-Newslaundry.com The circumstances of Nagaraju Koppula’s death point to reasons why our newsrooms continue to be incapable of absorbing people from disadvantaged backgrounds. In a heavily contractualised media industry, unions have become a bad word and journalists associated with unions have come to be looked on as trouble makers. It’s no surprise, then, that lawyers, academics and activists outnumbered journalists at the condolence-cum-stocktaking meeting called on by the Delhi Union of Journalists...

-Newslaundry.com Journalist P Sainath talks about his new online media venture - People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), and putting the focus back on rural India (website: www.ruralindiaonline.org) Please click here to read more and access the entire interview. ...

-Newslaundry.com There's always outrage at the government ad spend on the death and birth centenaries of our erstwhile politicians. On Rajiv Gandhi's death centenary in 2013, we carried a report with incorrect figures. Following which, we filed a Right To Information (RTI) application to ask for the amount of advertising spend by the government on Rajiv Gandhi's death centenary ads in the Delhi editions of various English newspapers. When we contacted...

-Newslaundry.com Come election time, “paid news” is one of the most oft-heard phrases. News items on politicians can’t be explained away so easily anymore. Responding to reports of paid news during the Himachal Pradesh elections, the Press Council of India (PCI) for the first time set up a four-member Election Coverage Monitoring (ECM) Committee to look into incidents of paid news in the run-up to the Gujarat elections last December. Here’s the gist...