Journalism Jobs Outsourced to India? (This Posted From the USA… For Now)
By Tom Chandler on May 15, 2007 in Business of Freelancing, Copywriting
I’m not interested in pushing any panic buttons on the copywriting front, but it’s interesting to see offshoring creeping its way up the writing-for-hire food chain.
At first, technical work went overseas. Then SEO and article-writing gigs. Now we’re seeing reporting jobs moved offshore:
The world may be flat, as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has written, but I always liked to think I was standing on a hill. Now comes the news that pasadenanow.com, a local news site, is recruiting reporters in India. The website’s editor points out that he can get two Indian reporters for a mere $20,800 a year - and no, they won’t be commuting from New Delhi. Since Pasadena’s city council meetings can be observed on the web, the Indian reporters will be able to cover local politics from half the planet away. And if they ever feel a need to see the potholes of Pasadena, there’s always Google Earth.
The above was posted on HuffingtonPost.com by Barbara Ehrenreich, a journalist and writer. She goes on to say:
Still, writing was believed to be safe - the last stronghold of Western creativity. Explaining the outsourcing of almost every newspaper function, including copy-editing, the billionaire CEO of a consortium of Irish newspapers wrote: ”With the exception of the magic of writing and editing news … almost every other function, except printing, is location-indifferent.” But the magic has clearly been fading, starting two years ago when Reuters started outsourcing its Wall Street coverage to Bangalore. Is there nothing an actual, on-site, American can’t do better than anyone else?
Copywriting is about translating great ideas into print, and it’s difficult to imagine my job being outsourced, but then, the same anthemic cry of denial no doubt erupted from the call center operators, graphic artists, software engineers and (now) journalists who went before me.
Keep writing, Tom Chandler.
[tags]writing, copywriting, pasadeannow.com, offshoring, journalism[/tags]
The Washington Post covered this story, as well. I think it’s a lousy idea and bad journalism. The Post article went further, though, and talked about the importance of understanding the cultural nuances at play. Someone in India may be able to report the facts via webcam but without a solid grounding in the culture, may not be able to discern the meaning of facts/events accurately. Not to mention being able to get the feel of the room and the people in it.
But hey, what do I know. Everyone today calls themselves a “citizen journalist.”
Roberta Rosenberg, The Copywriting Maven | May 15, 2007 | Reply
I agree with Roberta. I think there are too many inherent differences and nuances for Indian writers to be able to engage adequately with a Western audience. I’m hoping these outsourcing projects/experiments have been undertaken without properly understanding these differences. Hopefully, outsourcing copy to India will be just a phase before businesses realise that some skills cannot be replicated elsewhere.
Or I could be wrong - in which case I will have to relocate to India just so I can live above the minimum wage.
Matt Ambrose | May 16, 2007 | Reply
I largely agree, though it seems that much of the low-end SEO work has already gone overseas.
I can’t imagine offshoring a high-end ad campaign. And it’s clear a lot of companies who rushed to offshore support and development functions are pulling back from those decisions.
I’ve worked for both English and Scottish companies, and that was hard enough. And (supposedly), we mostly speak the same language… 8-)
Tom Chandler | May 16, 2007 | Reply
This is still very much the commodization of (copy) writing — the only real difference being that the lowest bidder not only lives half-a-world-away and is steeped in a very different culture.
Roberta makes a fascinating point, I think, that today everyone calls themselves a “citizen journalist”. But, this is largely do to how easy it is to create a blog, isn’t it?
That raises some interesting questions: because of the prevalence of blogging is the “bar” inherently lower? Are we as writers shooting ourselves in the foot by taking part in this blogging revolution or are we adding to the problem against which we all complain – the ascendancy of bad writing?
Susan Minarcin | May 16, 2007 | Reply
Roberta’s “Citizen Journalist” comment was hilarious. It’s hard to define what most blogs publish as “journalism.”
Commentary? Analysis? Observation? Possibly. But journalism? Only a handful.
A couple months ago I started a post suggesting that professionals (us) make our lives harder for ourselves instead of easier by blogging.
Never quite got it finished, but perhaps someday I will.
Tom Chandler | May 16, 2007 | Reply
My feeling is it can’t happen without a serious lowering or twisting of writing standards. Most English-speaking Indians, though very fluent and comfortable with the language, speak and write an “altered’ kind of English — even grammatically so. It is not just style and brevity, it’s an often archaic (by US/UK standards) use of words and turns of phrases. I know. I live in India and read their papers daily.
Judith | Jul 12, 2007 | Reply
Judith: I think the differences in the language would prevent any large scale offshoring, but the work in question isn’t exactly high value copy.
Perhaps the market for this kind of work will stick. It doesn’t affect me, but it does tend to remove a few rungs from the bottom of the ladder — runs commonly used by new writers trying to break in…
Tom Chandler | Jul 12, 2007 | Reply
It’s amazing how many racists lurk on this site. Since when did language become the property of a single country/race/community? Cultural nuances are never in question when ignorant Western journalists make stereotypical comments on Arabs and people of other non English speaking ethnicities. Grow up people - the job market is a level playing field now. I once worked in a “Third World” news bureau and today I teach communication to undergraduates at a reputed US university. The world is changing - we ought to give up our prejudices and learn to appreciate that everyone who is qualified has the right to a job, no matter where their location or what their native language.
Ria | Jun 16, 2008 | Reply
Ria:
Perhaps you could locate the racist passages for us. I read the original post and comments, and see a discussion of economic-driven realities and limitations inherent in the cultural periscope; no more racist than suggesting foreign car manufacturers built their US factories in rural areas because wages were lower (hint: they did).
In your own comment, you said “everyone who is qualified has the right to a job” and in fact, we were debating the idea of “qualification.”
Can someone half a world away write tellingly about a meeting from a video? Can a copywriter tap into a largely foreign culture and sell to it? Or do very real cultural differences stand in the way?
Amusingly, you suggest western news people aren’t up to the job, an assertion that actually bolsters the case of those you’d so glibly label as racist.
Yes, we are all equal, but it would be ludicrous to suggest we see the world the same way, and by your twisted standard, it would be impossible to discuss that reality without being smeared as a racist.
If that’s the case, then the marketplace of ideas has already shut down, and the battle for civil discourse lost.
Tom Chandler | Jun 17, 2008 | Reply