Offshoring Probably The Least Of Journalists' Concerns
from the piling-on dept
At some point or another workers in almost any field wonder whether outsourcing labor will affect their industry. The latest to get attention for coming under the gun are journalists, worried that major news organizations are increasingly hiring writers in India and elsewhere to write American news stories. The trend makes sense considering that so much of what newswires put out are hastily repackaged press releases and earnings reports that don’t require much training. But beyond that, it’s important to remember that the situation is not a zero-sum game. There’s no fixed supply of journalistic output. Hiring more writers allows these companies to cover more news, and it allows the better-trained writers to do other things. It’s the same with stories about automating financial journalism, which should allow people with skills to use them for something more productive. Worried workers might want to take a look at the tech industry, where the threat of offshore labor never materialized. However, it’s obviously not a great time to be a journalist at many newspapers, but that has much more to do with the overall economics of the industry, and the problems those companies are having, rather than any threat (real or perceived) from foreign journalists.
Comments on “Offshoring Probably The Least Of Journalists' Concerns”
What is a journalist these days anyway?
Journalism is all about sources, alwas was and always will be.
There are clearly two distinct classes of journalist, rather like the rap artists I’ve just been reading about who use samples, and real musicians who write and perform songs. The first class journalists are also reporters, or work closely with them. They collect new stories as eyewitness accounts, do investigative work, make phone calls. Then you have the aggregators, commentators, bloggers and special interest portals forming the second class. Sure, the second class journalists do write material (this techdirt.com site is a great example of well written provocative summaries that add some value – at least more than slashdot), but it is only a meta-discourse on the content they trade.The second class are merely an unwitting distribution channel for the first.There are two other primary sources that are best not called “journalism” for many reasons. The first of these is the real web, the true online gestalt sphere from which stories can and do emerge quite independently, and the second is an old player known as government who have always written news stories but have rarely been so brazen and open about the way they manipulate and manufacture concensual news as they are today.
The notion of a “journalist”, and where they work is not as important as the source of the story and the motivation for it. Many so called journalists and news sites do not properly filter their sources or follow back the source and motive, ironic because that is their only job, so they don’t add value. Look at the difference between Slashdot on a week where a good editor is filtering and a bad week when it’s a slew of vague FUD stories and nebulous hearsay from quack commentators and industry shills. The only way a journalist can *add value* to an aggregate is by imbuing it with their personality, by having a position, an opinion and a motive to filter and search. You won’t get Indians working at a few bucks an hour to do that, you may as well write some Perl scripts to summarise other peoples news feeds and change a few words.
My heart bleeds for the overeducated liberal media
The mainstream media (with the notable exception of CNN’s Lou Dobbs) sat quietly and said nothing over the past six years as my industry was outsourced to India, China and God knows what other third-world nation. I was the first person among all my friends and co-workers to hear and use the word ‘outsourcing’ and I read it in an industry (computer networking) trade magazine back in the summer of 2000.
Now that the chickens have come home to roost and the journalists are being outsourced, I say f– all of them. Let the upper middle and privileged classes find out what it means to have your own American-based company stab you in the back with a cold ice pick.
C|NET outsourced content jobs already
Outsouring is a HUGE HUGE HUGE issue for journalist.
It wasn’t that long ago that CNET shafted its staff when i decided to outource its dev news.
here’s the proof: http://www.newsforge.com/trends/04/03/18/2240229.shtml
Offshoring Probably The Least Of Journalists' Conc
Offshoring can, as any business practice, have a positive or negative effect depending on how it’s done. I would much rather have the trivial work done by someone in India while I concentrate on matters of larger scope. This improves my work and benifits the foriegn worker and the customer as well as both country’s economies. However, shipping too much work overseas to under-qualified workers will result in poor services/products and no long term benefits to anyone.
