Report Locally, Write Globally

The difficulties facing the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News have been widely chronicled in the press, most exhaustively by the New York Times Magazine's Michael Sokolove in August. The papers, which had been bought in 2006 by an investor group led by flack-turned-newspaper-man Brian Tierney, the sort of larger-than-life character rarely seen in the consolidated, corporate realms of the news business in its current incarnation, filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year. The papers' parent company, Philadelphia Media Holding, was reported to be $390 million in debt to its lenders, including Citizens Bank.

In February, Tierney told the New York Times' Richard Pérez-Peña, “Philadelphia Newspapers’ goal is to bring its debt in line with the reality of current economic conditions." Considering the current state of newspapers, that's not saying much.

Today, Reuters' Ajay Kamalakaran reports that the lenders may end up controlling the papers, thanks to a Philadelphia judge's decision that they can use some of the $300 million owed them by Philadelphia Newspapers, LLC to bid on the papers. (It's worth noting that Philadelphia Newspapers, LLC is a division of Philadelphia Media Holdings.)

Kamalakaran points out that, "The company has been running display ads in the Inquirer and Daily News telling readers what they can do in the 'fight' against the 'disaster' of 'out-of-town corporate ownership.'" One needn't look past the papers' shared homepage to find a big ad placement that reads "KEEP IT LOCAL! Click here to learn what you can do to support locally owned journalism." The ad links to a page filled with petitions, letters, and statements about the importance and power of locally owned media.

An interesting side note to Reuters' report is its dateline: Bangalore, India. (A note at the end explains, the article was the result of "Reporting by Ajay Kamalakaran in Bangalore, Jessica Hall in Philadelphia, and Robert MacMillan in New York; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn.")

It's best not dwell too long on the issue of outsourcing since it so often tips into protectionist or xenophobic rhetoric—and this is in no way meant to sound like a shot at Kamalakaran or any other reporter or editor based in India—but it does seem that one of newspapers' problems might be found in their reliance on just this sort of report produced on the cheap overseas. Newspapers used to have local overnight teams that would report and file a story like this, but because of cost-cutting, the work is now done overseas.

In November 2008, New York Times Op-Ed columnist Maureen Dowd talked to James Macpherson, the editor of Pasadena Now, a California "newspaper" (it exists only online) largely written in…Bangalore. "Many newspapers are dead men walking," Macpherson told Dowd. "They’re going to be replaced by smaller, nimbler, multiple Internet-centric kinds of things such as what I’m pioneering."

That "kind of thing" includes using reporters in India whom he boasts, "I pay per piece, just the way it was in the garment business. A thousand words pays $7.50."

For those prices, this blog post could've been produced for less than the cost of an egg and cheese on a roll. And Reuters' story on the Inquirer and the Daily News (assuming it was produced under similar pennies-per-word rates) would cost less than a cheesesteak from Geno's or Pat's.