Opoprtunities to question the Washington Post

A couple of comments in the Daily Kos are of interest. Here's the first:

Why stop there? Why not outsource journalism to India or Mexico? You can get a thousand chinese who scan police blotters and press releases and twitter and facebook all over the US and write stories about it for a fraction of the price of a US journalist.

And the second:

Maybe you thought you were kidding? It's been done.

The second commenter referred to Pasadena Now's use of Indians to report local events in Pasadena. (See my most recent post on this.)

But they were commenting on a Daily Kos story about how the Washington Post is trying to get original content from bloggers:

You may remember this from a few months ago -- the Washington Post wanted to create a network of local bloggers to provide content for the Washington Post. It was an unpaid gig, but bloggers would offer up a couple of paragraphs on the Post website, and readers could click through to the blogger's site to read the rest of the piece.

Well, it hasn't turned out that way....

In short, the Post has created a "workflow plan" requiring the bloggers to be on call on certain dates to provide original content, it's encouraging them to do original reporting, and it's even begun assigning stories to them.

Whatever you may say about James Macpherson, at least he PAYS his reporters.

And Macpherson would have a sharp enough eye to catch this item in the first comment:

Is jounalism something that is so simple, that ANYONE could do it? Really? Scabs for journalism?

Well, perhaps jounalism isn't that simple. You need a Macpherson or someone to check for misspellings. I know.