The answer is "pretty soon"

Maureen Dowd writes:

[James Macpherson] pioneered “glocal” news — outsourcing Pasadena coverage to India at Pasadena Now, his daily online “newspaperless,” as he likes to call it. Indians are writing about everything from the Pasadena Christmas tree-lighting ceremony to kitchen remodeling to city debates about eliminating plastic shopping bags. [...]

I wondered how long it would be before some guy in Bangalore was writing my column about President Obama.

Interesting to see that after a couple of decades of outsourcing non-journalism jobs, newspaper writers are just now pondering the effects of cheap non-domestic labor on their industry - especially now that internet video feeds are practical.

Welcome to the wonderful world of free-trade globalization where jobs paying $30-40K are eliminated here, and (Hi Brad DeLong!) someone somewhere else is getting paid a pittance.

OF NOTE: DOwd tells us that at the cyber-newspaper Pasadena Now, the going rate is $7.50 for a thousand words. Dowd's column this week was 770 words. If she's paid accordingly, that's $5.77 for her column. Multiply that times 52 weeks and Dowd would be pulling down a whopping $300 a year.


posted by Quiddity at 11/30/2008 12:12:00 AM