred debates in the national media, Mahajan started out with passing news to a reporter with a local daily. The fact that his cable control room was close to a local hospital buzzing with news helped immensely. 8216;8216;My news sense developed and I began learning the ropes,8217;8217; he says.
Later, he hit the streets of Meerut with a hired video camera generally used for shooting marriage ceremonies. 8216;8216;I just wanted to record news and was fascinated by the exercise,8217;8217; he says.
That was 13 years ago. The amateur videos shot then were put to good use. He started broadcasting the clips compiled into a programme called City Hulchul on his cable network that he set up in 1989 after his dealings in sports equipment and shares didn8217;t yield much. 8216;8216;At that time, I had stopped feeling ashamed of my failures and poverty; I was not afraid of taking risks anymore,8217;8217; he says.
The effort paid off. His brush with self-willed city journalism led him to apply for the vacancy of a stringer with a private television channel. And, once he started, there was no looking back. Today, his old scooter has given way to a white Santro, and days of walking in the scorching sun with cable wires are just painful flashes from the past, dimmed by the whirring of the air conditioner in his adequately equipped office.
But alongside journalism, he still runs his cable business to support the expenses on reporting that often exceed the amount he is paid for the exercise. He insists he is a journalist out of passion and not compulsion. 8216;8216;I use my own car and camera and am never paid for any damages to the equipment since I am a stringer and not a full-time staffer with any news channel,8217;8217; he explains.
In the coming months, Mahajan plans to float a film company that would produce music videos and comedy films. But the enterprising journalist still has a regret: He is still a stringer, though with a different channel.
8211;Pallavi Singh

Annirudh Nakum
Rajkot
Race Course Ring Road, Rajkot
It8217;s not every day that Rajkot makes an appearance on national television. But in July when a woman stripped and walked on Rajkot8217;s Race Course Ring Road to draw attention to the harassment she faced from her in-laws, not just Gujarat but the entire country watched in sympathy.
As she protested, taking a round of the office of Commissioner of Police, the police didn8217;t even notice her. But Annirudh Nakum did.
A photographer with the vernacular daily Divya Bhaskar and cameraman for a local news channel, he was on his way home in the evening when he spotted Pooja Chauhan.
Nakum, who was crime reporter with an eveninger, smelt a story. He took out his video camera and followed Chauhan.
Then he told a friend who worked for a national channel about the story and in half an hour he had every channel calling him up for the footage.
8216;8216;I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Though I am a photographer-cum-reporter, I always carry a video camera,8217;8217; says 26-year-old Nakum.
A college dropout, Nakum struggled and did every thing from reporting and filming for a couple of years before he got a permanent job with Divya Bhaskar. But his passion for filming breaking news is abiding.
8216;8216;I like to expose things which would otherwise go unnoticed. I am always ready to shoot for my cable channel,8217;8217; he says.
He learned to work with camera from friends. 8216;8216;My parents are in Idar. My father is retired and to support myself, I started working for vernacular papers 10 years ago,8217;8217; says Nakum.
He was 17 when he shot his first story. 8216;8216;I accompanied a police team that went to a village to conduct a raid on gambling den. It was my first story on air. I8217;ve been on many exciting assignments in the last few years but my first story remains my most favourite assignment.8217;8217;
For the Pooja Chauhan story he got precisely three minutes to think, act and film. 8216;8216;She was very agitated and had a baseball bat with her. I just decided to follow her and got the footage,8217;8217; he says.
8211;Hiral Dave

Akil Ahmed
Betul
October 20, 2005
Kunjilal Malviya, who gave death the slip in full glare of TV cameras, would not have become immortal had it not been for Akil Ahmed, a stringer with a nose for news from Betul.
The 75-year-old astrologer had predicted his death on October 20, 2005, and when he missed his date with it, he credited his life to his wife8217;s prayers. 8216;8216;I had sensed the drama. The day also happened to be Karva Chauth when women fast for a long life for their husbands,8217;8217; says the 36-year-old stringer. The contrast of the certain death of a man and his wife8217;s prayers to defeat it was saleable. While viewers may have felt shortchanged after the drama was over, Ahmed8217;s idea was spot on.
However, the astrologer8217;s 8216;non-death8217; is not the story he is proud of. The story he talks most fondly of was a cyclonic storm that had rendered an entire village roofless four years ago. Another story dear to his heart was how the Forest Department people looted and burnt down a tribal settlement for encroaching on forestland.
Ahmed, who spent four years in a national Hindi paper before switching to the electronic medium, strings for NDTV and Star TV. One pays him Rs 1,200 for a story, another pays him Rs 2,500. He has also worked for other channels.
Armed with a video camera and a notepad, he does all by himself. About a dozen stories make it to the national TV in a year. But that8217;s a very small percentage of the number of stories he actually send to the channels apart from a regular flow of ideas.
He takes neat notes and maintains videos of even those stories that have been spiked. There have been times when his ideas were followed up without his knowledge and the stories carried without giving him any credit.
8216;8216;Channels rarely follow up their own stories but I prepare myself for the eventuality by keeping the visuals ready,8217;8217; says Ahmed, probably the only gateway of all major channels to Betul and couple of other adjacent districts.
The contacts he developed during his print days are still his major source of news. They approach him with all sorts of information but he crosschecks by calling up the police station concerned, or, whenever possible someone in the village itself.
Unlike most stringers he has an activist in him and devotes part of his time to social work like tending the sick in a local hospital.
8211;Milind Ghatwai