Outsourcing journalism to cut costs
Outsourcing to reduce labour costs has caught on in many industries, and it’s happening in journalism too.
The latest example is pasadenanow.com, where editor and publisher James Macpherson is recruiting a journalist based in India to cover local politics in California. The reporter will be expected to watch council meetings online and conduct interviews by phone or email.
Editor & Publisher reports that some people find the idea appalling and ill-advised:
“Nobody in their right mind would trust the reporting of people who not only don’t know the institutions but aren’t even there to witness the events and nuances,” said Bryce Nelson, a University of Southern California journalism professor and Pasadena resident. “This is a truly sad picture of what American journalism could become.”
It is a shaky business proposition as well, said Uday Karmarkar, a UCLA professor of technology and strategy who outsources copy editing and graphics work to Indian businesses. If the goal is sophisticated reporting, he said, Macpherson could end up spending more time editing than the labor savings are worth.
But Macpherson isn’t the only one cutting costs through outsourcing.
The editors who run US news website reuters.com and British site reuters.co.uk sit at desks in Toronto, where Reuters takes advantage of lower pay rates for Canadian journalists.
And New Zealand Herald publisher APN plans to have most of its newspaper pages, for the Herald and smaller papers around the country, edited by another company. Although the work will still be done in New Zealand (and the contracting company will have to set up a new operation to do it), it is expected to cost less than having the work done in-house. About 70 APN staff will lose their jobs.
>> More on outsourcing journalism jobs to India and to China
PasadenaNow.com hires two reporters in India to help cover Pasadena news; Eye Level Pasadena approves « Eye Level Pasadena wrote:
[…] Journalism and the World: I’m not the only one looking to hire from India Journalism.co.uk: Local news reporting outsourced to India (quotes Foothill Cities’s post and this post) Ed Driscoll.com: You can’t make this stuff up (via Topix) latimes.com: Local news reporting outsourced to India pasadenastarnews.com: The news coming from afar Cincom Smalltalk: Dumb and Dumber Neil Sanderson: Outsourcing journalism to cut costs […]
Posted on 11-May-07 at 10:14 am | Permalink
Covering Pasadena from 9,000 miles away » mathewingram.com/media wrote:
[…] notes, Reuters already has staffers in India rewriting press releases. My friend Neil Sanderson has more. newspaper, outsourcing | Share […]
Posted on 11-May-07 at 12:36 pm | Permalink
Covering Pasadena from 9,000 miles away » mathewingram.com/work wrote:
[…] notes, Reuters already has staffers in India rewriting press releases. My friend Neil Sanderson has more. india, media, newspapers | Share This | Related […]
Posted on 11-May-07 at 12:39 pm | Permalink
Centinel wrote:
We’re a Pasadena-based blog that covers local politics, so this story was of particular interest. Our comments, which got picked up by LA Observed and a number of other blogs, can be found here:
http://foothillcities.blogspot.com/2007/05/pasadenanow-outsources-local-news.html
In brief, while there’s a helluva lot you can do online, quality local journalism, beyond just summarizing city council meetings and parroting the local news headlines, is something that almost certainly can’t be done from a different continent. Of course, we appreciate your thoughts.
Posted on 11-May-07 at 2:54 pm | Permalink
Pasadena Now - following the discussion online « Eye Level Pasadena wrote:
[…] pasadenastarnews.com*: The news coming from afar Cincom Smalltalk: Dumb and Dumber Neil Sanderson: Outsourcing journalism to cut costs West Coast Grrly Blather*: Pasadena Weekly Dan Gillmor, Center for Citizen Media Blog: Outsourced […]
Posted on 12-May-07 at 10:53 am | Permalink
robhyndman.com » Blog Archive » More on Outsourcing Journalism wrote:
[…] of Neil’s post earlier this week on recent news of outsourcing journalism, this post by Liz Foreman at Lost Remote […]
Posted on 13-May-07 at 6:03 am | Permalink
More info here wrote:
More info here…
Good job narrowing down all the information….
Posted on 08-Jul-09 at 11:17 pm | Permalink