In this modern world, you should be aware of this wide range of alternative careers that are there to choose from other than the regular jobs which are opted by the majority of students. In this series by Vox Populi, we interview alums who opted for unorthodox career paths.
Today, we interview Samarth Bansal, an alumnus of the UG Y11 batch. Samarth’s team revamped the Vox Populi in 2014 and launched its digital edition—the website where you are reading this. In four years of professional journalism, Samarth has worked as a full-time staffer with the data journalism teams of The Hindu and the Hindustan Times. He was awarded the Alfred Friendly Press Partners Fellowship in 2018 which led him to work with the investigative reporting team of the Wall Street Journal for five months at its New York City headquarters. Now he works as a freelance reporter in New Delhi and writes for various Indian and international publications. Here are some of the excerpts from our conversation with Samarth.
Q: How did you decide to opt for a career in journalism?
It was not a part of the plan. My friends knew me as a techie interested in building a technology startup. There are two parts to this answer: first, my involvement with Vox and second, making the career choice.
On Vox: I loved blogging. I started right after JEE, and my first post explained the physics of bowling. I published infrequently, but I really enjoyed writing: be it about personal musings or campus affairs. That interest led me to Vox Populi. A friend and I revamped the journalism society in 2014, setting up this website and getting people interested in campus journalism. I enjoyed this journey a lot.
For the career choice, here is some background: In my third semester, I had consciously decided to not sit for campus placements in the last year. I was caught up by the entrepreneurial bug at the time: the phase where techie teenagers idolize Steve Jobs. It was quite liberating because I got rid of the calculative decisions many of my friends made to do well at the campus placements.
In my fourth semester, I started working for an early stage startup in Mumbai as the lead software developer. It was a great experience. I did this for a couple of years and then decided to move on.
Quite ironically, my curiosity to explore the world beyond software into other exciting realms of technology—hardware, energy, materials—led me to a job in journalism. It so happened that two days before my mid-semester exams in the eighth semester, I went to participate in a policy hackathon organized by Harvard in New Delhi. I went alone, made a team on the spot and built a super simple Internet of Things product: the problem statement was to use data and tech for coping with the so-called “tanker mafia” in Delhi’s water system where water from tankers doesn’t reach the localities. So my team built a simple device to embed in the tankers that detects water levels through a sensor, transmits the data to a central dashboard where authorities can monitor and detect fraudulent patterns. Judges were impressed and we won the hackathon. That got us a fully sponsored ten day trip to Boston. How fun! That apart, one of the judges in the panel was an editor at The Hindu and I later learnt that the paper was looking to hire people interested in data journalism. I wrote to the editor to enquire more and that led me to an internship in the newspaper’s National Bureau in New Delhi. That was it. I enjoyed it so much that I have stayed in journalism since then.
I started with data/computational journalism—where, simply put, we use data analysis and graphics to inform our reporting and tell stories—and eventually into what doesn’t neatly fit into any fixed category of journalistic work. I still wrangle datasets to find stories, but my work is now much broader than that. You can call it a mix of explanatory journalism and investigations, and technology/data skills are extremely valuable there.
So that’s the story. I did not “follow my passion”. Journalism happened to me by chance. It was an accident. And I am glad it happened. That’s the most honest explanation I can give you.
I think we often downplay the role of chance in our lives, and how randomness dictates so much that happens to us. It’s easy to attribute causality to a certain event to make sense of what happened next. But that’s hindsight reasoning. There is a lot of literature on this topic and if you are interested, Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness is a great starting point. Read it. I sometimes wonder what I would be doing had I not gone to the hackathon and rather studied for semester exams! (laughs)
Q: How is your life as a freelance journalist?
