Bad news for news
By Kevin Uhrich 05/17/2007
We've heard a lot of talk this week about a new phenomenon in American journalism: transnational outsourcing.
It seems Pasadenan James Macpherson has come up with a new wrinkle in the world's second-oldest profession by gathering press releases and other information through his home computer and then sending all that to India to be rewritten.
That information would then be sent back to the United States, where Macpherson puts it all together in colorful packages and posts it to his Web site.
Total cost of this arrangement: nearly $20,000 a year.
No question; two writers for half the price of a good reporter sounds like a deal. But larger questions abound.
Are rewritten press releases really news? Are two people who happen to live in another country and can apparently write in English better than native-speaking Macpherson really reporters? For that matter, is Macpherson actually a journalist?
The answer to all of those questions is no.
Just as a good reporter is not always a good writer, a good writer is not always a good reporter. And to be a journalist, you have to be both. So while what Macpherson is doing seems to have some news value, it is not really journalism.
Maybe a good way of looking at this situation is recasting the lines of a famous commercial: “I'm not a journalist, but I play one on the Internet,” could very well be how Macpherson introduces himself at parties.
If you look at the site, you'll see there isn't much there. There are emailed jpeg photos of famous local people and brief capsules of what they are doing and some of the things that are going on around town. But there is no actual reporting going on, mostly just regurgitation.
The problem is, in this day and age, with Web blogs and other ways of getting messages out to the public, everyone and his brother fancies themselves journalists, including Macpherson, who, according to published accounts, actually started out in the clothing trade doing business in such countries as India.
So in essence, this is at least a second career for Macpherson, who is really no better than a glorified blogger at best and a dangerous hobbyist at worst.
How is that dangerous, you ask?
In case anyone hasn't noticed, American journalism is in big trouble right now. So many choices are out there in cyberspace that even the old tried and trues like the LA Times and the LA Daily News are having trouble selling papers.
But besides competition, newspapers and magazines face another, more fundamental crisis, and that is one of trust and confidence.
With the war in Iraq and all the collusion and outright lying that was simply regurgitated by the mainstream media in getting us to this point, people simply do not believe what they are reading anymore. And why should they when what is being printed amounts to little more than propaganda for the administration?
With all that in mind, it's a wonder why Macpherson would try to jump onboard a sinking ship. But for better or worse, he has. And, if his idea catches on with some bottom-line publisher, everyone in the business will be in big trouble.
Wages for reporters and editors are already at historic lows throughout the industry. How much more will their skills be devalued and debased by this brand of outsourced reporting?
We understand everyone needs a hobby. But could they make it one that doesn't include duping the public into believing they are something that they are not at the expense of professionals who are already fighting an uphill battle to merely do their jobs and survive?
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