ThePrint’s Delhi team is its heart but state reporters are its arteries—Chennai to Chandigarh

If a media outlet wishes to be truly national, as ThePrint does, it should have its own network of correspondents in the states who know the smell and the lay of the land.

Graphics by Manisha Yadav | ThePrint

Manasi never imagined she would go to a court, and crime is still a mystery to Purva. Shikha finds murder is easy. Akshaya was delighted to speak to Viswanathan Anand, while Dipak and Sushil are so experienced that everyone speaks to them.

Sreyashi never has a dull day and Karishma says you can’t take a day off. Chitleen is happy writing 650 words, but Prasad is happier with 2,000. Iram went from Mumbai to Madhya Pradesh looking for excitement when most people do the opposite. And as for Sharan? Why, he’s in love – with reporting.

Such is the variety and diversity of ThePrint’s state correspondents. From Guwahati to Mumbai, from Chennai to Chandigarh, these journalists are as much part of ThePrint’s story as the team in Delhi. If the Delhi office is the heart of ThePrint’s operations, these state correspondents are its arteries.

One of ThePrint’s most distinctive features is that it has invested heavily in state correspondents and retainers. For this column, I spoke to 11 journalists of ThePrint in various parts of the country. I discovered that for all their differences, they shared several similarities.

They are a lively group of journalists who joined ThePrint because they were looking for change, growth, and a national profile.

Manasi Phadke, Deputy Editor, Mumbai, joined ThePrint in 2017 after stints at The Indian Express and Reuters. “The digital pace is faster here than at a newspaper, and it is also deeper,” she says. “The canvas is much wider.”

Chitleen K Sethi joined ThePrint in Chandigarh from Hindustan Times knowing that digital was the future and learnt how to report “all over again”. “You can give depth to your reporting here, that’s the biggest thing.’’

For Karishma Hasnat in Guwahati, there was the option to work for regional media, but she wanted to reach a wider public and the opportunity to cover eight Northeast states.

At Times Now, Kolkata, Sreyashi Dey, Senior Assistant Editor, was doing stories “as per requirement’’—quick newsy sound byte reports. Special Correspondent Shikha Salaria was a crime reporter for The Times Of India in NCR. She says that after a while, she found crime reporting too easy and routine.

Special Correspondent Iram Siddique is grateful that at ThePrint, she doesn’t have to file “routine stories’’ the way she did in Mumbai at The Indian Express and Mumbai Mirror. “Such a waste of energy,” she says. “Here, you have to show, not tell.”

After a long stint with NDTV, Assistant Editor Akshaya Nath in Chennai realised that she “wanted to do something new” — and writing was entirely novel to her. “There’s so much I didn’t know, it’s been a reality check,’’ she says.

Special Correspondent Purva Chitnis in Mumbai was looking for an opportunity to report on politics from the ground, having worked at Business Standard and India Today. “This is the perfect mix,’’ she says.

“At newspapers, it’s all about hits and misses,’’ says Sushil Manav who had retired as Chief of Bureau at The Tribune but joined ThePrint as the Haryana correspondent in 2023. “Now, I travel and do a lot of reporting from across the state.’’

“I liked what ThePrint was doing,’’ says Sharan Poovanna from Bengaluru who wanted to upskill. And finally, all of them said they love to dig deep into stories and travel. ThePrint allows them to do both.

Beyond Delhi

A band of experienced state correspondents is unique among Indian news portals, as most depend largely on news agencies like Press Trust of India (PTI) or Asian News International (ANI).

However, if a media outlet wishes to be truly national, as ThePrint does, it should have its own nationwide network — correspondents, based in the states and who speak the native language, know the smell and the lay of the land.

A major complaint against the media is that it is Delhi-centric — even regional stories are written from the capital by journalists who work on their e-mails and mobile phones. The opinion section tends to reflect the voices of Delhi-based experts.

All too often, reporters from Delhi travel to different parts of the country, for on-the-spot coverage — even when state correspondents are stationed there or are present in a bordering state.

Mainstream national newspapers have state correspondents as well as regional editions; TV news solves the problem with channels in different languages. But among news websites, ThePrint alone maintains such a large contingent of state correspondents. While it also takes automated agency copies and sends out reporters from Delhi for coverage, its state correspondents allow it to offer readers news that is much more than headlines.

Bringing attention to states

ThePrint’s state coverage is all about bringing the states to readers’ attention wherever they may be. “Basically, to keep an eye on regional stories of national importance as well as hyper-local developments that might become a precedent-setting story,’’ says Nisheeth Upadhyay, Editor Operations, who interacts with the state correspondents from Delhi. “We make sure we don’t miss out on a big story.”

