Posted on 01/09/2009 7:02:00 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The specter of outsourcing has cast a long shadow over American industry for many years. Some protestors have decried the trend, while corporations have claimed that it is just one more indication of a global economy.
Certainly, there have been longstanding jokes about people in the United States calling about a new computer and finding themselves speaking with someone in New Delhi. But many of us in the newspaper business incorrectly thought ourselves immune from this tendency.
Several readers of the Cape Cod Times have recently said that they have called in for certain subscription services, only to find themselves speaking with someone from the Philippines. Editor Paul Pronovost confirmed that the paper, through its parent company, Ottaway Newspapers Inc., works with an overseas call center. But he emphasized that readers can still reach a person in the Hyannis office with specific questions.
"We do contract with a call center in Manila and an automated system for things like vacation stops/starts, basic subscription questions, etc.," he said. "It's an Ottaway-wide outsource, but there are some 'live' people here in Hyannis for unique and/or complicated member service issues."
The Times is hardly unique in this regard. I can recall working as a reporter for another local paper and having readers complain to me that they had called with a subscription question, only to find themselves chatting with a nice person in Florida. Interestingly, then as now, the complaint never had anything to do with the quality of the service they had received, but the fact that they were speaking with someone who was not from around here.
The jump from Florida to the Philippines may be little more than academic, if the issue is truly one about the local economy. But Rob Sypek, director of Member Services for the Times, said the transition to the Manila-based call center one and a half years ago may have actually preserved local jobs.
"In actuality, at the time, nobody was let go," he said, adding that the customer service department was downsized through retirements and people taking positions in other departments. "Actually, we were able to reallocate positions to advertising, sales, and our Internet service. There is the possibility that we may have saved jobs because we were able to do what we did at a cost savings."
In addition, there have been few complaints about the actual service rendered by the Manila call center. Sypek noted that when problems do occur, "eight or nine times out of 10, somebody dropped the ball on our end." He also reiterated Pronovost's comment that there are people in the Hyannis office who can help if a problem is not resolved to a reader's satisfaction.
Newspaper chains have, for many years, "platformed" their resources across their many papers. Design, production, and even reporting efforts have consolidated in the name of cost cutting. I can recall when one chain that owned several local weekly papers closed its Cape printing facility, eliminating dozens of local jobs as the printing efforts were turned over to an off-Cape location.
Lest anyone think that this movement is limited to the service and printing sectors of the newspaper industry, many papers have been experimenting with sending aspects of their production process abroad as well. NewsMedia, a chain of more than 50 newspapers, has already begun outsourcing preproduction work. Why not, the argument goes, send copy editing and layout work somewhere else; someplace where you can pay people pennies on the dollar for the same work?
More than one U.S.-based newspaper is experimenting with employing reporters from India to produce local stories. A November piece by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd quoted James Macpherson, a California-based entrepreneur who uses Webcasts to help India-based reporters write stories about Pasadena, Calif.
Although this may seem to fly in the face of reason (and common sense, quite frankly), some in corporate America see this as the next logical step in the globalization of information technology. Although perhaps disappointing, the movement should come as no surprise to those following industry trends: back in 2004, Reuters set up a group in Bangalore to report on U.S.-based business news.
Although there are no plans afoot to have someone in Bangladesh cover the next Harwich selectmen's meeting, readers should keep an eye on news organizations and hold their collective feet to the fire. It's the only way to ensure that local news and local jobs do not become an oxymoron.
Our local paper is now printed in another city in another state, but much worse than that the don’t even make the doughnuts in our local Krispy Kreme anymore.
CNN outsourced its news reporting years ago, having HAMAS supporters report on the war there, etc.
That's a tough call. Which is less trustworthy: Reuters or CNN?
"They see the efficiency of stories from AP as the solution to all their problems, yet that is the root of their failure."
"It is the disease of leadership that does not value truth."
(de Texas Fossil)
--
From: "The Rockets Red Glare"
by Richard J. Barnet ISBN 0-671-63376-7 copyright 1990
"To market official truth so at variance with reality
or to engineer consent to policies that mock American values
or to bypass public opinion altogether,
government (& Media) must so thoroughly misinform the public
as to poison the wellspring of democracy."
The sad truth is that my youth was wasted as a reporter and an editor on local newspapers and radio up and down the West Coast. Perhaps because I was on the inside, I could see the rot way back in the early 1990s. The disease has a name called “advocacy journalism,” in which the writer actively includes himself or herself in the reporting of the story, which would have been fine in itself if it had been contained to Howard Stern and Hunter Thompson. By the time I left the business in 1995, practically every reporter was an “advocate,” and the point of view being advocated was almost always from a leftist perspective. Since most readers aren’t leftists, they were either insulted, disgusted, or dismayed.
A while later I learned that this kind of advocacy emerged from a leftist strategy promoted by the Frankfurt School, and especially Antonio Gramscii, who thought that the best way to undermine capitalism in Western countries by socialism was the slow takeover of communication, education, religion, and community groups. Gramscii called it “the long march through the institutions.” Eventually, the culture would be socialist in everything but name.
That’s why most people see newspapers as mere propoganda. They’re seeing the paper for what it is. RIP
Social Work + Journalism = Advocacy Journalism
Good one. I laughed.
Communication: Check
Education:Check
Religion: Still working that
Community Groups: Check. Ref our new President.
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