A victory for copy editors

The Miami Herald has decided not to outsource some of its copy editing to India after all. Apparently, editors realized folks thousands of miles away from the newsroom might not have the local expertise needed to edit local stories.``The more we looked at the prospects of editing and layout from outside the newsroom, the more it was clear these skills involving news judgment and experience are not likely to work well from afar," wrote Miami Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal in a staff memo published in the Romenesko column on the Poynter Institute website.

Other papers are still looking for ways to cut costs, and outsourcing is one of them. The Californian in Bakersfield announced it will outsource some jobs, but none of them are newsroom jobs.

What do you think? Are you glad Miami reconsidered? Or should newsrooms be more open to new ways of doing things?

Outsourcing copy editing?

The Miami Herald has decided to outsource copy editing to India to save costs. The Newspaper Association of America said earlier this year that newspapers would try a lot of new things to cut costs. But is having copy editors across the world a smart thing to do?

Is Clinton's win a comeback or not?

So Hillary Clinton's win in New Hampshire seemed to surprise everyone late last night, particularly the media pundits who had relied on polls showing Obama surging ahead in the past few days. The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz column today examines the issue. But is today's coverage of the election result any better? Many newspapers are heralding the victory as a comeback or an upset by Clinton. You can see some of today's New Hampshire front pages on the Poynter Institute website. Is comeback an accurate description, considering until a few days ago Clinton was assumed to be the front-runner in New Hampshire anyway? Bottomline: Are reporters and headline writers correct in trying to characterize every move in the run to the White House? Is there an inherent danger in relying too heavily on polls, which are really just a snapshot in time? Do we need to stick strictly to the facts and forget the characterizations or is part of our job to analyze?

Coverage of Hillary's 'moment'

Check out the story in Columbia Journalism Review on the emotional moment by Hillary Clinton that we discussed in class today. The story and video got huge play nationally, leading network broadcasts and getting Page 1A play in several papers. But interestingly it did not get much attention in New Hampshire, where the story unfolded and where the vote is taking place. Hillary Clinton downplayed the story today, as you can tell in this report on Fox News. So does the CJR story change your take at all? Was it underplayed or overplayed? Is the coverage sexist? Do some of you still think it was deliberate on Clinton's part?

Covering the Iowa caucuses

You can find an interesting analysis of media coverage of the Iowa caucuses online from two different perspectives - content and design. The Project for Excellence in Journalism looks at the content in print, online and broadcast coverage of the wins by Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee. The theme in most news outlets, according to the analysis, was surprise and change. At the Poynter Institute, you can find a look at the different design approaches many newspapers took to the caucus coverage. An interesting point raised by the author: Do newspapers still have to follow the age-old idea of presenting both sides equally? In other words, did Obama and Huckabee deserve equal play?
What do you think of that? Many papers played their pictures of equal size, but a few ignored that idea. What about the coverage in general? What did you like and why?