The Bandwagon to India

At Mindworks Global Media in Noida, India, the work just keeps on coming. The company, started by Tony Joseph, 46, does not produce any type of publication itself, but instead works for media companies from all across the globe that outsource copy editing work.

In a BusinessWeek article from this July, I read that Mindworks has been doing outsourcing work for four years now. Mindworks started outsourcing copy editing work for the U.S. just last year. Joseph said that he realized that the fastest way for Mindworks to grow was to focus on receiving copy editing work from international companies.

Apparently Dell is not the only American company jumping on the bandwagon to India.

Yes, we all know that the newspaper industry is suffering. But outsourcing work to India just to save a buck? It’s hard for me to believe that leaders in the newspaper industry have not thought that although outsourcing saves money they don't have, in the end they are only further hurting themselves. One of the main problems that newspapers and journalism in general are facing at this point in time is a lack of credibility. The rush to be first in publication has allowed for more grammatical and factual errors that tarnish a publication’s reputation. How can outsourcing work to India help solve any of these problems?

As John McIntyre discussed in Back Talk, of course anyone can catch simple spelling errors, but that does not nearly cover the job that copy editors perform. They catch factual errors and mistakes in the English language that one of the 90 men and women at Mindworks would most likely blow over.

Besides the alarming fact that newspapers seem to be missing why outsourcing is not the solution to their problems, I am more upset about the view of America that is being projected to the international community. We are already known as the fat, lazy, stupid country. Which, to be honest, I understand, considering the image that we project to the world through our media and political decisions. But at least before, American’s were editing these stupid shows. Now, not only are we projecting a negative image, but in addition are admitting that we can not even edit this negative image anymore. I get a bad taste in my mouth when I think about the fact that the people who have chosen to pursue journalism and hopefully defend the demise of the English language have given up and passed the job onto people on the other side of the world.

It is one thing for Dell to outsource to India. I can come to terms with the fact that Americans may not be the leaders in computer science and engineering. The other day in my History of Journalism class, my professor reassured us that although our engineering friends on campus will be making three or four times the amount of money we will in a few years, we are not to worry because without communications, there would be no engineers. No matter how many numbers they can crunch, engineers still need to be able to communicate their findings and ideas with one another to make things come together.

The fact that this proud standard that I now hold myself to seems to be slipping away is hard for me to grasp. Are we passing on our pride in communications by passing on our editing responsibilities to India? Have we lost to the engineers?