Friday, August 31, 2007

outsporking


I don't know who actually broke the news (possibly LA Observed), but a couple of months ago, all the SGV blogs were abuzz with the fact that Pasadena Now has outsourced its city hall beat to India, where a nice young man hired off of Craigslist reports on all the latest news using nothing but the web. Since then, at least one blog has had a good time taking the piss, to everyone's delight.

This morning's Franklin Avenue -- not usually first on the 909 beat -- reports that the outsourcing ain't over yet. Apparently KHIZ, based in Victorville, is not afraid of bloggy opprobrium: They produce "the Inland Empire's only newscast" in Erie, Pennsylvania. Clearly it's waaaay more than 15 miles on the Erie Canal.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This blog is awesome and therefore I'm blog rolling you.

meg said...

Well, thanks, Aaron -- but we really aren't that awesome. We're occasionally pretty good and generally passable.

And you do know we don't live in your district, right? {snrk}

calwatch said...

Interesting idea, but KHIZ is a low power station. It's also because the IE is the West Coast's version of New Jersey. Not Los Angeles, Not San Diego. Thus, nobody cares. Heck, at least New Jersey has a state capital. The IE, on the other hand, has nothing. (Does any one remember ICTN? That unholy creation of Verizon, San Bernardino State, and what passes as newspapers here? Exactly.)

(BTW, I generally have a distaste for comment moderation for logged in readers unless there is a really good reason. Spam isn't that bad and it feels like you are stifling comment.)

meg said...

Sorry, calwatch (about the moderation, I mean). I had to turn moderation on for the time being because of all the, um, "comments" from the employee of Sakura Ichi after our review of it. Without moderation, there would be hundreds of nastygrams.

I agree with you generally, though, and I'll turn moderation off when things quiet down a bit.

Don't know nothin' about ICTN, so I'll take your word for it there. Still, outsourcing Victorville is pretty funny! (At least if you've got a dark sense of humor.)