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Saturday, August 09, 2008

Journalist seeking paycheck? Try India!

Says this article in Salon.com (Journalist seeking paycheck? Try India) India is the new Mecca for unemployed US journalists. So where does it leave Indian journalists? With more and more celebrities writing columns and less and less reporting opportunities being given to sections such as: rural development, performing arts, fine arts, literary matters, etc. a new breed of foreign journalists are on their way to India with their concept of what journalism in India should be. Excerpt:

"The U.S. news industry is bleeding jobs. According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 2,400 journalists left newspaper newsrooms last year, either through layoffs or buyouts, leaving the industry with its smallest workforce since 1984. Circulation and revenue are falling across the country, as are share prices: Gannett, the country's largest newspaper publisher, is seeing its stock trade at around one-third its value a year ago; the New York Times Co. is down 45 percent. Classified advertising revenues have dropped 30 percent over the last two years and the last quarter was one of the industry's worst ever."

With newspapers increasingly carrying SMS-ese (yesterday India's leading newspaper spelled "month" as "mnth," I searched, but couldn't find the exact headline, who cares?), what does this augur for Indian newspapers, magazines and media? Will a firang tell us what to write, print, and publish?

May be its quid pro quo for the jobs we have taken away from them!

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