Towards the end of the discussion on “Big Business in Media: Alternatives for Independent Journalists” organised by the Foundation for Media Professionals (FMP), a young scribe got up to ask the panelists present: “What alternatives are there for an independent journalist like me, when there’s no money?” His grouse was that a publication he had written for had not paid him. “They literally made me beg for my cheque. Fed up of asking, I let it go eventually.”

Another aspiring journalism student complained that an online portal she works for pays her nothing. “Not even for my travel or for the phone calls I make for a story.” She added that she’d like to join TV and not print because that’s where money and recognition is. “Print is only a way to broadcast.”

When I first decided to become a journalist, a cousin, who had worked with an English daily and now teaches at Jawaharlal Nehru University, warned me: “There are two kinds of jobs: One in which you have the money, but no time to spend it . And, the other, in which you have all the time but no money to spend. In journalism, you have none – neither time, nor money.”

After I joined the industry, I heard several editors and senior reporters speak along the same lines. Some of the best in the business left for precisely these reasons, given that the work hours and stress levels are almost always inversely proportional to the salary.

And the situation does not just pertain to India. According to the Career Cast 2014 list of the 10 worst jobs in the US, the job of a newspaper reporter was better than only that of a lumberjack. The survey stated that the worst jobs tended to be those with low pay and high levels of stress. Notably, it also stated that a lot of people who make up the worst list love their jobs and said they won’t have it any other way.

It was, therefore, in order that one of the panelists, India Spend and Boom TV Editor Govindraj Ethiraj, told the young scribe that he must be clear about the reasons for which he has entered the profession, implying, of course, that money cannot be one of them. Journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta reiterated this, stating that you had to reach a fine balance between your “mission” and “commission”: “It is tough and it takes time.”

Meagre and delayed salaries are something that all journalists on the panel seemed to have dealt with. Columnist Ashok Malik spoke candidly of a cheque from a news publication that recently bounced. “Of course, I have other sources of income and didn’t depend on that one cheque but imagine what that could do to any other journalist.”

Indeed, as he stated, the financial insecurity that a lot of journalists face is one reason why many of them have welcomed big corporations, like Reliance, entering the media. As much as we’d like to paint doomsday scenarios over corporations entering the media, the fact is that a flawed business model with excessive dependence on advertisers has put news industry on shaky ground. To be sure, Network 18 was running losses before Reliance India Limited (RIL) came into the picture and the immediate grounds of the buyover, one would guess, were more Network 18’s need to sustain itself than RIL’s urge to “influence” media discourse. As Malik pointed out, it would be foolish to assume that RIL had to buy a media house to “influence” the media.

The FMP event was organised at Delhi’s tony India International Centre precisely to address concerns arising from the Network 18 takeover and the recent recommendations by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on cross-media ownership and big businesses entering the media.

The panel, apart from Malik, Thakurta and Ethiraj, also had Scroll Founder and CEO Samir Patil, Omidyar Director (Investments) C V Madhukar and journalist Siddharth Varadarajan.

FMP’s invite clearly stated that the event will not be “given to lamentations about lost innocence”. Broadly, it laid out four points to discuss: (a) if corporate groups gain added advantage by acquiring media houses; (b) whether diversified business houses should be restricted from entering news media; (c) do restrictions on cross-media holdings make sense in the age of the Internet and proliferation of news media outlets; and (d) what are the alternatives for enterprising independent journalists.

Thakurta stated that it is still early days to assess the impact Reliance’s takeover will have on the reportage in Network 18’s news outlets. However, he said it is also unlikely that employees there will bite the hand that feeds them.

Media ownership is a problem that has no easy solutions. While the discussion at the FMP panel focused attention on the perils of big businesses or advertisers providing the monies, the prospect of a public broadcaster, like Doordarshan, does not instill hope either, given the way it is arm twisted by the government of the day. Should consumers pay for the news they get? While this may sound great on paper, there are precious few examples of this model working on the ground.

What then is the solution for journalism to remain sustainable, while also maintaining editorial integrity? For starters, perhaps owners and editors need to realise that loss-making entities, poor salary scales and shoddy journalism are all part of a business model that is crumbling and needs to be replaced. (A standard joke among reporters goes something like “itne paise main itna hi milega” – a polite excuse for turning in below-average or half-baked stories.) Online journalism is already challenging status quo and examples from the West show that quality journalism can be viable too. Adverse market realities can then be a breeding ground for innovation and disruption. Are journalists up for the challenge?