Having endured numerous frustrating sessions with Bell's tech help employees in India, we are not big fans of outsourcing.
Outsourcing to cut costs might be saving Bell big bucks, but it is pissing off its paying customers in increasing numbers.
Shifting the packaging of Canadian community newspapers to India to save money makes less sense than outsourcing Bell service calls.
Outsourcing to cut costs might be saving Bell big bucks, but it is pissing off its paying customers in increasing numbers.
Shifting the packaging of Canadian community newspapers to India to save money makes less sense than outsourcing Bell service calls.
But it has arrived in North America.
A TSF reader says:
"Indian media companies have been packaging papers for foreign publishers for a few years, and have recently attracted attention by moving into the North American market.
"This one (Mindworks Global Media Services) does pagination for the Orange County Register (in California), among others. They always seem to be hiring."
Mindworks, based in New Delhi and launched in 2004, says in its backgrounder: "Our clients create content; we create and manage efficient processes to package it."
And in its service blurb:
Our services include:
• Copy editing and improvement
• Fact validation
• Grammar and punctuation checks
• Copy fitting
• Style alignment
• Headlines, decks, infographics and other visual elements
• Overall proofreading
Having people thousands of miles from your community editing and proofreading North American newspaper content is foreign to us and demeaning to newspaper people losing their jobs to outsourcing.
Will the folks in New Delhi be educated in various Canadian newspaper styles, say the Canadian Press style book and the Sun Media style guide? Will they know the nuances of offbeat columnists, such as Mike Strobel? The spelling of street names?
Absentee editors?
Just say no.
"This one (Mindworks Global Media Services) does pagination for the Orange County Register (in California), among others. They always seem to be hiring."
Mindworks, based in New Delhi and launched in 2004, says in its backgrounder: "Our clients create content; we create and manage efficient processes to package it."
And in its service blurb:
Our services include:
• Copy editing and improvement
• Fact validation
• Grammar and punctuation checks
• Copy fitting
• Style alignment
• Headlines, decks, infographics and other visual elements
• Overall proofreading
"Very often, we provide copy editing, design and production services in conjunction. For example, we do copy editing, design, layout, pagination and pre-press processing for many newspaper and magazine clients."
Having people thousands of miles from your community editing and proofreading North American newspaper content is foreign to us and demeaning to newspaper people losing their jobs to outsourcing.
Will the folks in New Delhi be educated in various Canadian newspaper styles, say the Canadian Press style book and the Sun Media style guide? Will they know the nuances of offbeat columnists, such as Mike Strobel? The spelling of street names?
Absentee editors?
Just say no.
Don't some of the services also take in covering city council meetings by watching them on TV and reading reports? Tell me how some editor in India can understand what really goes on at a council meeting from halfway around the world? How can they get to know the personalities of councillors, government officials, local residents...etc.?
ReplyDeleteThere's no way they can ever know the history or background of certain things.
PKP is losing it
Journalism will just become on voice being repeated by hacks in other countries and sent back to us. If the paper business was innovative, it would succeed, but nobody can be bothered reading this crap.
ReplyDeleteNotice how the business was doing fine UNTIL everyone started laying off writers? PKP couldn't give a rats ass about papers anymore, he just wants to suck them dry to pay for his cell phone towers.
Anyone who thinks there will even be a Sun Media in 10 years with this clown at the helm is delusional. When it finally dies, it will be be blamed on the "changing times"...never because of his ineptitude.
Funny thing is we can't cover council from the TV in our newsroom... our cable was officially cut off today.
ReplyDelete