Sunday, September 14, 2008

Outsourcing to India?

The idea of outsourcing copy-editing jobs has been thrown around by newspapers afraid of going down in flames. Because of the ever-present question of what the fate of newspapers will be in even 5-10 years, some newspapers are becoming desperate and trying to think of as many possibilities as they can.
But does anyone actually believe that a journalistic work sent to any other country to edit will work? Even if we sent it to England, where everyone speaks English, there would still be many errors that aren't really errors. British English and American English have a lot of differences, and it just depends on where you are to fully understand different meanings.
Take that another step further, and send it to a foreign-speaking country? I know that a lot of people in different countries do speak English; I speak Spanish. But that doesn't mean I would feel comfortable editing Spanish journalistic pieces. And there are a wide range of dialects and differences between Spanish in Spain and Spanish in say, Costa Rica.
Also, I have enough trouble copy-editing, and I've lived in the United States my entire life.
I personally think that the idea of outsourcing basically anything from American newsrooms is ridiculous. If we do that, then are they really American newsrooms?

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