Flap over the abuse of stringers raises hackles among street reporters.
Stringers in US parlance are what in the British would be called a "correspondent" -- the in-country (or in-state, or in-district) reporters who know the language, people, events, culture and machinery of what makes things tick. The British developed the stringer system to cover their far-flung empire in the 19th century.
They were part-time contributors to a larger mass of news pouring into the home office of the newspaper where editors would organize the items in increasingly subdivided sections so readers could easily find news of their region of interest: Asia, Italy, Paris, Bloomsbury, etc.
The term "stringer" comes from the method of payment. When reporters were merely stenographers (as Dickens was) they were paid by the word. A system then developed in which paid by the column inch of the copy they produced. This was measured with marked "strings" (rather like a measuring tape). The terms "sticks" and "blocks" were also used, but "string" was the one that caught on.
Stringers in bigger cities or states that generated regular news items were also paid stipends.
Desk editors played the smaller, less important stories in" round-ups" or "digests." If the stories were of significant inerest they were sometimes featured separately as stand-alone storiesattributed to "our Delhi correspondent" or "your Rangoon correspondent" or "a Times corresponden. -- similar to intelligence agencies referring to an agent as "our man in Havana."
Name bylines came along late in the game. Post Civil War in the US. Salaried reporers wanted to become war correspondents sent off take part in the experience and return to the comfort of the home office and dine ot on the colorful tales they could tell.
Some went native and got themselves posted to thrilling capitals to become experts on that particular nation.
But the world is big and profits meager so stringers remained the backbone of worldwide coverage.
Office politics and human nature then produced at the NY Times and other big US papers pet reporters who wanted the best of all possible worlds. They wanted to be in the office to cover their backs in the upward scramble to higher pay, yet go abroad to cover glamour stories that would stoke their reputations to inspire upward rises for them in the corporate news structure.
Editors liked the stringers for their expertise, cheapness and inability to complain about editorial slanting/ They liked ambitious home office "parachutist" golden boys and girls because they were easier to instruct and control with carrot and stick...
A so it remains today, only with the parachutists and editors getting a little to ambitious, greedy and arrogant. They basically have eliminated the middleman stringer by making him "disappear" by obscuring their contribution by incorporating it without attribution under the parachutists; bylines.. This provides the parachutists -- and the newspaper -- the faux patina of in-house expertise, so useful in creating the illusion of authority to editorial page pronouncements..
Thomas Long makes very good points, especially about stringers knowing -- as one-time stringer Rudyard Kipling once put it -- that "their pride it is to know no stir of pride" in pursuit of the Big Story and for the love of the game.
From Peter Beaumount of the Guardian/UK, who, along iwth four carloads of mostly American newsreporters, narrowly survived a confrontation with frightened, trigger-happy US soldiers in a burning Baghdad.
Stringers in US parlance are what in the British would be called a "correspondent" -- the in-country (or in-state, or in-district) reporters who know the language, people, events, culture and machinery of what makes things tick. The British developed the stringer system to cover their far-flung empire in the 19th century.
They were part-time contributors to a larger mass of news pouring into the home office of the newspaper where editors would organize the items in increasingly subdivided sections so readers could easily find news of their region of interest: Asia, Italy, Paris, Bloomsbury, etc.
The term "stringer" comes from the method of payment. When reporters were merely stenographers (as Dickens was) they were paid by the word. A system then developed in which paid by the column inch of the copy they produced. This was measured with marked "strings" (rather like a measuring tape). The terms "sticks" and "blocks" were also used, but "string" was the one that caught on.
Stringers in bigger cities or states that generated regular news items were also paid stipends.
Desk editors played the smaller, less important stories in" round-ups" or "digests." If the stories were of significant inerest they were sometimes featured separately as stand-alone storiesattributed to "our Delhi correspondent" or "your Rangoon correspondent" or "a Times corresponden. -- similar to intelligence agencies referring to an agent as "our man in Havana."
Name bylines came along late in the game. Post Civil War in the US. Salaried reporers wanted to become war correspondents sent off take part in the experience and return to the comfort of the home office and dine ot on the colorful tales they could tell.
Some went native and got themselves posted to thrilling capitals to become experts on that particular nation.
But the world is big and profits meager so stringers remained the backbone of worldwide coverage.
Office politics and human nature then produced at the NY Times and other big US papers pet reporters who wanted the best of all possible worlds. They wanted to be in the office to cover their backs in the upward scramble to higher pay, yet go abroad to cover glamour stories that would stoke their reputations to inspire upward rises for them in the corporate news structure.
Editors liked the stringers for their expertise, cheapness and inability to complain about editorial slanting/ They liked ambitious home office "parachutist" golden boys and girls because they were easier to instruct and control with carrot and stick...
A so it remains today, only with the parachutists and editors getting a little to ambitious, greedy and arrogant. They basically have eliminated the middleman stringer by making him "disappear" by obscuring their contribution by incorporating it without attribution under the parachutists; bylines.. This provides the parachutists -- and the newspaper -- the faux patina of in-house expertise, so useful in creating the illusion of authority to editorial page pronouncements..
Thomas Long makes very good points, especially about stringers knowing -- as one-time stringer Rudyard Kipling once put it -- that "their pride it is to know no stir of pride" in pursuit of the Big Story and for the love of the game.
From Peter Beaumount of the Guardian/UK, who, along iwth four carloads of mostly American newsreporters, narrowly survived a confrontation with frightened, trigger-happy US soldiers in a burning Baghdad.
So what happened then in the advance into Baghdad - and what is happening still as American soldiers fire on crowds of demonstrators? The answer struck me recently. The world's biggest and most formidible army - the most technologically advanced - lacks discipline regarding its own rules of engagement and an ability - the critical ability - to properly identify targets before engagement.
This is not a new problem. It is behind the too frequent incidences of US friendly fire on its allies; behind the arrogance with which US forces treated many Iraqis.
But the result is a recklessness and a lack of care for civilian casualties that borders on the criminal.
When I look at that picture of those young men from the 3/15th, when I remember their terrible baptism by fire in the battle on that motorway, I would like to feel more sympathy for them than I do. They are good men most of them, but they have put on the green suit and taken up the gun. And they have failed in the terrible responsibilty that this confers upon them.
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