US Journalists Migrating to Indian Newsrooms

A worker sorts papers at a distribution centre: 150 million people read a newspaper every day in India, compared to 97 million Americans

With falling revenue, circulations and share prices, the American news industry seems to have entered the apocalypse.

Mass redundancies across the sector mean the industry now has its smallest workforce since 1984 – last year alone 2,400 journalists left newspaper newsrooms, according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Charles Layton, of the American Journalism Review, foresees that ‘we may begin seeing, pretty soon, big American cities with no daily newspaper.’

However, as US newsprint finds itself entering a recession, the news industry is booming overseas. India’s burgeoning economy in particular has paved the way for a similarly booming news industry. Circulation of Indian newspapers has been growing steadily, and new titles are appearing all the time.

Western magazines such as Vogue, Rolling Stone, FHM, and Maxim have already launched successful Indian editions. Raju Narisetti, formerly editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe, now edits business title Mint in the country, employing several journalists from the U.S.

Growth is even greater in the non-English media, as provincial India becomes more literate and has more disposable income. In broadcast, the industry’s newfound economic strength means that TV channels can poach the best journalists from print by offering salaries as high as $180,000 a year.

But all this growth means that demand is expanding faster than labour can keep up. While some American papers are cutting their freelance budgets, India is a freelancer’s goldmine: there are more stories than there are writers or time enough to report them.

Young journalists in particular are flocking the country, attracted by the assignments, salaries and fast-track career advancement they wouldn’t get at home in the West. Editors such as Pankaj Paul of the Hindustan Times have even been head-hunting in the US’s top graduate journalism schools, looking for candidates to work on Indian titles.

Naturally, everything goes in cycles, and it surely won’t be long before the Indian press cools down, or the US industry finds a more viable business model. But, for now, India is making history before our eyes.