Thursday, May 17, 2007

News site outsources local journalism

My brother sent me a link to this interesting article.

PASADENA, California (AP) -- The job posting was a head-scratcher: "We seek a newspaper journalist based in India to report on the city government and political scene of Pasadena, California, USA."

A reporter half a world away covering local street-light contracts and sewer repairs? A reporter who has never gotten closer to Pasadena than the telecast of the Rose Bowl parade?

Outsourcing first claimed manufacturing jobs, then hit services such as technical support, airline reservations and tax preparation. Now comes the next frontier: local journalism.

James Macpherson, editor and publisher of the two-year-old Web site pasadenanow.com, acknowledged it sounds strange to have journalists in India cover news in this wealthy city just outside Los Angeles.



I'm a little curious; how is it that someone in India can get the news in a town from overseas, and then publish it in that same town because the local people can't get the news themselves? That isn't journalism, most of us blogging can do that much without having to put forth hardly any effort. So how does that equate to a job as a journalist? I don't see how someone from another culture can report news when they are not even there to see it firsthand, and may misinterpret what they read, which is already coming to them second- or third-hand. It's a poor way to run a paper, if you ask me.

4 comments:

René O'Deay said...

Hi, bobG,
You obviously haven't visited NowPublic.com, it's an online news community with members all over the planet.
We share news, photos, videos, some of it live and breaking, some of excerpts from local news, with links back to originating media, newspapers, tv stations, etc.
And then we update them or other members add what they know or found out, or relevant photos or videos. so I think it's feasible.
Hey, I have a link to NowPublic.com on all my blogs, and you can see my news page from it.

BobG said...

An online news community I can understand; bloggers tend to get the news out better than the MSM does, sometimes. But hiring one or two people to be the only source for a publication doesn't seem like that good of an idea to me.

Anonymous said...

Hey there bobg, I agree with you that even though it's great for people all around the world to post news from their country and comment on anything happening worldwide, it's not the best to have someone living in India as a journalist working for "Pasadena Now"...
Anyway, I saw you visited my blog, hope you liked it and will visit again; if you find anything interesting please feel free to leave a comment ^^.

Anonymous said...

Kevin over at the Evolving Excellence blog moderated a panel discussion at Kellogg the other week on Onshoring and China. Let's see if I can find it...

Onshoring:
http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2007/05/a_tide_against_.html

Perils of China:
http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2007/05/littered_with_t.html

But foreign companies are moving here, even in big steel:
http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2007/05/nucor_look_over.html

Ken