“The Good Reporter: A Memoir of Journalism in the 21st Century, A Collective Biography” (Simon & Schuster India, 2026) is the story of Khabar Lahariya, India’s only women-run independent rural news outlet. Founded in 2002 in Bundelkhand, one of the country’s most drought-stricken, underdeveloped regions, the paper is staffed largely by women from marginalized communities, many of whom came to journalism without formal education. Today, the outlet reaches 5 million people every month across multiple digital platforms, with a network of about two dozen reporters across 16 districts of the north-central regions of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh — areas largely uncovered by mainstream media.
The newsroom gained international attention as the subject of “Writing With Fire,” an Oscar-nominated documentary directed by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh — though the journalists of Khabar Lahariya said the film captured only part of their story.
“The Good Reporter” is their response to that. Written as a collective biography — drawing on a feminist sociological research methodology in which a group shares individual memories to build a layered account — the book interweaves personal memories with reporting anecdotes to examine the stories journalists choose to tell and the ways they choose to tell them.
This edited excerpt traces the outlet’s origins to a literacy workshop that produced a homemade broadsheet, which the group decided to sell.
Khabar Lahariya came out of an idea piloted in 1993 in a residential adult literacy centre run in the nineties in Banda district of Uttar Pradesh, as part of the Mahila Samakhya programme. A broadsheet was developed in workshops with women students and distributed to rural communities. It quickly gained popularity. It was the first and only piece of mass media in the local language, Bundeli, centering remote rural audiences and prioritizing stories of their everyday lives.
The kernel of who and what we are, local journalists and a local news product, emerged in the nineties in India. It was a moment of globalization with new kinds of resources and ideas for ‘development’ work. We emerged in the fertile environment of policies and programmes that brought women into the public domain as proactive subjects, like the Mahila Samakhya programme, introduced the idea of education as a critical tool and process to empower adult women. Chitrakoot, where we would start Khabar Lahariya, was one district where this programme was implemented.
And it was created by women. This literacy product took on an unexpected significance—that prophesied its future outside of the world of development that it was born in—when the women who produced it began to price and sell it. Dehati [NR: a pejorative Hindi term meaning rural or country-dweller], unpad [illiterate] women selling a broadsheet! Stepping out of their homes, piling into jeeps, and wading through rivers to get people to buy and read! And people paid. This propelled the idea of a more permanent local newspaper, which eventually launched as Khabar Lahariya in 2002.
Khabar Lahariya had, at its heart, the desire to bring into the public domain stories about everyday rural lives from the perspective of those considered most unlikely—because of their castes, and their history of exclusion from education—to have a public voice. We were in a prime location to put this corrective desire into action.
Uttar Pradesh is the largest state in the country, with the largest number of members of Parliament. It is densely populated and, from its cities to its smallest hamlets, holds firmly and distinctively to the norms of caste, class and gender. Bundelkhand, where Banda is located, is on the southern border of the state—rocky, stricken by drought, and with a history of underdevelopment and poverty. Here, sensational crime abounded, yet the politics of the well-oiled, deeply striated, feudal system operating within the democratic structure of the panchayat found little space in the newspapers in circulation. The broadsheets available were densely packed with stories in small print, in a language that no one spoke (or read, in these districts with dismal literacy rates) and mostly included stories about cities far away and unrelated to the everyday lives of rural people. They were—and mostly still are—owned by large businesses or politicians, and reporters and stringers were predominantly ‘upper’-caste’.
Khabar Lahariya became the only newspaper that represented rural lives in intimate detail, reported and distributed by women who knew life and work, hardship and violence, and the culture in these villages better than anyone else. It was written in the language we spoke and our neighbours spoke. Not being able to read was no barrier; copies were bought and read aloud by the often-theatrical men found on the village chabutra, or schoolgoing children to their mothers while they cooked and worked.
With the gaze and language of rural women, Khabar Lahariya brought an understanding of the business of the rural public space that no ‘mainstream’ newspaper had. It brought into the ambit of the public forum why Kalavati being burnt alive by ‘accidental’ fire while she was making chapatis was suspicious; why Gangaram Tiwari, with his three buffaloes, ten bighas [a unit of land measurement, commonly .6 acres] of land and government job, had his application for a house under the rural housing scheme for the poor passed immediately, but landless, sickly Kallu Ahirwar’s application was delayed for years; why Tabassum couldn’t get her meagre widow pension from the bank; or why Raju [also known as] Abbas, a local stringer with a portfolio of reports praising the local administration, seemed to have more modern amenities in his house than anyone else in the village.
This, then, became Khabar Lahariya’s foundational principle, and eventually, our ‘brand’: ‘Aapki khabar, aapki bhasha mein’, your news, in your language.
The post ‘Your News, in Your Language’: How Khabar Lahariya, a Women-Run News Platform, Brought Hyperlocal Journalism to Rural India appeared first on Nieman Reports.
