Local news reporting outsourced to India

[Algorem]

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pasadena11may11,1,7515978.story?coll=la-headlines-business

A news site hires two to cover Pasadena from afar. That helps a shoestring budget go further.

By Alex Pham, Times Staff Writer
May 11, 2007


When is local journalism not really local? When it's about Pasadena and written by someone in India.

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.

"A lot of the routine stuff we do can be done by really talented people in another time zone at much lower wages," said Macpherson, 51, who used to run a clothing business with manufacturing help from Vietnam and India...

[youngdem]

1. Hilariously stupid.

Like anyone in another country could possibly write in a way that services the local political needs of a local community. If this turns out anything like my tech support experiences, this is gonna be FUNNY as shit.

Imagine the reverse - some redneck in middle Kansas writing City Council blurbs for a suburb of Mumbai.

Ridiculous. I hope this stupid, greedy tool loses HIS job for this stupidity.

WHY is their not a social taboo yet against outsourcing? It is the most Pyhrric of victories - the very same as saving food by starving your children. Yeah, you've got some extra food now, but holy shit, at what cost?

And hey, WHY AREN'T WE OUTSOURCING MANAGEMENT? THAT is where the real fat is, and I am certain that the American corporate culture is corrupt and devoid of skill sets needed for a stable and vibrant business climate. Let's outsource THEM and use the savings for some raises for the working people.

[Peace Patriot]

2. I like that! "Outsource" all the CEOs and corporate "managers," and THEY can work for

$12,000 a year! Considering what they "produce," and how little they work at all, they're not even worth that.

Workers of the world, unite! WE get the profits--THEY get the shaft!

Note: I admire people who start, and stick with, small businesses. I think trade--creating things, selling and swapping things, providing humans with variety and adventure--is a basic human need. I have nothing against trade, and small scale capitalism. It's predatory capitalism, and huge, monolithic, monopolistic, global corporations that are the death of democracy, and that pose the biggest threat to our planetary environment. And it is the do-nothing-but-kill jobs CEOs, and corporate toadies, whom I would like to see "outsourced." They and their global corporations are a huge, pussy, lethal cancer on the back on democracy, and on the back of REAL business and trade and human creativity.

It took about a thousand years to throw off the monolithic medieval Roman Catholic Church, which placed prison bars around the human mind for the length of its tenure as the chief power in Europe. Exceptions don't prove the rule--the Irish monks (who were Pelagians--a gentler form of Christianity--not Roman powermongers), the monastic libraries, the literate clerics, and the occasional bright lights--could not mitigate the overall trend of misery and ignorance, enforced by Church doctrine. It was TRADE--and only trade--that ultimately changed things. The bourgeoisie tradesmen and bean-counters of the Italian city states, who ranged far and wide, and, in the end, produced humanism, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and some of the finest art the world has ever seen. It was they who sparked the interest in the ancient Greeks and Romans, and their notions of self-rule and rationalism in civil society.

Now we have another kind of monolith--the Corporate Rulers, who invoke "doctrines" like "free trade" and "trickle-down economics" and the "evils" of "big government" (read: majority rule, democracy), just like the medieval Church; who control all news and opinion (just like the Church); and who now install presidents and congresses to do their bidding, just like the medieval Church installed kings and emperors.

Let's hope it doesn't take a thousand years to overthrow them! I don't think it will. Their destruction of the planet has occurred so fast--in a hundred years time, with most of the damage in the last three decades--that revolution against them MUST occur, or we all die. Information systems (and literacy) have also accelerated, so that we are better informed than the poor serfs and peons of the Middle Ages. It's quite interesting, in this respect, how the Bush Junta has tried to turn people into stupid peasants again, with their assaults on science and education, and their promotion of unenlightened, repressive religion, reinforced by the stupid-making corporate news monopolies. But the American people have shown themselves to be extraordinarily resistant to propaganda. Way back in Feb. '03, 56% of the American people opposed the invasion of Iraq, despite relentless, 24/7 warmongering. And now it's up to 75%! The American people just have to figure out where their power is--in their vote--and the need for vote counting that everyone can see and understand, in order to initiate American Revolution II: The revolution against the Corporate Rulers!

I think it can happen much faster than may appear possible at the moment. They are reduced now to Corporate fallback positions--for instance, we have to vote on their nefarious machines but we get a "paper trail" (it will be a little bit harder for them to twiddle the vote), or withdrawal of US troops "over the horizon" in Iraq (continued bloated military spending--which all goes to corporate war profiteers--and a permanent big US military presence in the Middle East, where the oil is--but maybe less overt slaughter.) This means they are on the run. And who they are on the run from is US voters, workers and taxpayers!

Writing the local news for Pasadena in India could prove to be interesting, though. Depending on the Indian. They've got some radicals and creative thinkers over there, too. If it was tit for tat--and NOT Corporate oppression--I might be for it. I do believe in a global perspective--just not global predation and piracy, and planet-killing.