Posted by Matt Purdue
It had to happen. The U.S. newspaper business is headed for India. CNBC’s Julia Boorstin blogs today about the Orange County Register’s plan to outsource some work to a firm in India. And we’re not talking about the more traditional outsourcing arrangement that involves customer-service positions or IT jobs. We’re talking about newspaper editors -- copy editors, to be exact. (Full disclosure: I previously worked as a journalist for the Register’s parent company, and in my teens wrote a small sports article or two for the Register. I’d posit that any copy editors who get laid off from the Register are the lucky ones.)
While most newspapers don’t employ copy editors to make decisions about what gets covered and how, good copy editors are absolutely essential for producing a quality newspaper. They generally handle much of a newspaper’s quality assurance on facts, grammar, punctuation and style. It’s a thankless job. Copy editors rarely get credit for catching a false “fact,” but usually get blamed when a typo slips through in a headline. (Although the New York Times recently ran a rare copy editor encomium, apparently missed by the honchos at the O.C. Register.)
Now this is not to imply that India-based employees, with access to the same digital research tools used by their counterparts in the U.S., can’t do the job. But this does mark a dramatic turn in the U.S. newspaper business. Ink-stained wretches all across America will be adding a little extra kick to their coffee as deadline approaches tonight in their newsrooms. Outsourcing might not be a bad thing, however. Newspaper business models need to change—and fast. Advertising revenue is in the toilet. Offshoring copy editing might, just might, staunch the blood a bit.
But what’s next, I wonder? If an editor with an excellent command of English can copy edit a story for the Orange County Register, who’s to say that in two years, when he really knows that paper inside and out, he can’t start reporting stories? After all, a great deal of today’s reporting is done with a cellphone and an Internet connection. Does it really matter if a phone interview with a lifeguard in Laguna Beach is conducted from Buena Park or Bangalore?
Comments