> Why do reporters report in a pack? And this is not specific to India. My 2-paise worth: In a given time period, there are only so many events considered to have news value. And so, all those events have to be covered to ensure the audience served knows about those events. If I didn't have an Internet connection and subscribed to one daily then I miss out on Samson's auto if the daily didn't bother to cover it. So, the urge to ensure no story is missed.
Krishna's statement is news, and everyone will cover it. As Shiv says, something in PTI and Reuters is news and will be covered by everyone. On the other hand, the lament about not enough analysis on the Australian attacks, is not so much event, as much as process coverage. Now, that is something which Indian newspapers have largely not done a great job of. This need for process coverage started with 24*7 tv and online media. You know that reporters work as a pack because you have access to multiple dailies online. You can then compare and contrast and find most of it is the same thing repeated. Even with 24*7 tv news, when you open the paper in the morning, you see news being repeated from your 9 pm show. Given this, to remain relevant, newspapers have to fulfil your demand, which is that of reporting the process, for instance, a wider picture of what is happening in Australia, which will be something unique to a paper. Now in Indian newsrooms have realised this, and this process reprting is slowly catching on. But contrary to what happened in say the United States, print media in India continues to have a growing audience. Not a surprising fact, given that as literacy catches on, audience reading newspapers will increase. So, there is still an 'offline' audience to cater to, and that number is substantial. So, newspapers have to cater to two kinds of demands, posed by the online and offline audience. And they are trying to find their feet in this changing context. For instance, Times of India has some pages dedicated to longer features -- something which newspapers used to consider as a magazine's domain. 'News features' is what they are called. And writing news features is a very different ball game. YOu need to have adequate writing skills along with reporting skills, whcih again poses a challenge in newsrooms. And it is not just a question of changing how news coverage is done, the change also has to happen at an organisation-level. When newspaper websites started, there would be just a technical team uploading all the print content online. Then a separate online team was formed who would feed exclusive stories to the web, to feed its ravenous apettite. Now, there are talks of convergent newsrooms. This is a generic path being traced by most Indian newsrooms. And this process is going to take time. And till then, Samson will continue to be bombarded by lots and lots of reporters. :) ps: This was only about the Indian landscape...
