There goes one theory
I never thought I would appreciate Pennsylvania's abysmal open records law, one of the worst in the country, until I read this Associated Press story about how a news website in Pasadena, Calif., is trying to hire a reporter in Bangalore, India, to cover city council doings--from India.
Even when I heard that Reuters had outsourced coverage of certain financial news, especially routine earnings reports, to Bangalore at a fraction of a cost of hiring an American to do it, I rationalized that basic financial news was a special category of journalism, where everybody works off the same disclosure documents. But when you can dump an American and improve your company's bottom line, by golly, a little good old American ingenuity will make it possible to hire an Indian in India to cover municipal government news in your own American city.
It seems that California requires nearly all municipal government doings to be online, often in video form. I once watched a video of Apple CEO Steve Jobs appearing before the city council of Cupertino, Calif., on a zoning issue. The problem in covering city government, though, is understanding the nuances of what you are seeing.
For example, what would happen if a reporter in India witnessed a typical shoving match between two members of Harrisburg City Council, or a fistfight over a parking place? Would they lead with that, or with a debate over the incinerator? Or Mayor Reed's smoking habits? My guess is, horrified by the behavior of our elected officials, they'd write a responsible, dull story about the incinerator, and then we'd never know who punched whom.
But thankfully, most municipalities in Pennsylvania can barely run the copier to print agendas for the meeting, let alone videotape the proceedings and upload them to the Internet. No, sometimes being backward has its advantages. Like keeping your job.