It’s completely different than having a full time job—and for the good, at least for me. Work is no longer the central part of my life. The institutions we are part of and the work we do there become a part of our identity: that erodes in many ways as a freelancer. There is no concept of weekdays or weekends. Every day is different. For instance, if I am desperate to finish a new book, I can just not work for two days and read; or meet friends in the afternoon and work late in the evening. Then there are weeks where I am packed with assignments and have to work every day. That flexibility is quite powerful.
And the flexibility allows me to take up long term reporting assignments and look beyond the news cycle.
Q: Where do you work if you don’t have an office? And what about finances?
I mostly work out of coffee shops in Delhi. I have my list of 5-6 favorite spots that are work-friendly and that’s where I spend most of my working time if I am not on a reporting assignment.
As for the pay, yes, that’s variable. You don’t earn a fixed amount every month. So I set an annual goal and plan accordingly. You need to figure out a model to sustain yourself financially.
There is no formula for it. What is crucial is to have clearly defined goals, figure out your risk model and work towards it. I can recommend another book here: An Economist Walks Into A Brothel by Allison Schrager. It’s an easy read and helped me think about risk in everyday life.
Q: Tell us about Indian journalism and press freedom. What is it like?
Strictly speaking, free press in India is a myth. There are many pressures the big media faces, both economic and from the government. Everyone manages it differently. Having said that, there are ample opportunities to pursue independent journalism. I often say there is no such thing as “the media”—a clearly defined collective. It does not exist. Print newspaper journalism is very different than television, and both are very different from digital media. The medium of communication changes what constitutes news and how it is delivered. This is an underappreciated fact of how journalism works.
Economics of journalism is the biggest barrier to its freedom. Advertisement revenue — that has sustained journalism for decades — is shifting to big tech companies like Google and Facebook, and for good reason: they provide more value to advertisers. Add to that, that a great chunk—I don’t have the exact numbers—of the ad pie comes from government ads: cutting off ads from a newspaper for critical reporting is a powerful form of controlling news in the hands of the government. That leads to self-censorship, which is a big concern.
Figuring out a business model to sustain news in the digital age, filling in the trust deficit, helping people navigate information overload, good curation are some of the crucial challenges that journalism faces today.
Raj Kamal Jha, the editor-in-chief of Indian Express, aptly described the state of Indian journalism in 2016: “Good journalism is not dying; it is getting better and bigger. It’s just bad journalism makes a lot more noise than it used to do five years ago.”
Q: What is the role of technology in journalism?
A lot. The role of technology in journalism has increased and it will continue to increase. It helps journalists tell better stories through the web, which is an interactive medium; find stories in large data sets; do open-source investigations and find evidence through realms of digital trails people leave on the internet. That’s just the reporting side. Then there’s the whole field of distribution: how do you deliver stories to people, through different mediums, in the most effective way? How do you make news products tailored in line with people’s information consumption preferences? There are a lot of problems in the media industry as a whole – all open for creative destruction at the moment. It’s quite exciting.
I am also working on a project—parallel to my regular reporting assignments—where we are building bots that automatically write news stories based on high-frequency data. The larger field is called “natural language generation”. A friend and I are building this for a range of Indian datasets: economy, politics, environment, commodities, among other things. You will see more on it in the coming months. Our early experiments have been pretty good.
Q: Tell us more about your association with Vox Populi.
As far as I know, Vox Populi was started in the early 2000s. I have read the archives, and our seniors did a really good job.
During my time as a student, Vox was not very active. I don’t know what exactly happened, but we didn’t have a strong journalism body. There wasn’t even a website. In my final year, a friend and I got the chance to revamp things and start from scratch: that’s how voxiitk.com came into existence.
Back then, we didn’t have a strong team as you guys have now. Not many people were interested. We gave a series of presentations to encourage people to join Vox and gradually built a team. We launched Vox’s first website on 3rd August 2014 (he remembers the date distinctly and says it with a sense of nostalgia) along with the Facebook page.
Q: What do you think about the future of Vox Populi?
I have been in touch with all the chief editors since I graduated. Here are a few things we often discuss.
