In another sign that Tom Friedman was right when he claimed that the world is flat, the Los Angeles Times reported last week that PasadenaNow, a lifestyle magazine covering the city of Pasadena, has hired two reporters in India to cover the Pasadena City Council meetings for the publication. Per the article, these outsourced reporting jobs will be held by two people living nearly 9,000 miles away from the news source they are covering: "One lives in Mumbai and will be paid $12,000 a year. The other will work in Bangalore for $7,200." The article also indicates that one of the two journalists had attended the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
In an Associated Press article, the online magazine's publisher, James Macpherson,
A sensible point, especially when we assume all the basics about news reporting. It seems obvious that in order to conduct proper newsgathering and in order to provide thorough reporting on relevant issues, journalists need to be close to the source, frequently visiting the events and people making news. And it seems clear that they should be enmeshed and existentially engaged with the cultural logic of the news making environment in order to make meaningful choices about what information should and should not be reported, who should and should not be interviewed, and to provide a proper perspective and create a meaningful context for the information being examined. All of this is very difficult to achieve from 9,000 miles away. While it does certainly remove news reporting out of the cultural bias that is sometimes reflected by localized journalism, this is not what advocates for journalistic objectivity had in mind.
Although this move ultimately devalues the quality of journalism overall, because there is no substitute for being on scene, it seems unavoidable and makes too much business sense to be deterred as a practice. Given a choice between a professionally trained and experienced journalist and a C grade lackey from slacker University, USA, it is safe to say that most people will prefer to get their news from the former. Based on a brief look at the kind of journalism that is proliferating, maybe a bit of international competition will do journalism some good. Perhaps journalists have gotten a bit too comfortable with their sense of entitlement to their work.
Indeed, most of the anxiety about this issue is spurred by the fact that journalists had long considered themselves immune to the problem of outsourcing. One can only imagine the smug look on the faces of millions of Americans who have lost manufacturing and computer jobs to outsourcing as journalists get a taste of the spine tingling, hair raising realities of globalization. Welcome to the party.
1 comment:
Travis,
Maybe the reporting in this magazine was never dependant on being on-the-scene. Maybe the "quality" of journalism in this publication was never going to be affected by outsourcing. It makes me wonder how much information we see as "on-the-scene good reporting" could just as easily be written in China!
Maybe this move to outsourcing is a precisely calculated move to keep the status quo (costing a little less).
Post a Comment