Covering Outsourcing

I’m trying something new for the busy journalist: two versions of the same Web Tip. One is a 30-second version and the other, well, longer.

The 30-second Version

SAJA Roundup & Tips on Covering Outsourcing
http://www.saja.org/outsourcing.html
Sources, resources and more about outsourcing jobs to India. A constantly-updated compilation of major articles, opinion pieces, and contacts, including pro-outsourcing and anti-outsourcing experts.

The Longer Version

When asked what quality journalists need to do their work well, the answer I often hear is “a sense of curiosity.” All journalists I know do, indeed, have a sense of curiosity. But recent experience has shown me that sometimes that curiosity can be selective.

For about a year now, I have been telling my journalist friends about how big the issue of outsourcing to India is going to be. Outsourcing, a.k.a. off-shoring, typically refers to U.S. jobs being moved overseas to India, China, the Philippines, etc., as companies take advantage of lower labor costs.

But apart from tech and business reporters, most folks I spoke to had little interest in the story, presuming this was just like other movements of jobs overseas, such as, say, manufacturing to China.

Cover stories in BusinessWeek (“Is Your Job Next?” — Feb. 2003, which recently won a George Polk Award; “The Rise of India and What It Means for Economy” — Dec. 2003) and Wired (“Kiss Your Cublice Goodbye: How India Became the Capital of the Computing Revolution” — Feb. 2004), a CBS News “60 Minutes” segment on call centers (“Out of India” — Jan. 11, 2004) and nightly rants by CNN’s Lou Dobbs against “Exporting America” didn’t seem to get the attention of many of my friends.

Everything changed Feb. 9, 2004, thanks to small items in The New York Times (by media reporter Jacques Steinberg) and on the AP wire. Reuters was going to hire six journalists in Bangalore, India, to cover announcements from U.S. companies (none replacing existing employees elsewhere, Reuters said). This served as a wake-up call to journalists who had had no interest in the topic of jobs moving overseas.

I immediately started getting e-mail messages and phone calls from people whose attention I’d been trying to get. Nothing like the prospect of our own necks being on the line to make us listen. Gee, if I spend most of my day “reporting” by using the phone and the Internet, couldn’t someone who is paid one-tenth of my salary easily do this job?

Of course, these six jobs are nothing compared to the tens of thousands of jobs now overseas. Estimates of the number of U.S. jobs that might move overseas by 2015 range from one million to five million. Blue-collar jobs have been moving abroad for decades; this is the first time that white-collar jobs are under such pressure. India is just one of the countries trying to attract such jobs, but it has been the focus of a lot of the attention, both good and bad.

Last week alone, India was a major character in three cover stories: Time’s “Are Too Many Jobs Going Abroad?”; the Economist‘s “The New Jobs Migration”; and BusinessWeek‘s “Software: Will Outsourcing Hurt America’s Supremacy?” (BW‘s third cover on this topic in a little over a year). 

Indians in the U.S. (yes, including me) are in an awkward position. They know that better jobs coming to India means an improvement in living standards (though little trickles down right away) but what to say to those around you complaining about jobs lost here? What to say when a friend complains that he couldn’t understand the accent of the Indian operator who answered his customer service call? It also turns out that some of the more vocal opponents of outsourcing are Indian-American software engineers, whose jobs have gone to India (perhaps even to a cousin).

At SAJA, the South Asian Journalists Association (I serve on the board), we have been getting calls almost daily from news outlets around the country trying to get a handle on this issue, some even sending reporters to India for the first time. To help these journalists and to clear up some of the many misconceptions about outsourcing, we have built a primer.

SAJA Roundup & Tips on Covering Outsourcing is a constantly-updated collection of major articles, breaking stories, lists of experts, and even a cartoon or two about outsourcing. You will find articles and sources representing both the pro- and anti-outsourcing camps. It’s a part of SAJA’s Reporting and Career Tips on a variety of topics. If you or a colleague need additional help, there’s a phone number (it’s mine, actually) you can call.

Your turn: Send your thoughts — and useful sites — to poynter@sree.net.

Speaking of SAJA: The 10th Anniversary Convention and Job Fair is June 17-20, 2004 at Columbia University in NYC & the SAJA Journalism Awards entry deadline is April 2.

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