US Journalists Migrating to Indian Newsrooms

A worker sorts papers at a distribution centre: 150 million people read a newspaper every day in India, compared to 97 million Americans

With falling revenue, circulations and share prices, the American news industry seems to have entered the apocalypse.

Mass redundancies across the sector mean the industry now has its smallest workforce since 1984 – last year alone 2,400 journalists left newspaper newsrooms, according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Charles Layton, of the American Journalism Review, foresees that ‘we may begin seeing, pretty soon, big American cities with no daily newspaper.’

However, as US newsprint finds itself entering a recession, the news industry is booming overseas. India’s burgeoning economy in particular has paved the way for a similarly booming news industry. Circulation of Indian newspapers has been growing steadily, and new titles are appearing all the time.

Western magazines such as Vogue, Rolling Stone, FHM, and Maxim have already launched successful Indian editions. Raju Narisetti, formerly editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe, now edits business title Mint in the country, employing several journalists from the U.S.

Growth is even greater in the non-English media, as provincial India becomes more literate and has more disposable income. In broadcast, the industry’s newfound economic strength means that TV channels can poach the best journalists from print by offering salaries as high as $180,000 a year.

But all this growth means that demand is expanding faster than labour can keep up. While some American papers are cutting their freelance budgets, India is a freelancer’s goldmine: there are more stories than there are writers or time enough to report them.

Young journalists in particular are flocking the country, attracted by the assignments, salaries and fast-track career advancement they wouldn’t get at home in the West. Editors such as Pankaj Paul of the Hindustan Times have even been head-hunting in the US’s top graduate journalism schools, looking for candidates to work on Indian titles.

Naturally, everything goes in cycles, and it surely won’t be long before the Indian press cools down, or the US industry finds a more viable business model. But, for now, India is making history before our eyes.

Mr Blackwell Hospitalised

Fashion critic Mr. Blackwell has been hospitalized with an unnamed serious illness.

Blackwell, 85, has been unconscious in hospital and since Tuesday, his partner, Robert Spencer, said from his home in Los Angeles.

Mr. Blackwell, whose first name is Richard, has issued an annual worst-dressed list for the past 48 years, famous for its tongue-in-cheek cruelty.

Last year he named Victoria Beckham the worst dressed celebrity of 2007, hissing “Forget the fashion spice – wearing a skirt would suffice! In one skinny-mini monstrosity after another, pouty Posh can really wreck-em.”

Mediaphilia wishes Mr. Blackwell a speedy recovery.

Seriously ill: Mr. Blackwell

Foot-in-Mouth Disease: Martin Bashir Embarrasses Himself

Martin Bashir disgraced himself at the journalists’ banquet in Chicago for the Asian American Journalists’ Association last month.

Bashir, who was co-hosting the dinner, declared he was ‘happy to be in the presence of so many Asian babes’. He added ‘In fact, I’m happy that the podium covers me from the waist down.’ (Yuk.)

In an anecdote that could well have been cribbed from an after-dinner speaker’s handbook by The Fast Show’s Swiss Tony, Bashir said speeches ’should be like a dress on a beautiful woman – long enough to cover the important parts and short enough to keep your interest’. In reality, Bashir’s speech was more like a dress on your up-for-a-larf uncle at a family party: misjudged, pointless and toe-curlingly embarrassing.

What is interesting about Bashir’s comments, however, is the way they expose the usually private attitudes of senior male members of the media. There is very clearly still an undercurrent of sexism which still retains a degree of acceptability in the industry – Bashir’s one mistake, it seems, was voicing this sexist ‘banter’ in public.

Anna Chen, writing in the Guardian’s G2 supplement today, sums it up best:

‘Asian women who aren’t softly spoken, submissive and permanently on heat seem to short-circuit many Western males’ brains. If you are tall, opinionated and transgressive they call you a lady boy… “Asian Babe” reeks of low-life desperation born of economic disadvantage: not the best thing to say to a hall full of high-powered media professionals. Certainly not journalists from the east Asian ethnic minority who have had a gut fill of fighting ultra-low status with ultra-high achievement.’

Bashir has since apologised for his ‘moment of stupidity’ in a letter to the AAJA, published in New York magazine – a very public way of diffusing a very public indiscretion. What needs to change, however, are the ingrained private prejudices and bigotry of the industry, especially those figures at the top of the hierarchy. Associations such as the AAJA exist to support the marginalised identities of Asian journalists within the media, but by making such sexist comments Bashir subordinated another oft-marginalised group: womankind. He made a mockery of all the work organizations such as the AAJA do to promote the work of people of one identity, by subjugating people from another identity.

Mediaphilia hopes the AAJA won’t be accepting his apology.

Foot-in-mouth disease: Martin Bashir.