Unspun

Last Friday Associated Press carried a story about how large US papers such as the Balitmore Sun, L.A. Times and Newsday will be cutting back on foreign bureaus. In doing so they were merely following a trend by newspapers worldwide to scale down on their foreign bureaus because of financial reasons.
One Jakarta foreign correspondent thought this trend would result in more jobs for freelancers and stringers. But another disagreed and I thought his arguments are worthwhile posting here:

“I disagree that this trend will create more opportunities for freelancers.

Newspapers are cutting their correspondents for cost reasons and shifting to wires for international coverage.

Costs are the prime motivator for this and no editor/bean counter will start increasing freelance budgets – even though they’re a fraction of the salaries, packages they pay for correspondents – when they can get feature content as part of their wires subscription fees. You can bet that AP/Reuters are including that very angle as they pitch expanded “multimedia” services to subscribers. Occasional travel pieces, one-offs and special situations aside, I see the wires – AP, Reuters etc. – being the only winners in this situation.

Papers, at least U.S.-based papers, are realizing they can get away with piggy-backing off wires/”partners” for content instead of having regular correspondents/freelance strings. U.K. and Australian papers and notably, the South China Morning Post might be different in this regard at the moment, but I think they will be hard-pressed to resist this trend given how desperate the bottom-lines of most print media worldwide are becoming as readers/advertisers shift more to electronic media (fewer actual readers) or on-line providers (blogs, even, *shudder*).

The most egregious example of this is the Wall Street Journal Asia (unfair example, perhaps, as it’s a paragon of poor management) which hasn’t cycled any parachutist correspondents to cover Indonesia for about six months after their former correspondent vacated last July and is quite happily cruising on wire copy and Washington Post content from Southeast Asia’s largest economy/ world’s most populous Muslim nation, etc. They’ve calculated – probably correctly – that their subscribers don’t give a hoot that the journal isn’t bothering to cover recent events in East Timor, for example, but leaving it to Alan Sipress at the Post instead. (Note: I’ve since learned that Alan and his wife Ellen will also be leaving Jakarta soon. No word as to whether there would be a replacement)

And I note that Newsday and the Baltimore Sun bureaux in Beijing were closed down a few months ago and are apparently getting by nicely (in the bean-counters view from HQ, at least) by uppicking a mix of Chicago Tribune and wire copy. If big papers can’t justify a full-time presence in the big China story anymore, you know it’s paradigm shift time.

So I think the days of traditional freelancing for mainstream news providers are over.

The most reliable and resilient freelance opportunities now aren’t for straight news, but rather for specialty/niche media.

To wit: A good friend and full-time HK-based freelancer does China-related copy for Cat Fancy magazine in the U.S. for example to help pay the bills that more interesting stuff can’t.

Sad times for print journos. Looks like some of them might even have to seague into PR or associated professions.