From: "Salil Tripathi" <salil61-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: postcolonial-digest V2 #2222
Date: Thu, 01 May 2003 08:24:30 +0000


Saul,

Fisk cannot be independent from The Independent. Even if the $1 per article 
fee, or whatever access charge the newspaper levies for Fisk's pieces does 
not go to Fisk directly, it contributes to the resources available for the 
Independent to continue to spend on quality journalism and its 
dissemination. It has to spend for the IT infrastructure to manage its 
website, it also has to spend to hire sub-editors (or copy editors in North 
Americanese) who will lay out the article and make sure it is formatted 
properly, and to disseminate it through print means (which I contribute to 
by spending 55 pence a day, buying the newspaper) or electronic means (to 
pay for its computers, machines, software legally-bought, and electricity) 
... for all of that the Indy needs resources.  I don't know how familiar you 
are with the British newspaper industry, but the Independent has the least 
circulation among the broadsheets, and has to be rescued financially twice. 
There's no guarantee it will remain in business. Whether Mr. Fisk is 
financially-independent is irrelevant. If he were, he'd have started 
disseminating his articles directly to the Internet. The fact he chooses not 
to do so, and wishes to retain his association with the Independent, shows 
that he needs the infrastructure that the Independent provides -- this 
includes someone to make his flight bookings, someone to pay for his 
insurance (operating as a foreign correspondent, not being embedded, during 
a war in Baghdad, entails huge insurance premia), someone to pick up his 
hotel and phone bills -- and he needs to stay in a five star hotel not 
because he likes comforts, but because five star hotels have their own 
generators which guarantee power supply and they have phone lines that work, 
providing internet connectivity, and five star hotels are centrally-located 
places where it is easier to meet other journalists and newsmakers..... Mr. 
Fisk is not a pencil-wiending, letter-pad-carrying reporter in the trenches, 
although unlike many fly-by-night correspondents, he goes as soon as 
possible where the action is. To function effectively, a cottage industry is 
needed to support him. As Sarojini Naidu (I think) said of the Mahatma: 
Keeping Gandhiji in poverty is an expensive business.

Much of foreign correspondentship is mundane, requiring a lot of material 
support from so-called "capitalist" tools and agencies. Those things cost 
money, and someone, usually consumers who claim to value that output, should 
pay for it. Some consumers are privileged enough to work in first world 
university campuses and can get free access; many others, who don't even 
have access to computers, can't. So if you value that output, and if the 
cost is worth the intrinsic value, you should pay for it. Or depend on the 
largesse of others, who'll disseminate it via the Internet. But if you want 
Mr. Fisk to continue to operate effectively and write articles from his 
unique perspective, you would need to bear some of the cost (55p a day, in 
my case). If you have nothing but contempt for the Independent's 
stockholders and owners, they'll at some point go out of business, making it 
even harder for Mr. Fisk to operate the way he prefers (and there's nothing 
wrong with the way he wishes to operate).

Salil



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