Has anyone heard that a paper in the Pasadena, CA area may seriously consider outsourcing its work to India? It sounds like a bad joke, but I heard in passing it is true. Any CA Dopers wish to comment?
Some newspapers have been outsourcing copy editing and page layout, as well as some other functions in varying degrees. Here’s what I think you are referring to:
That’s becoming a big business in India. The Nation English-language newspaper here in Bangkok tried outsourcing much of its work to India on two different occasions but was never really happy with the quality and so ended the contract each time. But I know there are some Indian outfits handling Canadian and Australian newspapers.
But it’s the coming trend in the newspaper world. It’s not exactly outsourcing since it’s the same company, but I also happen to know the South China Morning Post out of Hong Kong maintains an office in Bangkok, where it has local native-English-speaking sub-editors do a lot of work for less than they would have to pay local hires in Hong Kong itself.
Yeah, it was a big deal in the media community when it was first reported on a year ago. The reporters in India are watching Internet feeds of city council and other meetings, doing email follow-up, and writing the stories from those resources.
You can also have your X-rays and CT scans read by outsourced radiologists. For just about anything that can conceivably be outsourced, odds are someone has tried it.
It would be a poetic justice hoot if that story yabob cites was, itself, outsourced.
In other news, besides the news, radiology, a legal reporting (and software), lawyer’s jobs are now being outsourced to India as well:
In addition, I’ve seen engineering jobs being outsourced to Eastern Europe, as well, by companies with one or two contact people in the US. The widespread use of common drawing and design software, combined with e-mail and the low overhead of such countries makes this sort of thing almost inevitable. And scary, to the lawyers, radiologists, reporters, and engineers. When they reported on a future where you could work from home, no one seems to have visualized other people sending their work in from less-expensive homes in other countries.
I heard a presentation several months ago on global migration in the electronics manufacturing world. One of the things that was mentioned was that India has been graduating huge numbers of electrical engineers. A company that designs cellphones can find lots of engineers to hire there, giving the company an edge when it comes to design speed. In the US, the work would go much slower because they just can’t find enough engineers. For some companies, speed getting a new product to market is a major thing.