EDITORIAL OUTSOURCING IN THAILAND?
The Orange Country Register in the United States has become the latest publication to outsource editing and design work to India, as BusinessWeek reports. India is picking up a lot of this kind of work, especially from the U.S. where costs are high and income is being squeezed.
Why can't Thailand grab a share of this business too? The Kingdom has some talented journalists and designers, and costs are low. There are, however, two drawbacks. First is the lack of experienced English language media professionals within the native workforce. That's a problem that isn't exclusive to the media industry. Any editorial outsourcing work would need the guidence of a native speaker, and that's where the work permit issue becomes another potential problem.
There are very few media companies here that could handle such work at the moment - my company is one that can - but it's a potentially lucrative area for those that can make it work.
5 comments:
According to what I hear, one of Bangkok's English-language dailies 'outsources' copy-subbing work to one of those countries...it might even be India. The paper is cash-strapped, and prefers to get its copy subbed by cheap overseas labour than to hiring enough of its own staff here.
Thai firms struggle to meet their own needs for staff who are good at English. I can't see them taking on work from overseas in a hurry.
Yet they are keen to present an image to the world which suggests they do have staff with English skills. The Manager newspaper, for example, runs a small unit producing copy in English...you can read their stuff at the Manager's website.
It's all that remains of the English-language newspaper ThaiDay - Sondhi L's venture with IHL. It's threadbare, and almost laughable...
I think I can guess which daily you're referring to. That said I think the costs of hiring one decent English sub-editor would be pretty similar to outsourcing the work. Many agencies supply camera-ready pages which negates the need to sub-edit in the production process.
We take work from overseas and it's an area I want to explore further. You just need one decent native English editor and some reasonable Thai staff and you've got potential to get some decent revenue.
It depends also on the quantity of work coming in, and the quality of work which the Thais are capable of producing.
All you need is one farang? Life will get lonely for that farang.
He needs to be working in a copy-editing environment with other farang, to keep his own skills up to scratch. Nothing stands still...you owe your overseas customers nothing less.
Quality of work is the main issue, yes, but I've been the only native English person in my company for the last two years and managed okay. ;-)
All my communications are in English and the majority are with contacts and clients outside Thailand. Having another native English person would be good but we manage fine with just me.
Of course when we get more work - and I know we will - then I will recruit more experienced English media professionals.
Me, maybe!
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