A free U.S. press - via India?

An article in Business Week says one more job is going to India: copyediting.

In the on-going effort to make print publications more economical to produce, papers such as the Miami Herald are utilizing an Indian company called Mindworks Global Media to do copyediting and layout.

Company founder, Tony Joseph, cited the changing U.S. media market and said, "For us, the greatest opportunity for creativity and growth is in markets where there's a lot of flux and everything is open for reconfiguration."

Is that the state of American media; everything open to change? Has Internet technology so radically impacted American journalism that we are getting all of our information and news online? Will there be any American newpapers ten years from now? Has American media become so "dumb downed" that all we want to read about is Madonna splitting from her husband?

At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, it just doesn't seem like journalism, the bedrock of American democracy, should be outsourced. Is our press truly free anymore with fewer companies owning the media outlets and cost efficiency as the driving factor?

In the book The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should know and the Public Should Expect, authors Bill Lovach and Tom Rosenstiel present the basic tenets of journalism as:
1. Journalism's first obligation is to the truth.
2. Its first loyalty is to citizens,
3. Its essence is a discipline of verification.
4. Its practioners must maintain an independence from those they cover.
5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power.
6. It mus provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.
7. It must strive to make the significant interesting fand relevant.
8. It must keep the news comprehensive and in proportion.
9. Its practioners have an obligation to exercise their personal conscience.
10. Citizens, too, have rights and responsibilities.

Can "news" being reported via another country fulfill those critical responsibilities?

Can we risk it?

I guess we already are.