MediaNews CEO Dean Singleton has been thinking big again.
Times-Standard
reporters should be very, very afraid.
The
Associated Press
and
paidcontent.org
are currently carrying accounts of Big Deaner’s speech to the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association yesterday. Apparently Dean chose the occasion to hanky-drop his new scheme for “saving” the newspaper industry: Consolidation of the entire company’s news operations into one massive call center, possibly to be located in India.
Picture the cost savings: Sweatshop “reporters” would “cover” the community by remote control, through telephone and Internet. Newsprint would be gone. It’s a model currently being pioneered by the ghastly press release merchants at
pasadenanow.com
. Singleton apparently wants to take the thing to a whole new level.
“In today’s world, whether your desk is down the hall or around the world, from a computer standpoint, it doesn’t matter,” Singleton said after his speech.
And when you think about it, that’s true. From a computer standpoint.
This article appears in Supervising the Second.
Wow. I have been a dedicated TSer since I have been reading the news. I never thought that I would switch. This would do it. The funniest thing is that is was of no achievement of the ER, rather they may win by default.
Spelling and punctuation might improve.
THE SKY IS FALLING, EVERYBODY PANIC!!!
THE PULP MILL, THE NEWSPAPERS, MERVYNS, FISH SEASON, TIMBER HARVEST… WHATS NEXT?
In my section of the web (parenting blogs) there are blogs targeting American parents written in English by writers in India, some of whom I know are not parents. Even some childless Americans operate parenting blogs. You won’t see them give reasoned advice or recount personal experience. It’s all about profit, providing generic content and keeping up appearances.
If we lost eyewitness reporting from dailies, not only would people not read the paper, but advertisers would throw their money elsewhere. We’d see some new local weeklies start up, staffed by the recently displaced reporters. It’s the data entry folks who are most as risk.
Has it already happened? From the AP story:
“Singleton said most of the preproduction work for MediaNews’ papers in California is being done in India, a move he said cut costs by 65 percent.”
p.s. Re: Billyjoe Bob’s question, what’s next? Maybe the bottom falling out of the local pot market?
India. Is that near Hydesville?
This isn’t that much different from the current industry. 90% of modern news media networks are controlled/owned by six or seven people in the world. Basically CNN and the BBC already have a model like this only they still engage in the paper industry as well. So here you would go to a single owner but the extensive network of managers and supervisors would be home based.
Bigger is usually better but not in this case. Centralized control of the media with a private owner would invoke a similar concept to government owned media. It would be a specialized government with one interest. I believe that can be called a Monarchy if it has any power.
However it is hard as a individual to want to stand up and fight for an industry that has the integrity of warm spit these days. The journalism industry has cut its own throat on this one. Shoddy half-baked reporters covering things out of their field and depth have depleted the credibility of the media. Low pay, low respect, and the cycle gets worse.