Delhi-dallying
The Sacramento Bee and the Miami News, both owned by the McClatchy Co., say they are going to outsource some of their advertising production work to an outfit in New Delhi, India, called Mindworks.
The story said that Mindworks also would monitor reader comments posted to the Herald's stories online. That created an image in my mind if the Times-Standard did that — somebody in Delhi trying to make sense of some weed-raddled raving from Humboldt County about Jesus, Bush and Arkley.
This is all fallout from the tight advertising squeeze being faced by newspapers. I suspect on some of these routine types of computer jobs, they can save a lot of money by doing this — and digitally it's quite easy to do.
Except for the language problem. Yes, people in India speak a British-inflected English from the days of the Raj, but as someone who was on the line getting some advice on a home network setup yesterday, I had to say "Pardon?" a lot. He got it fixed for me, though.
Newspaper outsourcing is not all that new in other parts of the world. Years ago, a friend who works at the New Straits Times in Singapore said his paper had a copy desk in Australia and a graphic design desk in (as I recall) Hong Kong.
In this country, it may work for graphic design but not for news content (or web comments), especially at community papers where a deep understanding of local issues and lifestyles is crucial to success. The Herald's story hinted at this when it noted that www.pasadenanow.com, a news Web site, was flamed after it hired two reporters in India to cover the L.A. suburb. Admittedly, one was a Berkeley grad, but still . . .