The Good Reporter: Rural women's stories, uninterrupted amid media clutter

In a crowded media world, a women-led newsroom offers a refreshing breather

The Good Reporter: A Memoir of Journalism in the 21st Century

by Disha Mullick & Team Khabar Lahariya

Published by Simon & Schuster

272 pages ₹699

 

In 2002, a group of six poor, marginalised women from rural Uttar Pradesh decided to publish a local newspaper, which would be sold in Bundelkhandi towns and villages. A monthly four-page newspaper, Khabar Lahariya  was the first and only piece of mass media in Bundeli, centring on remote rural audiences and prioritising stories of their daily lives.

 

The newspaper was born from an idea piloted in 1993 at a Mahila Samakhya programme in Banda district of Uttar Pradesh. Just two years after it started, it won the Chameli Devi Jain award for women in journalism. A decade after it started, Khabar Lahariya grew to a multi-edition and multilingual twelve-page broadsheet. In 2019, it transitioned from a non-profit media project to a self-sustaining digital media company. Over the past 25 years, Khabar Lahariya  has grown into other districts, states, and mediums. It later rebranded as KL Digital, the first hyperlocal digital news channel entirely run by women — with their mobile phone cameras, on screen in piece-to-camera reports, and live broadcasts. In recent years, it has gained visibility across India and the world, been invited to panels and talks, and feted for courageous journalism.

 

This biography tells the story of a women’s media collective that has consciously strived to avoid being labelled as rural, alternative, feminist, community, development, or Dalit media, and instead seeks to stand on an equal footing with others shaping public discourse. The book grew out of oral narratives rooted in Hindi and Bundeli, with some backstories drawn from Awadhi or Bajjika news reports. The narratives were initially written in English, translated into Hindi for feedback, and then revised back into English.

 

A small media outfit, consisting of 20 to 30 women belonging to different castes and communities spread across 10 districts of the country’s largest states, the newspaper covered local stories — stories of violence, struggle and hardship — that were in stark contrast to the content of urban, mainstream journalism. “We’ve journeyed from poverty, discrimination, violence and lack of education to be well-known figures in our communities and beyond,” write the authors.  

 

The organisation’s criteria for recruitment did not involve educational qualifications, only that the candidate should be from a marginalised community, have a curiosity about her world, and be able to step out to do the work. The candidates would then be trained through structured learning, internships as well as advanced and thematic trainings. The team was regularly upskilled through computer courses, subject experts, refresher training and so on. What it provided these women was an identity, a regular salary, and liberation from total financial dependency on their husbands’ family.

 

The mixed-caste newsroom was one in which the rural public and personal sphere often overlapped. “The majority of reporters and editors were Dalit women, but there were also Muslim women, kol adivasis, backward castes, and so-called ‘upper’-caste women,” the authors write. “Diversity — of caste, religion and gender — is not a card we carry, or a literary device or a key word for search-engine optimisation; it, too, has been a lived reality, within the newsroom and outside,” they added.

 

Over a period of time, the collective moved from local to more politically astute reporting and wider beats. “We carried histories of physical labour, caste and class — in fields, as contract labour, in brick kilns and in our middle-class homes,” they write. During the first wave of the Covid 19 pandemic, the collective made several other community efforts in addition to their reporting. They began running a helpline for migrants from Bundelkhand stranded across the country, connecting them with food and transport, and also supporting a local food donation drive. “To be able to give the local, rural story a value comparable to ‘hard journalism’, and to bring its politics and significance to light, has been a hard-won success,” they explain.

 

“This desire to assert power in different, still challenging situations are the moments of significance in our lives,” they write. In a world that is so crowded today with various sources of news — whether print, electronic or social media — where the only measure of success is numbers and TRPs — the story of Khabar Lahariya  comes across as a refreshing breather, one that feels every bit authentic and genuine. “Our impact is the shape we have left, and leave every day, on this rural landscape,” the authors conclude.

---

The reviewer is a New Delhi-based freelance writer