I hadn't thought that newspapers could get dumber, but hey - I was wrong:

“We seek a newspaper journalist based in India to report on the city government and political scene of Pasadena, California, USA.”

...

James Macpherson, editor and publisher of the two-year-old Web site pasadenanow.com, acknowledged it sounds strange to have journalists in India cover news in this wealthy city just outside Los Angeles.

But he said it can be done from afar now that weekly Pasadena City Council meetings can be watched over the Internet. And he said the idea makes business sense because of India’s lower labor costs.

Local news outlets have exactly one area in which they can add value: local news. Turning that into a copy/paste exercise with remote staffers just makes the local news into the same kind of dull sameness you see in wire service copy/pastage - no value add, no reason to read it at all.

If a local news source wants readers, it's going to have to do local news coverage. This is what you call "penny wise and pound foolish".

Technorati Tags: newspapers