The stringer's tale

Praised by writer Pico Iyer as a journalist with the verve of a V.S. Naipaul, Anjan Sundaram has been reporting for the New York Times on Africa for a while.

Stringer is about his days as a stringer for AP in the Republic of Congo; instead of the usual gripe against the life of a stringer, Sundaram says something extraordinary about stringing: Astringer, writes Sundaram, makes a better reporter than a full-time foreign correspondent, even though stringers get less than minimum wage and risks her life by living inside say a village that is at the center of a civil war. 

In contrast to a stringer's report, reports by star foreign correspondents are distant, oversimplified and frequently de-contextualized. Star foreign correspondents tend to live away from conflict zones and consequently are rarely in direct touch with those affected by civil and military strifes. They stay for a few weeks in the best hotels in hub cities, that are removed from the scene where events are unfolding.

The reports that emerge from such distant or mediated encounters with the real tell stories that are only seemingly about others, but really are "about ourselves." The "telltale signs" of such stories is

is "a distinct assuredness":

Confusion and vulnerability are stripped away, as are the contradictions and subtleties of life. People and places are reduced to simple narratives--good and evil, victim and killer. Such narratives may be easy to digest. But they tell us only a portion of the story.