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Journalists must develop new skills to stay ahead of its overseas competitors

Poynteronline.com recently ran an article, titled, “Offshoring: Coming Trend for Copy Desks?” that talks about many of the editing functions that are going overseas to countries like India and Singapore, where the work can be done at a lower cost.

This means that we will need to develop new skills to protect our jobs and remain “essential” in an industry that is changing quickly.

The article provides some advice to copy editors that touches on what they can do to secure their jobs, which got me thinking about what else a copy editor (or communications person in general) could do to stay in the game.

A few things that come to mind are as follow:

1 - Start a blog; update it everyday. Subscribe to a feed management service, such as FeedBurner, to increase readership.

2 - Identify the overseas companies that your organization is working with. Get to know them, learn their strengths and weakness, begin working with them directly if possible.

3 - As the article points out, proximity will give you an edge, so carve out a subject area that you can call your own. In other words, become an “untouchable,” as Thomas L. Friedman points out in his book “The World is Flat.”

4 - Learn to use new media technologies, including content management systems, which are now more popular than ever before.

As companies send more and more work overseas in an effort to save money, we should study the shift carefully, while identifying ways to improve our skills and learning to work with overseas staffs as well.

-- Hugo

posted by Mark H. @ 11/23/2006 01:22:00 PM