On May 20 Columbia Journalism Review published an article by Global Post correspondent Samantha Fields. The India Beat appeared in CJR’s Behind the News section and describes India’s growing media industry and the experience that young American journalists can gain by working in the country. Fields writes:

‘There is a rather unconventional bit of wisdom being doled out to young journalists in the United States these days: go to India. While journalists here are losing jobs right and left, and major dailies like The Boston Globe are struggling to keep the printing presses up and running, new papers, magazines and television stations are cropping up all over India.

“In recent years, India’s steamroller economy has diversified well beyond tech and outsourcing, including a big boom in the news media,” New York-based reporter Arun Venugopal wrote in a piece for Salon last August. “Circulation has been steadily growing at Indian newspapers, and new dailies and magazines are popping up on a monthly basis.”’

To read the entire piece, please visit Columbia Journalism Review’s website.

Struggling U.S. News Outlets Cut Costs Through Editorial Outsourcing to India

By Jackie Kasuya

As the journalism industry continues to suffer advertising and circulation losses, more publications are exploring one possible cost-reduction option: outsourcing some of their editorial work to cheaper labor in India.

It’s an idea first tried by Reuters in 2004. The international news agency moved some of its editing and writing jobs to India, and now reportedly has more than 10 per cent of its global staff employed in Bangalore.

The Reuters move is portrayed by union officials as a major blow for the company’s journalism. The Newspaper Guild of New York and the National Writers Union charge that Reuters reduced standards by replacing experienced journalists with less qualified people in India.

Kim Barker Visits Columbia

By: Mariana Atencio

Journalist Kim Barker talked to Columbia students about why she quit The Chicago Tribune and her passion for covering the Middle East. Mariana Atencio sat down with the former foreign correspondent.

Global Press Watch Correspondent Publishes Piece on Pakistan

Pakistan lawyers take part in a protest supporting the independence of the judiciary in June 2008. Photo: AP / Anjum Naveed.

A news analysis by Global Press Watch correspondent Madiha Tahir was published in Columbia Journalism Review’s online “Behind the News” section on April 24. The news analysis examines media coverage of Pakistan.

Reporting World News With a Hometown Spin

A Global Look at What’s News

It’s true: America’s mainstream media have reduced their foreign reporting staffs. It’s also true that anyone with an Internet connection can get foreign news from just about anywhere in the world, reported by local journalists and reflecting local interests and concerns.

The 17 reporters in Columbia Journalism School’s International Newsroom monitored nearly 100 news Web sites around the world and interviewed some of their journalists to find out how they define and report the news. Read their reports here.

Pics from Associated Press, unless otherwise credited.

The reports show that, no matter where you are, news is local – what’s happening at home or nearby, or what’s happening abroad that affects the local audience. In India, that means that long after the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks faded from world headlines, the local media have continued saturation coverage of “26/11,” as the attacks are known there. In Iraq, “local news” means covering every single statement by President Barack Obama about when American troops will leave the country. In Liberia, a presidential “e-mail scandal” and a plague of crop-destroying Army worms made local headlines but went largely unreported outside the country. And in Mexico, the press ran daily updates on organized crime and violence – a story that burst into prominence in U.S. media only after the violence spilled across Mexico’s border, making it “local” news for Americans, too.

One early 2009 story did not need to meet the “local” test, though. The January inauguration of President Obama was news around the globe. Turkish media used the event to examine everything from expected foreign policy changes to Michelle Obama’s fashion selections. Kenyan newspapers devoted entire Web pages to the new president. And in more than one country, Obama was held up as a model for local politicians to emulate. In Cameroon, for instance, The Post marveled that on the day before his swearing-in, Obama “rolled up his sleeves” to perform some community service.  “Very few sub-Saharan elite are willing to soil their hands with backstreet and rural problems,” noted The Post.

Read here for more on global media, and here for more on how they covered the early days of the Obama administration.