We have delved into this in many forms. Even had a heated discussion with what we presume was a J-School grad a couple weeks back. We have also noted the continued outsourcing of jobs to parts other than America. Well if you meld the two observations together here’s what you get —

Last year, a news Web site in Pasadena, Calif., made headlines when they started outsourcing city hall coverage to reporters in India. Using simple webcams and e-mail, Pasadena Now would put journalists half a world away inside city council chambers to observe and file stories on local government. The site fired its staff, and replaced them with Indians who’d crank out 1,000-word stories for the rock-bottom rate of $7.50.

The media world was abuzz: American news outfit outsources local reporting to the subcontinent. Could we all be next?

We wondered too about the limits of outsourcing local news, particularly alternative journalism. Covering city council meetings via webcam is one thing. Producing entire issues of a local news and arts weekly is quite another. What started as a joke — “I’ve got an idea. Let’s outsource an entire issue to India just to see if it can be done” — has culminated in what you see here.

They cover city council meetings from Bangalore! And the papers are still failing? Think about it. If it is possible to do everything in a paper other than Section A at Indian rates these business should be making money out the ying-yang. Of course what is described above was done on a lark as an experiment. But still. Somebody might run with this full time.

The Columbia School of Journalism might as well close up shop or remorph itself as a international studies program.

Linky.

While traditional newspapers continue their rush to oblivion, online ad spend soars. This years increase could only be the tip of the iceberg:

Brian Wieser, global director of forecasting for Magna, predicts that companies will spend $699 million on online video ads this year, up from $531 in 2008. He expects the amount to crash through the $1 billion mark in 2011. (Media Bistro)

Are the newspapers reading this? Yes, the money is online, and it’s growing. There are infinitely more outlets, but the spend is large even if each outlet’s share of it will be smaller. My advice to the pulp dailies? Get lean and nimble. That means trading your army in  for a tiny squad of commandos. Push your presence online. Think local. Reverse the trend of outsourcing most of your content. Outsource the overhead functions instead. If you must commit some of your work to print, do it weekly on Sunday. Sales for that edition are still good in most areas.

If you are a news organization and insist on clinging to the idea that news is only news when it appear as as ink on paper, your days are numbered. There is still one daily paper in Denver, but with dead trees continuing to be its delivery medium of choice, it’s time will come too.  As for the reaming big city dailies, survival can come in the form of a tiny staff, and online interactive delivery.

“Today the Rocky Mountain News, long the leading voice in Denver, becomes a victim of changing times in our industry and huge economic challenges,” Scripps CEO Rich Boehne said.

Scripps said the paper lost $16 million last year.

Financial problems are widespread in the newspaper industry as the economy has deteriorated, ad revenue has tumbled, readers have gravitated toward the Internet and advertisers have followed them.

Four owners of 33 U.S. daily newspapers have sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the past 2 1/2 months. A number of other papers are up for sale.

This past weekend, there were separate bankruptcy filings by New Haven (Connecticut) Register publisher Journal Register Co. and by the owners of The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News.

They followed a December filing by Tribune Co., whose media stable includes the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, and January’s filing by the owners of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. Other publishers could seek bankruptcy protection in the coming months, too, as advertising prospects for 2009 remain bleak.

Hearst Corp. announced earlier this week it will close or sell the San Francisco Chronicle if it can’t reduce expenses dramatically within the next few weeks. Last month, Hearst laid out plans to close the Seattle Post-Intelligencer if a buyer isn’t found before April. And Gannett Co. is looking for a buyer for the Tucson Citizen in Arizona.

Boehne said the Rocky Mountain News’ 230 editorial employees would be paid through April 28.

(Yahoo)

[Dog] An introspective of sorts by the RMN of the RMN here.

I’ll say maybe. It depends on how you define a journalist. If a journalist is an individual trained to report at least two sides of a story and relentlessly check facts to insure that they are facts, I’d say yes. Unfortunately, this has not been the behavior of most who have been employed by the dying old media.

