Question

Whatever happened to the Orange County Register's experiment in outsourcing copy desk and layout functions to India? The plan, announced in June 2008, was to do this for a month and then evaluate the results. But I don't remember hearing about the results - maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention. Or maybe I just forgot.

Training your replacement?*

The Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism's jobs link has an interesting opportunity for an experienced journalist who wants to travel to India and do a little teaching (this is a cut and paste job - the spelling and grammatical errors are theirs):

Job: Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media

Visitng Faculty- Print and/or Broadcast (TV)

Location: Bangalore, India
State: Intl

Duration: 6-12 months

Salary: Rs. 45,000 per month plus free boarding and lodging. $1,5000 round trip airfare

Application deadline: Sunday, February 15, 2009

This is a full-time position.

The Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media, Bangalore, India seeks two journalism professionals in print and television to teach for 6-12 months or more, starting in July 2009 to May 2010. We offer Rs. a monthly stipend of Rs. 45,000 plus free boarding and meals at the campus residence. 4 days per week workload allows 3 days of free time to explore the country and enjoy the culture. We are one of the top journalism colleges in India offering print, web and boradcast for a one year post-graduate diploma program. Please visit www.iijnm.org and email me at amgeorge99@gmail.com.

Abraham M. George, Dean

Experience required:

Work experience of no less than 10 years in TV and/or print. Our main needs are to ytrain students in reporting and writing, scripting for TV, covering/broadcasting news, and producing documentaries.

The monthly stipend works out to about US$920 give or take, depending on when you do the conversion calculation.

*Update: The Chicago Sun-Times might be one of the first newspapers in the country to employ Indian copy editors, if rumors are to be believed. The company is looking for $50 million in savings and has threatened to cut one-fifth of its editorial force. Apparently, company officials made some noise Friday about outsourcing the copy desk (Chicago Reader via Romenesko).

Passage to India

AP confirms what Mediabistro reported last week: The forward-thinking OC Register is outsourcing copy editing to India.

Deputy Editor John Fabris provides the spin: "In a time of rapid change at newspapers, we are exploring many ways to work efficiently while maintaining quality and improving local coverage."

Outsourcing hyper-local

First, we learned some newspapers were planning to ship ad production overseas. Then, we learned MediaNews was outsourcing customer services for its Northern California papers to the Philippines. Now, the Orange County Register-owner Freedom Communications plans to send some its stories to India for copy editing.

Gives a whole new meaning to the concept of a foreign desk.