Guest — Shalini Singh: I wish journalism were a lot more aspirational than it is today. I’m curious about what isn’t being told to me. And what isn’t being told to me is that 70% of your country’s stories may not be reaching you.
Anybody with a mobile camera can record something and report from the spot. But that isn’t necessarily journalism in its complete sense. Journalism involves fact-checking, verification and editing. It is someone else’s story, and the journalist is the medium—not the story itself.
Host — Nikunj: Hi, and welcome to Postcards: Your Passport to Unseen Corners of People, Policy and Politics. I’m your host, Nikunj. Thank you for joining us for what I hope will turn out to be a brilliant episode today.
Today, we’re going to be talking about a lot of things, so I don’t want to give too much away in the introduction. We have a fabulous guest with us. Her name is Shalini Singh. Shalini, thank you so much for joining us.
Guest — Shalini Singh: Thank you for having me.
Host: How are you feeling? Nervous? What’s making you so nervous?
Guest: I just hope I live up to your expectations for this conversation. There’s nothing to live up to—or live down to. It’s my first podcast.
Host: Okay, so why haven’t you done a podcast before?
Guest: I haven’t been invited!
Host: We can change that. If people enjoy this conversation, we can invite you for more podcast conversations as well.
Guest: Thank you for inviting me.
Host: It’s so good to have you here. The team and I have been reading about some of the work you’ve done, which we’ll explore in more detail. Of course, you’ve also received several awards. It’s incredible to see, including the Ramnath Goenka Award.
I’m mentioning that because there are several other awards as well, and you’ve had quite an incredible journey.
Just before the shoot, we were talking about our previous podcast, which recently went out. It was with Mridula Koshy, and we discussed libraries as a third space, which was really interesting.
You mentioned that you had conducted a workshop there once—in September last year, I think.
A colleague of mine, who lives in Dwarka, and I met at the library. We sat down with community leaders from different parts of the city and talked about how to look at communities, people and the stories within them. We were trying to understand things at the most local level.
Guest: Yes, that was something we did. It was interactive, and we mostly encouraged the participants to share their questions and ideas. They were already working on certain things but weren’t sure how to take them forward. We tried to help them develop those ideas and think about how they could move forward from there.
It was a great conversation. We shared examples from our own work. I spoke about the work I’ve done in Delhi on climate change, and we tried to connect those examples to the local context.
Host: If a seven-year-old child came to one of these workshops and asked you, “What does a journalist do, and why does journalism really matter?”, what would you tell them?