Kathmandu, April 15 -- When journalist Suresh Rajak died on assignment in Tinkune on March 28 last year, he had not received a paycheck in ten months. His employer, Avenues Television, settled his outstanding salary only after his death triggered a wave of public outrage. The incident briefly forced into view what has been an open secret in Nepal's media industry for the last few years: journalists across the country are routinely going months without pay, with little recourse and nowhere else to go.

"There's nowhere to leave for," one journalist at Mountain Television told Kantipur. "Every place is the same. Who do you even complain to?"

Nepal's traditional journalism industry is in the middle of a slow-motion collapse that its own pra...