Long Term
I have one concern with outsourcing, even for something as simple as no-brainer earnings report stories. Sure, it frees up better, more experienced journalists to cover more interesting stories today. But if Indians are doing all our entry level work, where will our experienced journalists come from tomorrow? It’s nothing no one already working in the industry needs to fear, but something the industry as a whole must be wary of- that they don’t destroy their skilled labor pool.
Re: Long Term
True. Thats a big problem I see in any industry that’s looking to outsource. These days even a college grad’s prospects don’t look that good without some sort of actual work experience like co-op.
I know that this is far fetched but imagine having no entry level jobs in a given field. You can’t get into the upper level jobs without entry level work experience. But you can’t find an entry level position because of outsourcing. How do you get into that field?
Outsourcing can be a good thing?
I imagine outsourcing can be a good thing, for shareholders of a company. Anything to make a bigger buck. I say lets outsource the government, let the lowest bidder do the deed. I’m in Ohio and the only jobs coming in are major retailers and restuarants here (youngstown) Steel mills closed GM , Delphi , anything with a decent wage , pension and benefits are leaving to save a buck. You can’t beat a government pension, you can pay for it just can’t beat it. With the cost of prescription drugs , health care , now gasoline too skyrocketing people less fortunate ( minimum wage jobs mostly part time ) haven’t got a shot. America used to be a hell of a place to live , just too bad I wasn’t alive then. Used to be people were proud of what they did and cared about each other, now all they care about is the almighty dollar . How the hell can you be proud to ship any jobs overseas? I’ll never be on a board of anything but if I was I’d put a pistol in my mouth and shoot before I’d sell out. Sad part is the people that can make a difference don’t care. 🙁
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My heart bleeds for the overeducated liberal media
qoute “My heart bleeds for the overeducated liberal media by Joan on Nov 20th, 2006 @ 9:50am
The mainstream media (with the notable exception of CNN’s Lou Dobbs) sat quietly and said nothing over the past six years as my industry was outsourced to India, China and God knows what other third-world nation. I was the first person among all my friends and co-workers to hear and use the word ‘outsourcing’ and I read it in an industry (computer networking) trade magazine back in the summer of 2000.
Now that the chickens have come home to roost and the journalists are being outsourced, I say f– all of them. Let the upper middle and privileged classes find out what it means to have your own American-based company stab you in the back with a cold ice pick.”
I have t agree with her. i am in the same boat as him, the only difference is that I also do computer hardware onsite and remote. That means that only part of my job is protected maybe to a degree and even then with bare minimum wages.
its all about choices
I made a concious choice to stay in the “hands on” part of the IT industry. I work in the server room and in clients offices. It would be problematic to out source my job. Yeah I could be replaced with some min wage type from south of the border I guess. But I still think Im fairly safe.
http://www.thatpoliticalblog.com
Journo Jobs could move
There’s nothing from stopping the better Indian journalists from developing their own news sources and tackling bigger more sophisticated stories.
I think it’s fair to say that most reporters do most of their work via email and phone, both of which are available in India.
Three years ago when people first started paying serious attention to Silicon Valley programming jobs that were being outsourced to India, defenders of the practice said, “don’t worry, it’s only the lesser skilled, more mundane jobs.” But what happened? Now the Indians are tackling even the most sophisticated jobs. Kudos to them for their hard work.
PR jobs could move too
Sadly for my industry of PR, many PR practioners do nothing more than stare at MediaMap and blast out emails to media. This too could move to India.
To my fellow PR people out there, the future of your career will depend upon you adding serious value with your communications skills, your strategic insight, your relationships, your results, and your geographic proximity to clients and media.
With media moving to India, it’s only a matter of time before PR agencies begin adding staffers in India to deal exclusively with the offshored reporters writing stories about US clients.
To agencies out there who continue to ravage clients with exhorbitant billing practices, you’ll be first in line for obsolesence once clients realize they have more efficient alternatives both at home and abroad.
All of us in professional services industries need to take the offshoring threat seriously. Many of us are more disposable in today’s Internet age than we would like to believe.