The Banana Peel Project

Before I take off for my weekend backpacking trip, I thought I’d point out this unfortunate AP wire release from yesterday. Apparently a Pasadena-based local news site has started outsourcing some of their reporting to India. According to the release, the editor believes that some kinds of reporting “can be done from afar now that weekly Pasadena City Council meetings can be watched over the Internet.” And there’s lots of other news sources that have done the same thing.

On one hand, this kind of thing really bugs me. I think it clearly shows that there are many people within journalism who treat communication technology like the Internet as a way to cut back on overhead costs, while ignoring its ability to improve coverage. A local reporter, one with ostensibly more experience covering local politics and potentially more source contacts, would undoubtedly be more prepared to distill and present the perennially dull City Council meetings. A reporter in India will be able to report strictly what was said and who said it; there is no better way to utterly turn people off of local politics.

On the other hand, outsourcing does save a lot of money. Small local news sources, especially Web sites, have an extremely tough time making ends meet. And since a diversity of news sources is essential for a democracy, it is important for small organizations like pasadenanow.com to stay afloat. Given the option between outsourcing and collapse, I’d have to side with the former. Good thing it’s not that simple.

One of these days soon I’ll get around to articulating how I feel about subjectivity in journalism, because I think it’s closely related to the issue of local versus outsourced news. It seems that every time I do, I get lots of good…criticism.

For now, I’m off to the woods.

[the banana peel project]