Thursday, January 10, 2008
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2008
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January
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- Is Bill hurting Hillary's campaign?
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6 comments:
They might save a bit of money for now but this is going to bite them in the ass sooner or later, and having a damaged reputation will probably be more costly in the long run.
I think outsourcing editing for a Florida newspaper is absolutely crazy. Here money is getting in the way of common sense. I think copy editors should be the most familiar with the area they are covering, more than anyone else in the newsroom. They can recognize trends in the news and have headlines make sense to the readers, especially local ones. Someone in India doesn't know what's going on in the local scene of Miami, duh! Saving money is the only reason they are outsourcing, but they will receive more flack from readers than they anticipated.
I think this is a great experiment and I'm glad to see it. Any innovator will tell you that they learn more from failure than from success. I think (at least I hope) that this experiment is destined for failure. Something idiotic is going to happen because the copy editors are unfamiliar with the local issues. Readers won't be fooled. And that creates demand for the greatest assets journalists have - credibility and knowledge. Those are commodities with real economic value - something readers will pay for.
While there are plenty of jobs that are suitable for outsourcing, I can't imagine that the job of editing an American newspaper is one of them. Editors do more than check spelling and grammar for a story, they make sure it has the correct tone, that it plays to the audience correctly and editors also have a foundation of knowledge of the local area so they can identify any slip-ups the writer may have made. Moving editorial jobs out of the country, while potentially cheaper, just seems like an absolutely horrible decision taking into account all the things required of a good editor. I think it would be hard enough to do in a different state, let alone half way across the globe. The demands of the job are high, and if papers do begin to outsource editing, I bet they'll soon realize they made a mistake.
I don't see how they can expect copy editors in India to edit a Florida paper. Even if the Indian editors have a good command of English, Miami has a substantial Cuban population. Are they going to ask the Indian editors to learn Spanish too? And it's highly unlikely that they will be able to recognize American idioms, let alone employ them correctly in headline writing. And, though this may be only my gut feeling, it seems that having two different computer systems in opposite hemispheres would decrease efficiency. I don't see how the money saved will outweigh the drawbacks.
I think this idea is just ridiculous. I understand companies are trying to save more and more money, but do they have to go as far as India to copy edit? When copy editing takes place, facts are checked along with AP style and grammar. Is an editor in India going to be able to sit down with a reporter and fix little problems in the story, or spend 20 minutes checking the proper spelling of a name so the reputation of the paper doesn't go downhill? Copy editors need to know what is going on with the news, and people in India may not know all the US news, at least not enough to recognize wrong names or places. Companies all over the country, not just newspapers, have been outsourcing to save money, and it is hurting our economy. When our nation is in need of jobs, more are taken away. I think newspapers really need to think about what they would gain if they send their copy editing to places like India. You might be saving money, but you are losing workers, and by firing loyal workers because of cheaper ones in India, I'm sure the newspaper reputation would already begin to go down.
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