ABSTRACT
While news fixers’ labor certainly deserves Borpujari’s attention, as well as the attention of journalism scholars, there are other disadvantaged workers in the hierarchical profession of international news reporting. Journalism scholars need to embrace an approach to studying international news work that emphasizes the perspectives of the industry’s most devalued laborers—particularly because, as Borpujari’s Op-Ed in the CJR asserts, this news work is informed by colonial and neocolonial logics. But what should such an approach to international journalism scholarship look like, and what might be particularly productive about taking this approach? These are the two questions that this chapter seeks to answer. The chapter aims to answer the first question with the following argument: In order to adequately address the hierarchies that plague international journalism, news scholars should focus most explicitly on the labor of local stringers and “fixers.” To answer the second question, the chapter argues that a focus on local stringers’ and “fixers’” own perspectives is useful.
