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May 14, 2007
Offshoring local news
And following up on last week's posting on immobile jobs, here is an illustration that the question about what can be offshored continues to be explored:
Local news reporting outsourced to India - Los Angeles Times:
James Macpherson, editor and publisher of the Pasadena Now website, hired two reporters last weekend to cover the Pasadena City Council. One lives in Mumbai and will be paid $12,000 a year. The other will work in Bangalore for $7,200.
The council broadcasts its meetings on the Web. From nearly 9,000 miles away, the outsourced journalists plan to watch, then write their stories while their boss sleeps — India is 12.5 hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time.
. . .
Larry Wilson, editor of the 30,000-circulation Pasadena Star-News newspaper, scoffed.
"To pretend you can get the feel and the culture of a town as complicated and interesting as Pasadena by e-mailing and doing things over the Internet is nutty," he said.
I tend to think Mr. Wilson is right - you need to be there to get the details and nuances. This one may end up as a failed experiment - similar to the idea of a few years ago about having a video remote receptionist at the front desk. That notion was an extension of the remote telephone receptionist (who could be anywhere) but ran into the problem of not being able to do the physical activities of a receptionist (open the door, sign for packages etc).
To understand what can and cannot be done locally, we will need to build on the dual notion of tangible services (services that require physical action) (see my presentation of this) and the importance of tacit knowledge.
Some of that understanding will come from experimentation -- like the Pasadena Now website. I expect a lot of failures. But that is how we learn.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at May 14, 2007 10:06 AM
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