The state correspondents follow ThePrint’s primary focus on politics and governance. “It’s all about Bihar politics from here,” says Dipak Mishra from Patna. Sometimes, reporters keep an eye on more than one state. “I cover two governments (Haryana and Punjab) and politics,” says Chitleen Sethi. Shikha Salaria, spends most of her time in Lucknow meeting politicians of “all hues” – and chasing political developments in India’s largest state.

What’s so special about that, you ask, surely all news media does it, right? Yes, but as the correspondents told me again and again, at ThePrint, it is different, boss. “The stories must have the identity of ThePrint — they should have depth and an overarching narrative,’’ adds Upadhyay.

Consider these stories that are about politics and governance but go beyond the routine.

“This is what makes ThePrint different from other portals—it is reporter-driven,’’ says Chitleen, adding that for newspapers, there were days when she filed 350-word reports, but now, nothing less than 650 will do. Reporting from the ground, and the chance to take a “deep dive” satisfies Manasi too – and she speaks for all the correspondents.

Of course, one of the most important stories from the states is election season — and that is when the correspondents really come to life. Sreyashi says that during elections, she looks for stories “out of the box’’.

Sharan was thrown into the hurly-burly of campaigning season for the 2023 Karnataka assembly election almost as soon as he joined ThePrint — in November 2022. “My aim has always been to give the perspective from Karnataka,” he says.

It’s a comment on human nature that crime always sells. And so, these correspondents become crime reporters too. As with other verticals, the idea is to approach crime from different angles. Some of these stories illustrate that point.

This has been a learning curve for most reporters: Chitnis says that she is still perplexed about how to report on crime and Phadke had never done court reporting before ThePrint. For Karishma, covering the ethnic conflict in Manipur was “daunting”.

Overcoming challenges

ThePrint likes to tell stories with style and substance—and hence the emphasis on ground reporting. This opportunity is met with uninhibited enthusiasm by the reporters, partly because they get to travel.

“It’s the best,” says Sreyashi. Iram, too, likes to be in the thick of things and get to the bottom of them.

Akshaya had interviewed Viswanathan Anand before but “had not done an in-depth story on chess like the one we did or covered it from the perspective of Chennai’s chess culture,’’ she says.

Chitleen likes “special stories because you can pick on more human, thematic topics”. She was happy working on the Rambagh Palace story, enjoying the ample time to work on it.

Away from home or work from home?

ThePrint is now well-recognised in Delhi, but what about Hyderabad or Bhopal—Do journalists face an identity crisis there? Not at all. “It has good visibility,’’ explains Prasad Nichenametla in Hyderabad, “because of Shekhar Gupta.” That is the Editor-in-Chief of ThePrint.

When Purva started out in 202, 1she would introduce herself by saying she was from ThePrint. “Yes, but which paper?’’ she would be asked. Now she says ThePrint is well-known. The other correspondents agree. Among politicians and the bureaucracy in the larger cities, people know ThePrint, so access has become easier for these correspondents. Since they are experienced journalists, their network of sources helps too.

One thing I thought would be an issue is best captured in this line from the song Five Hundred Miles: `Lord I’m one, Lord I’m two, Lord I’m three …Lord I’m five hundred miles away…’’ from Delhi. Make that thousands of kilometres for many of these reporters. Do they feel alienated from the decision-making process, ignored, always told what to do?

To my surprise, this appears to be a non-issue—none of the correspondents felt slighted. “It’s a two-way street—they flag stories and so do we,” says Upadhyay.

Working away from the Delhi hub is another fact of life for these state correspondents. We experienced it during the Covid pandemic, but for state reporters, home is their office.

For Chitleen in Chandigarh, working from home went from being “very exciting’’ to “not that great”. Manasi loved it before her baby was born, but now, she finds it challenging. It’s sheer “torture” for Sharan in Bengaluru, who used to be the first to walk into the office at his previous organisation — even during Covid. Now, he goes to a café instead.

After shifting to Lucknow, Shikha says she has found WFH very “productive”. For Karishma in the Northeast, though, it’s “a big problem’’ — especially the lack of communication. Iram has become “accustomed’’ to it. Chitnis rather enjoys it, but Sreyashi calls it “lonely’’. All of them stay motivated, set particular targets (2 to 3 stories a week), and try to deliver them on time.

They say they miss out on interaction with colleagues, the exchange of ideas, and the routine of getting up and going to work. In Sreyashi’s words, it’s ‘FOMO’ – the fear of missing out on what is going on in Delhi, what Delhi thinks. Besides the weekly Zoom meeting, these editors and correspondents have only themselves to talk to about work.

Café, anyone?

Shailaja Bajpai is ThePrint’s Readers’ Editor. Please write in with your views, complaints to [e-mail]

(Edited by Humra Laeeq)