First, we need to focus on our editorial quality: how we write stories, language, narrative arc, all of that.
Second, many stories that Vox attempts fall in the cracks. Either students lose interest, or they keep on researching endlessly, and hence don’t end up publishing stuff. That needs to be fixed.
Third, Vox must challenge the administration. Vox’s vision has always been to be an independent fearless voice on the campus. I think the recent events at the campus says enough about why that is needed. Be critical about the campus, and don’t worry that writing stories will lead to negative publicity of IIT Kanpur.
Fourth, we should focus on the opinion section. I always wanted Vox to be a platform for everyone: professors, students, staff or the admin. If anyone wants to share their views, they should be encouraged to write on Vox’s platform. Vox needs more contributions and opinions from people outside the core team.
Q: What is your view on current administration at IIT Kanpur?
It’s mind-boggling, to say the least. I wrote an opinion piece for Vox with a friend on what’s going on at the campus. While talking to students for that piece, it was concerning to know the systematic curbing of student freedom. I find it difficult to believe this is the place I graduated from just a few years ago.
Q: Do you have any message for current students of IIT Kanpur?
First, if you have a knack for problem solving, start with small issues around. It is a great learning experience. Anything from how utilities in hostels function to changes in the academic system, if you care about it, work on them.
Second, we need to do away with mass narratives: stuff like what is a good department, what constitutes a good job, what’s a good salary, all of that. People’s preferences are dictated by their context.
For instance, I can’t even imagine working at an investment bank. It just does not fit in with the lifestyle I prefer. So that’s a terrible job for me. It might be good for someone else. But the sense that a job at a certain bank is the coolest at campus doesn’t make sense.
Same for salary: say two people make Rs X per annum. One lives with family and doesn’t have to pay rent, and free to keep the entire salary: spend, save, whatever, The other moved to a big city, has to clear off a family loan, and also has to support the education of siblings. Their requirements would be wildly different: Rs X is not the same for both. So we need to factor that in.
This also applies to the narratives around departments. Think about biological engineering: if you look at the global trends, it’s one of the most exciting spaces for innovation. But I often find students don’t value it enough.
Much of this I think is dictated by the campus placement market. In my view, we misunderstand the role of the Students’ Placement Office. Their mandate is clear: increase the percentage of people who get placed. They optimize for the number of people who get placed. It’s not their prerogative to fill in for individual needs and preferences. So think about what you want for yourself, what fits in best for you and take the leap.
Lastly, for the freshers, be careful about the fundas which second and third year students give you. They know as little as you do. Try to connect with more alumni, and for campus stuff, to fourth year students.
Q: Do you have any suggestions for students interested in journalism?
I have four suggestions to anyone even remotely interested in journalism or writing.
First, you have to be curious. This is not a suggestion as much it is an indication of whether journalism is for you. That’s what drives the quest to find out new things and report stories. In which other profession will you be paid to ask questions about the world, find out the answers, read about it, talk to the best people in the field and sharing what you find with the public? It’s a great job for curious people.
Second, read. Read a lot and read widely. My reading compliments my journalism a lot, it’s a source of ideas as well as understanding how to approach complex ideas. I wish I had read more during university.
Third, write. Do independent blogging. Write for the campus newspaper. Your writing may be amateurish but put the stuff out and get feedback. You have no idea how embarrassing my blog was, both in terms of writing and the quality of ideas—and I did not realize it for years. (laughs). But you can’t grow if you don’t start somewhere. If you look up at my very first blogs, even I would be ashamed of them!
Fourth, if you are genuinely interested in exploring journalism as a career option, do internships. Look beyond the SPO. Reach out to organisations where you want to work at. It takes effort but you can find some way. Ask your seniors and alums for help.
Samarth can be reached at samarthbansal42@gmail.com.
Written by: Abhimanyu Sethia, Devansh Parmar, Divyansh Sati
Poster by: Debaditya Bhattacharya