We’ve devoted a good bit of time and space on this subject as news reporting and distribution has evolved from a monlithic batch process controlled by a few into an instant and interactive process controlled by the masses. In this environment, distribution printed and delivered on paper simply can’t compete.  Journalism is alive and well in the connected world with plenty of new activity:

Someone anonymous pointed us to the recent launch of Patch, a company that is hiring full-time journalists and building hyperlocal community sites and is funded by Polar Capital. And that’s hardly the only one. In the last month alone I’ve had conversations with three different VCs looking at journalism startups and exploring whether their models made sense. Once again, we’re seeing that if there’s demand for a product (journalism), there will be businesses that will figure out ways to supply it. Not all will succeed. In fact, many will fail. But from that we’ll certainly come up with models that work. (Techdirt)

The move to online interactive media changes the game for those who have chosen journalism as their profession. With access to the entire world from s a single site, there is no longer the need for 1000+ writers rehashing the same story. The blogosphere has replaced them by reporting and giving a million different perspectives on the story. The agenda based reporting that has been employed by the majority of journalists for at least the last 50 years only appeals only to a minority fringe since more alternatives have become available to the masses. That fringe is alive and well in the connected world, but is not big enough to support so many that want to write the same story over and over again as a profession. A few will do very well and the rest will need to find other ways to support themselves.

Look for news reporting to become more localized, specialized, and offered by small organizations. Journalism is alive and well in the Third Pipe world. The new business is horizontal and decentralized. This is why the big verticle organizations like network news and newspapers are having so much trouble adapting.

While Google’s spinning this as a necessary bit of expense cutting, it’s pretty obvious they haven’t made many print ad sales. If the market’s gone, even the most active and efficient seller can’t change it.  The inefficiency of news on pulp no longer works. The time to market can no longer compete with the electronic alternatives, and ad buyers know it. Compound that problem with a generation of editorial malpractice, plus agenda driven reporting that has alienated readers and you have the formula for the death of a business. Google already has a deal to publish the archives of many of the pulp pushers online,  and the ad sales mechanism for that channel is already in place.

“While we hoped that Print Ads would create a new revenue stream for newspapers and produce more relevant advertising for consumers, the product has not created the impact that we–or our partners–wanted,” Spencer Spinnell, director of Google print ads, wrote in a blog post Tuesday. “As a result, we will stop offering print ads on February 28.”

Google launched the print ad program in November 2006, then expanded it in 2007, but with the recession in full bloom, the search giant has been winnowing projects to cut expenses. (Cnet)

Pew research conducted a survey of where Americans in 2008 were getting their news content. Needless, the outlook for pulp is looking entirely drab. This year more people of all age brackets were getting their news off the net rather than off the newsstand. –

For the first time ever, more people cited the Internet than newspapers as their primary source for news, according to the latest Pew Research Center survey, conducted Dec. 3-7 among nearly 1,500 adults in the U.S.

Currently, 40 percent of the respondents say that they get most of their national and international news from the Internet, up sharply from 24 percent in 2007. Newspapers remain the top source for 35 percent, about even with the past three years, but down significantly from the 50 percent as surveyed in 2003.

pewpulp

In the usually critical 18-29 demo, the web was even with TV at 59% of those polled. The fact is regardless of whether the pulp news sources stem the current tide the long term is a slow decline. The younger generation considers a paper yesterdays news. What’s the line? - “It’s not just what he knows, but when he knows it.”

Sad.

Linky.

With the credit crunch, the perfect storm may have arrived for the old media. This is not a new subject here, but the slide is accelerating, with big trouble for big name publications as well as the broadcast news organizations coming much sooner than I would have expected:

The development, which compounds the fiscal challenge of plummeting advertising revenue, was revealed Monday when the Audit Bureau of Circulations released sales totals reported by newspapers for April through September.

Combined weekday circulation of all 507 papers that reported circulation totals this year and last averaged 38,165,848 in the six months ending in September, 4.6 percent below 40,022,356 a year earlier. The aggregate drop was only 2.6 percent in the September 2007 period, compared with September 2006. (My Way)

Newspapers, broadcasters, and publishers of monthlies all face declining revenue, not only from smaller advertising budgets, but the variety of options for advertisers increases daily as well. The failure of most of the old media to take advantage of the interactive online format has left a void that has been filled by upstarts, and they are plentiful, and these typically much more nimble and lean organizations.

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