The outsourcing of copy editing is a red herring. Long ago daily newspapers in metropolitan markets as large as Boston and as small as Asbury Park became more responsible to their shareholders/advertisers than to readers/voters. Why? #1. News executives didn't have a game plan for covering the sprawling suburbs of the post WWII era. #2. They were slow in diversifying their reporting staffs to reflect changes in population and public issues. #3. Few understood the new technologies beyond viewing non-print advances as either entertainment or the breathless result of what Silicon Valley companies were inventing. Advertisers flocking to "the next big thing" of the Internet got some print executives to take stock. But by that point, American citizens had been devalued into being merely consumers, newspapers had become juicy revenue-producing properties to be acquired by the conglomerates, and public affairs reporting went the way of the dodo bird. Your on-air reference to television "out-sourcing" so-called local cameras crews in foreign countries also is off the mark. Even newspapers that couldn't afford to open a bureau abroad bought the freelance work of overseas journalists. John, I've been a big fan of your work since first hearing you on NPR. In this era of media outsourcing and downsizing, why not shift your takeway to a discussion on the relevancy of America's Fourth Estate?

Posted by Helen Pike, 11:16 a.m. Wednesday, July 9 2008 Permalink