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Media Masala: How Offshoring News
Production will Change the Publishing Marketplace |
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16 August 2004 |
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Reuters appears to be moving forward with plans to move
some of its editorial operations to its Indian offices, in
spite of increasingly vocal opposition from its unionized
journalists. With reduced margins in the news business
widespread the lure of offshoring appears to be an
irresistible option for major news organizations, even as
they try to navigate the most delicate issues of how local
news teams will fare in the years ahead. It's bound to be a
painful transition for some but in the end it's likely to
allow news publishers to transform the craft of journalism
into something far more dynamic and influential than found
in today's news operations. |
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The rumbings
of change were presaged more than a year ago, as
captured in our weblog last August, but now that Reuters
Group PLC has announced the moving of twenty editorial jobs
from U.S. and European editorial offices to its Indian
operations journalists at the legendary news service are
getting nervous,
according to The Motley Fool, as threats of a lawsuit
citing breach of a collective bargaining agreement are raised
by journalist union reps. It doesn't sound on the surface as if
Reuters' plans have changed significantly from last year's
announcement: the move seems still to be focusing on
production-oriented content generation processes that don't
require a lot of personal in-market contact. Nevertheless, when
20 jobs are replaced with 40 to 60 less expensive workers, you
know where the trends are heading.
For a profession that is already
searching for its soul in the face of increasing competition
from weblogs that oftentimes jump queue on breaking news,
online news services that make it easier to pick up news and
press releases from virtually anywhere and a broadening pool of
less-than-exemplary peers in the headlines,
journalists are hard pressed at times to feel cheery about the
future of their craft. Yet mainstream and
professionally-oriented news organizations have no choice but
to change their production methods to compete in a world that
is not only electronic-first but that no longer proffers a
significant market advantage to established publishers based on
their core technologies. Just as a generation ago the pressmen
running the printing plants of major papers fought a slow,
losing battle over the future of aging content production
technologies, journalists for major news organizations are
beginning to feel the technology impact on global editorial
operations that has been pacing at their doorsteps for more
than a decade.
Offshoring content production is in its
infancy but already it's clear that the ability of news
gatherers to leverage well-educated staff in global markets
will put a radical new spin on local and global news gathering
operations. The emphasis at the moment from editorial staffs is
on protecting jobs, but in the long run it's much more about
transforming journalism into a much more dynamic and effective
profession. Here are a few thoughts as to what the offshoring
movement will mean to both publishers and editorial
specialists:
- Turning journalists into news
"smart bombs". Business and general journalism has
weakened greatly in an era of
Fair Disclosure regulations that make it hard to break
through corporate information barriers and an explosion of
media outlets that give individual news brands far less
leverage than they did in the past for opening up paths to
unique news. Offshoring opens up the door to an era in which
journalists will have resources available to digest and
package prepackaged news far more effectively and to analyze
news sources for the information that's most likely to lead a
reporter to breakthrough coverage. Like re-equipping simple
gravity bombs with "smart bomb" technology, leading
journalists may find themselves to be heads of international
news gathering teams that can digest reams of information and
leads to zero in on the news that's going to make them stand
out more quickly and effectively than ever before.
- Out-Googling Google News.
Newspaper Web sites are enjoying more exposure from search
engines such as Google News but they wrestle with the
implications of these services for their own portals'
long-term health. Offshoring opens up the possibility of
having the cost effective staffs necessary to build a far
more robust online content presence than would be possible
with today's online news outlets, a content base that could
be tiered for premium consumption above and beyond the
ad-driven content provided to the news search engines.
Straight journalism will never give an organization an edge
in the search engine game based on traditional measures of
quality: breadth and depth must present far more content on a
tiered basis to operate effectively in a search engine-driven
distribution environment. Heaven forefend, there may even be
a fair amount of content from other sources that's pulled
together in a unique fashion by a technology-driven editorial
staff. What a novel concept!
- Out-blogging the bloggers. Let
us assume for the moment that the talk about weblogs being a
lower form of the journalistic craft is true. If so, then why
get senior journalists to spill their guts in public RSS
feeds when you could have offshore operations filling the
blogosphere with more utilitarian fare that could feed in to
more premium sources of content with links? Regardless of
what one thinks of blogging as a professional outlet the
facts on the ground point clearly to people coming to trust
the more unfiltered content available via weblogs as a key
source of information and news. In a global marketplace for
content there's nothing that says that an Indian, Australian
or Hungarian could not become as trusted as someone in the
U.S., U.K. or Germany for a certain level of content.
Offshoring could be just the thing for matching the
cost-effective weblogging medium with editorial sources
well-matched for cost-effective delivery.
While none of this may warm the souls of
journalism students in Western countries trying to plot out a
career path, it's probably as realistic a road map as any as to
where the offshoring movement will take editorial content in
the years ahead. The good news is that there will always be a
need for feet on the ground in markets where gathering news is
a personal experience. The bad news is that more of the people
in those markets are becoming personal news-makers themselves,
limiting the opportunities for professional journalists to gain
an edge without clearly superior methodologies. Offshoring is
likely to be more painful for journalists before it becomes
fully beneficial, but it does offer some promise for
publishers trying to plot out a road to premium profits, which
in turn may buoy the hopes for happy careers in the ranks of
journalism. Here's hoping that this all works out to everyone's
benefit sooner rather than later.
-
John Blossom
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