concept
Provincial Newspaper Correspondent
correspondent
also: газетчик, корресподент
A local, unpaid or barely-paid contributor who sends occasional items ('correspondence') to a big-city newspaper -- a marginal, often mocked figure in provincial Russian society, and the story's central satirical target.
Reading notes
- The Correspondent §4 the newspaperman
A gazetchik: an unpaid or barely-paid local stringer who sends occasional items to a big-city paper -- a real and slightly ridiculous fixture of provincial Russian life that Chekhov (himself once such a correspondent) knew intimately.
- A Fairy Tale §3 сотрудничает в газетах
"Sotrudnichat' v gazetakh" (to contribute to / be on the staff of the newspapers) is the same marginal-journalist social role Chekhov satirizes elsewhere in this corpus (cf. "Korrespondent") -- here inflated to absurdity by giving the claim to a housefly, whose only real 'contribution' turns out to be the specks she leaves on old newsprint.