Credit Art: Yashas Chandra “The Good Reporter: A Memoir of Journalism in the 21st Century, A Collective Biography” (Simon & Schuster India, 2026) is the story of Khabar Lahariya, India’s only women-run independent rural news outlet. Founded in 2002 in Bundelkhand, one of the country’s most drought-stricken, underdeveloped regions, the paper is staffed largely by women from marginalized communities, many of whom came to journalism without formal education. Today, the outlet reaches 5 million people every month across multiple digital platforms, with a network of about two dozen reporters across 16 districts of the north-central regions of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh — areas largely uncovered by mainstream media. The newsroom gained international attention as the subject of “Writing With Fire,” an Oscar-nominated documentary directed by Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh — though the journalists of Khabar Lahariya said the film captured only part of their story. “The Good Reporter” is their response to that. Written as a collective biography — drawing on a feminist sociological research methodology in which a group shares individual memories to build a layered account — the book interweaves personal memories with reporting anecdotes to examine the stories journalists choose to tell and the ways they choose to tell them. This edited excerpt traces the outlet’s origins to a literacy workshop that produced a homemade broadsheet, which the group decided to sell. Khabar Lahariya came out of an idea piloted in 1993 in a residential adult literacy centre run in the nineties in Banda district of Uttar Pradesh, as part of the Mahila Samakhya programme. A broadsheet was developed in workshops with women students and distributed to rural communities. It quickly gained popularity. It was the first and only piece of mass media in the local language, Bundeli, centering remote rural audiences and prioritizing stories of their everyday lives. The kernel of who and what we are, local journalists and a local news product, emerged in the nineties in India. It was a moment of globalization with new kinds of resources and ideas for ‘development’ work. We emerged in the fertile environment of policies and programmes that brought women into the public domain as proactive subjects, like the Mahila Samakhya programme, introduced the idea of education as a critical tool and process to empower adult women. Chitrakoot, where we would start Khabar Lahariya, was one district where this programme was implemented. And it was created by women. This literacy product took on an unexpected significance—that prophesied its future outside of the world of development that it was born in—when the women who produced it began to price and sell it. Dehati [NR: a pejorative Hindi term meaning rural or country-dweller], unpad [illiterate] women selling a broadsheet! Stepping out of their homes, piling into jeeps, and wading through rivers to get people to buy and read! And people paid. This propelled the idea of a more permanent local newspaper, which eventually launched as Khabar Lahariya in 2002. Khabar Lahariya had, at its heart, the desire to bring into the public domain stories about everyday rural lives from the perspective of those considered most unlikely—because of their castes, and their history of exclusion from education—to have a public voice. We were in a prime location to put this corrective desire into action. Khabar Lahariya reporter Shivdevi, right, interviews a farmer in Banda, Uttar Pradesh, in 2020 about her claims that an illegal sand mining operation had destroyed her land and endangered her livelihood. Shivdevi joined Khabar Lahariya after completing a six-month women’s literacy course. Like many of her colleagues, she did not receive formal higher education before entering journalism. Khabar Lahariya Uttar Pradesh is the largest state in the country, with the largest number of members of Parliament. It is densely populated and, from its cities to its smallest hamlets, holds firmly and distinctively to the norms of caste, class and gender. Bundelkhand, where Banda is located, is on the southern border of the state—rocky, stricken by drought, and with a history of underdevelopment and poverty. Here, sensational crime abounded, yet the politics of the well-oiled, deeply striated, feudal system operating within the democratic structure of the panchayat found little space in the newspapers in circulation. The broadsheets available were densely packed with stories in small print, in a language that no one spoke (or read, in these districts with dismal literacy rates) and mostly included stories about cities far away and unrelated to the everyday lives of rural people. They were—and mostly still are—owned by large businesses or politicians, and reporters and stringers were predominantly ‘upper’-caste’. Khabar Lahariya became the only newspaper that represented rural lives in intimate detail, reported and distributed by women who knew life and work, hardship and violence, and the culture in these villages better than anyone else. It was written in the language we spoke and our neighbours spoke. Not being able to read was no barrier; copies were bought and read aloud by the often-theatrical men found on the village chabutra, or schoolgoing children to their mothers while they cooked and worked. With the gaze and language of rural women, Khabar Lahariya brought an understanding of the business of the rural public space that no ‘mainstream’ newspaper had. It brought into the ambit of the public forum why Kalavati being burnt alive by ‘accidental’ fire while she was making chapatis was suspicious; why Gangaram Tiwari, with his three buffaloes, ten bighas [a unit of land measurement, commonly .6 acres] of land and government job, had his application for a house under the rural housing scheme for the poor passed immediately, but landless, sickly Kallu Ahirwar’s application was delayed for years; why Tabassum couldn’t get her meagre widow pension from the bank; or why Raju [also known as] Abbas, a local stringer with a portfolio of reports praising the local administration, seemed to have more modern amenities in his house than anyone else in the village. This, then, became Khabar Lahariya’s foundational principle, and eventually, our ‘brand’: ‘Aapki khabar, aapki bhasha mein’, your news, in your language. The post ‘Your News, in Your Language’: How Khabar Lahariya, a Women-Run News Platform, Brought Hyperlocal Journalism to Rural India appeared first on Nieman Reports. Read More