Journalists’ union questions Mamamia decision to advertise for subeditors in Bangladesh

They definitely need some new subs. The spelling and grammar across all of Debrief Daily’s platforms is shocking.

It sounds like they’re dipping their toe in the water. I get where Paul Murphy’s coming from, but if they can do the same job offshore but cheaper then it is just a sensible business decision. And if it turns out they can’t do the same job offshore then Mamamia will probably figure that out pretty fast.

The need to approve all comments on the site, day and night, is causing them staffing headaches as well.

Many comments take a day or more to be approved, if at all, which shuts down/quashes a lot debate on the site.

Also, as an advertiser, if I see an article with only two comments below it, I tend to think that there isn’t a lot of user engagement, so not sure why they are ignoring this aspect.

Surely there are local mums working from home here in Oz who can be trained to moderate comments outside biz hours?

So.. hand-wringing over workers in Bangladesh one minute –
http://www.mamamia.com.au/soci.....ralia-act/
http://www.mamamia.com.au/news.....nd-shamed/
And finding bargain workers in Bangladesh the next?

Not as good as the Bangladeshi ones Carro.

Offshoring jobs to save money is taking place in every industry and has been for some time. No occupation is immune to this. Or to being replaced by a self-service website.

I’m not sure Union action or anything else can prevent or even slow it down.

Employing people in other countries to do work that should be done here is not a positive move for any publisher. It is just impossible for someone in a distant country to understand what is going on here. It is even hard just trying to keep up with what is going on in different states. Then again, may be this is just part of a Mamamia plan to move the site off shore and appeal to a Bangladesh audience.

They’ve always used subeditors in Bangladesh, unfortunately this isn’t new, they’re just finally being caught out on it. They could use some good subeditors anyway, the grammar on the site is atrocious.

concerned, that’s a good spot

“But if Australians are prepared to pay just a few dollars more – and demand that our retailers start acting more ethically – the lives of millions of workers could be improved.”

If you think that *any* role in the media industry is going to be untouched by offshoring, then you are in for a rude shock. design, development, admin, sales, finance, marketing, production are all available cheaper, longer, faster, better from our neighbours.

There is a skilled worker tsunami coming and anyone who isn’t surfing it is going to drown. The myth of not getting good service/support/outcome from outsourcing is disappearing as fully fledged outsourcing and more importantly off-shoring companies gain momentum. Comms platforms for remote teams are now readily available.

Take an honest look at your job and ask if you couldn’t be replaced by someone in the Philippines for 20% of the cost.

Welcome to globalisation.

@ Nick S – Would you do your job for $4854 a year? That’s what workers in Australia whose jobs can be “off-shored” are going to have to do if this trend continues.

At least they’re paying subs. That’s more than they do with most contributors.

MamaMEAA ! I totally agree with Paul Murphy from the union. There are plenty of Aussie subs around who would love some part/full time work. They are skilled and could do it faster and better. Sure you can get cheaper but you don’t get quality and it shows . Media Watch had a swipe at this with Fairfax. Plus get real ! The Mamamia site says it has 4 million readers so it can afford to pay the correct rates to a local sub editor or get better paying advertisers. You need subs who have journalistic skills, understand our cultural nuance, have a good grasp of our political landscape, news and current affairs as well as the lighter stuff and being on top of “list journalism” -ie 10 ways to stuff your online mag, 1 hire sub editors from Bangladesh and India.

[Edited by Mumbrella]

They probably think local sub-editors would show up their inexperience and lack of depth as a publishing organisation. They’d be right.

Seriously – MAMAMIA is just so full of hypocrisy

They are hiring in India because its cheap. Lets be honest.

But they play the social card:

http://www.mamamia.com.au/soci.....ralia-act/

This is nothing new – News Ltd started the trend. So if you’re wondering why subbing in general is so atrocious now, here’s the reason

@Bradley H – Nope, I’d probably reconsider my career if my services were valued at $4854/annum by employers. I sympathise with people who are in that position, but at a policy level I don’t think protectionism will be helpful for the industry or our economy in the long term.

Noooooooo?! Whiney, irrational, left-wing mummy-bloggers being grossly hypocritical?! Say it isn’t so!

Welcome to your foocha.

The issue isn’t that jobs are going offshore. Australians – journos included – have plenty of employment opportunities. All it takes is entrepreneurial spirit and flexibility.
Wealthy Australian businesses should go for it – employ offshore! Inject money and skills into developing nations! Just don’t be cheapskates.. pay a fair salary by Australian standards.

