Foreign reporting commonly depends on the support of local aides assisting international journalists while working on the ground, thus “fixing” their stories. Fixers contribute to reporting as translators and drivers, or guide foreign correspondents through the country. However, they also often serve as door-openers to potential interviewees and sources of reporting for foreign correspondents or “parachutists”. They arrange interviews and help international journalists to better understand local contexts, and develop story ideas together with them. Fixers are often, but not necessarily, journalists themselves, who might already have investigated stories for local media similar to those they help international media to cover.
In the context of international reporting, the term “stringer” is sometimes used in a rather interchangeable way, even though the distinction often made is that fixers, unlike stringers, do not themselves produce stories independently, despite their crucial role in the logistics of newsgathering. Others, though, argue that these roles have become more blurred, and fixers increasingly take on the tasks of international reporters due to shrinking budgets for international reporting, or growing security concerns related to the safety and wellbeing of foreign reporters in war and conflict zones.
Especially, international reporters who are not permanent envoys to a certain country often lack the networks of contacts, language skills, and background knowledge necessary to conduct research on their own. Fixers have been a crucial element within the structures of foreign reporting for decades, but have not attracted much interest within studies of international communication and the professional debates among international reporters. However, since the 2000s scholars and practitioners alike have increasingly problematized the role of fixers within the human resource structures of international reporting. One focus of attention has been the lack of safety for fixers, who may be even less protected than international reporters when covering sensitive issues, as well as their precarious working conditions.
It is commonly complained that fixers are rarely credited for their work, despite being co-creators of journalistic stories through their indispensable help. The journalist-fixer relationship has often been described as one of unequal power, mirroring the cleavages in international (news media) power settings and discrepancies in geographies of news. Even the term “fixer” itself has become disputed due to its assumed pejorative connotations, with “local freelancers” or “local producers” being preferred by some to better capture their often far-reaching contribution. Yet, it has also been stressed that fixers are not necessarily victims of how global news is reported, but they do have agency in shaping the stories told to international audiences. Research has also pointed towards a growing professionalism and sense of entrepreneurship among fixers.
In this regard, collaboration with local journalists through more cross-cultural means of international reporting such as cross-border journalism has gained increasing attention, as a way to acknowledge the local perspective these contributors can bring to an informed and contextualized international reporting.
