Reporting on Pasadena from India
Well, now I can officially say I’ve heard everything when it comes to saving money in the journalism biz:
Pasadena news site outsources local coverage to India
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.
But he said it can be done from afar now that weekly Pasadena City Council meetings can be watched over the Internet. And he said the idea makes business sense because of India’s lower labor costs.
“I think it could be a significant way to increase the quality of journalism on the local level without the expense that is a major problem for local publications,” said the 51-year-old Pasadena native. “Whether you’re at a desk in Pasadena or a desk in Mumbai, you’re still just a phone call or e-mail away from the interview.”
The first articles, some of which will carry bylines, are slated to appear Friday.
OK, I hear him on the whole Webcasting thing, but from personal experience, I have to say there’s no substitute for being able to clarify things after a meeting with residents, elected officials and staff. And, of course, residents coming in to vent at meetings are an invaluable source of story leads and you miss out on those entirely if you don’t go to meetings, even if you watch the Webcast of people who will never have your business card pressed into their hands.
Still, I bet this idea spreads.
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The good news here is that now the journalism business is going to learn that off-shoring is not the cost-saving proposition that they think it is.
Here’s what we have learned in the technology business:
1) Cultural differences means that you have to spell out everything in clear, unambiguous language. You can’t expect to hand an Indian a requirements document (or a city council web-cast) that has implicit cultural references and expect them to pick up on the references. Indian culture (or Chinese, or anywhere you’d care to ship a job) is DIFFERENT.
2) There is a massive amount of turnover in these offshoring centers. Those that get in the door tend to leave within 6 months to a year because they can command a much higher salary at a different employer. This turnover means that all of the cultural nuances that you have trained them to pick up on will have to be retrained all over again.
3) Language makes a difference. Unless you are constantly immersed in a language, it is very difficult to pick up on differences of tone and inflection. Case and point. Americans tend to raise their voices when they are frustrated or angry. Indians (the ones I have observed), tend to talk faster.
Here’s a great follow-up story. Now that they have made the decision to off-shore this area of journalism, try to find out what they end up spending over time with this little experiment. I’m willing to bet it will be the same thing as we are seeing in the software business – over time there is NO cost savings due to the increased management and communication efforts.
I’ll get off my soapbox now. I get rather grumpy at the whole concept of off-shoring work to save a few bucks.
Comment by Jonathan — May 17, 2007 @ 9:39