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.

Pasadena Now discovers the green screen

Pasadena Now, the online "hyperlocal" news site that purportedly pays writers in India to rewrite city press releases, and which has broken such hard-hitting stories as: "Prominent Pasadena business executives and community leaders are accused of 'Having a big heart for Jerry’s Kids'," is planning to launch a TV network, fishbowlLA reports.

James Macpherson, the visionary who founded Pasadena Now, told fishbowl's Matthew Fleischer that green screens plus L.A. talent equals high-quality productions for cheap:

One great example is the green screen + virtual set dynamic. Formerly the territory of CNN's and ESPN's, now this tool is common.

LA is loaded with talent and knowledge. Our objective is to produce compelling content with highest production value at lowest cost. We are very fortunate that a leading So Cal special effects studio has offered to assist us with technology and the use of a studio.

We hope to present a mix of video styles, from user-generated videos which we curate and edit, to studio-shot programs, to live streamed important civic events.

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).

East meets West*

What the map might look like if Dean Singleton's outsourcing ideas come to fruition.

The map comes via Ken Doctor's Content Bridges and the post includes this interesting nugget:

The five largest markets for newspapers are: China, with 107 million copies sold daily; India, with 99 million copies daily; Japan, with 68 million copies daily; the United States, with nearly 51 million; and Germany, 20.6 million.

Japan has less than half the population of the United States and is as technologically advanced, if not more so. What is Japan doing right and what is the U.S. doing wrong?

*UPDATE: Thanks to an anonymous commenter for passing this on: A very recent Washington Post article attributes the staying power of the Japanese newspaper market to the relatively advanced age of the Japanese population:

...older people here, like older people in much of the world, enjoy reading newspapers. "For them, it is easier to read the paper than to open their PC," said Yoshiyuki Hashiba, a professor of journalism at Sophia University in Tokyo and a former journalist for the Mainichi newspaper for 30 years.

And Japan is chockablock with these people, who are growing in numbers. People 65 or older account for 22 percent of the population, giving Japan the highest proportion of the elderly in the world. The government projects that by 2040, this group will outnumber the 14-and-younger set by nearly 4 to 1.

Newspaper circulation, therefore, is expected to hold up reasonably well for a while, until the elderly can no longer read newsprint and die.

And the Japanese love their newspapers, with the average household having slightly more than one subscription. Sales are 2 1/2 times that of the United States. What might explain that?:

Japanese newspapers have other factors on their side -- a 99 percent national literacy rate and the enduring trust of their readers. A national survey this month by the Yomiuri newspaper found that 85 percent of those questioned said they trust newspaper reporting.

About 20 percent of U.S. readers believe all or most of what they read in daily papers, according to a 2007 "State of the News Media" report issued by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The article points out that Japanese newspapers have resisted putting most of their content online, meaning readers are paying for what they read. As I've argued before, the ease with which information gets passed around here in the United States is great, but giving away the news does more than cut into profits, it diminishes its value both to readers and owners.

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.

Shipping jobs overseas

Editor & Publisher offers a glimpse of the outsourced future, with newspaper companies contracting out to India for ad services:

Several companies have sprung up or leaped into action to go after ad production — a department that creates ads for mostly local clients in categories like real estate, automotive, and retail. Outsourcing companies vying for a piece of that business include 2AdPro, Express KCS, Affinity Express, and CCI Sourcing.

Their advantage — and emotional touch point — is that they maintain artists and staff in far-flung Indian cities like Chennai, Bangalore, and Gurgaon, where there is a steady stream of high-quality, inexpensive workers. These companies maintain they can do the same work for much less, saving newspapers anywhere from 20% to 60% of ad production costs.

The worldwide web

If you laughed when pasadenanow.com proposed outsourcing as a way to get cheap reporters (as though American reporters aren't paid cheaply enough), maybe you shouldn't have: The Miami Herald is outsourcing some of its advertising production work to India, the newspaper's editor said Thursday.