There’s a comment above citing “skilled workers”. Editing/sub-editing is not just dotting Is, crossing Ts and spelling. It’s having a feel and instinct for language. That’s just for a start. It’s an art. It’s not a production line job and never was. The best subs I’ve ever worked with were transcendent. My hope is, the more denigrated this area of journalism gets, the more ripe the field will be for a resurgence. I’m a romantic, sure.

Well, at least they will be paid. How many of Mamamia’s other contributors can claim that.
Very, very few.

Para 8. Bangladeshi spelled incorrectly.
Someone needs a new subeditor.

Of all the individual sins considered racist, it seems that exploiting an ethnic group for their low cost compared to an Australian, is not one of them.

What a disgrace Mumbrella…it’s not as though there are no people in this country who can do the job, have a knowledge of local issues/places and people and who read and write english as a first language, Thanks for contributing to a race to the bottom.

It’s been going on for some time, but usually India as this Bloomberg story from 2008 says:
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/st.....ial-advice

Cos fairfax outsourcing to NZ has been such a success……

Maybe they’re just after a sub-continental-editor and the ad wasn’t subbed properly?

What Mamamia is doing is no different than what Australian telcos have been doing for some years – outsourcing jobs for call-centres in the sub-continent, only this time it’s sub-editors. Given the poor English skills of some call-centre workers from experience, I don’t think this will be an improvement for Mamamia.

Offshoring has made intermediaries a lot of money.

Banks, call centres, IT, insurance, animation and legal services are all moving. How much are you worth? About the same that a person in the third world would accept to do the same job. The problem exists because the consumer does not understand quality. This happened to manufacturing a generation ago – the consumer did not understand the difference in quality, nor value working conditions of those toiling to produce what they were consuming–and were unwilling to pay for it.

Hairdressers, cleaners, service industries will be the new wealthy – on $18/hr. Any offshorable task will commoditise. Unions–when there are no members–have decreasing power.

Its not likely to get better without education and a wider understanding of quality. If you look at manufactured goods from the 50s and 60s from Australia, Europe and the USA and can’t see nor value financially the workmanship and quality, then you are part of the problem. It will is the same with fast-turn-over, commodity wordsmithing…

You bought a cheap Japanese car, guitar, or TV a generation ago because you were cheap, now you don’t have a choice. The current generation probably don’t know any different.

The big difference between Mamma Mia and Telco’s is that the latter have never pretended to care about the average Australian. Mamma Mia have built an empire on pretending to care about people and speaking out against what is wrong with this world. They are forever banging on about the (female) underdog: keeping women in work (at any cost) so they don’t become domestic violence statistics; helping mothers return to the workforce; the exploitation of workers in third world countries; the plight of journalists in Australia. It goes on and on and on. And yet, they make decisions that fly in the face of all of this. It’s the smugness of their team and the hypocrisy of their decisions that truly grate.

DT every job that is moved overseas damages the Australian economy. Jobs are lost, unemployment goes up, less tax is collected but more money has to be spent by the government on the unemployed. As well every small business or large finds it harder to get people to come in the door to spend money. But the company which helped cause the problem does lower operating costs.

I saw a video recommended to me about the future of Australian employment. The guy said everything mentioned above, but he gave context.

The fall of communist nations in Central (eastern) Europe opened up around 500m new workers to the employment market. Ditto with China, but around, what, 2 billion. Add in globalisation and machanisation of most industries, and the idea you can survive on $80,000 starts to lose its probability every year. So 1989 was a bad idea (according to our own self-centred comfyness and and first-world issues).

We ought to just let the Putins of the world keep caging their people and withdrawing from the world economy. I think old-style pure Marxists would love to see bourgouise middle-class people having to pick up a toolset to keep the 2 Mercs in running order! (we just HAVE to have them both).

As far as I know, 30 or 40 year mortgages and the prices of utilities and food etc will not fall to match the inability of people to pay. So, something is going to give, and it probably wont be the big companies.

Keep your eyes peeled to how things are going and see how you can keep your current standard of living going in the next 5 to 10 years. I don’t know if many of us will.

As the old saying goes “If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys”. Don’t expect the quality the sub-editing at Mamamia to improve with this move.

Read an item this week about drones being used to deliver food in cafés/restaurants.
If it catches on, there goes the employment for many uni students, and part-time work for – dare I say it, mums: (not wanting to be gender prescriptive, but many women are employed in this sector.)
Employment in this century, I fear, is going to look a lot like it did in feudal times/ slavery.

>>”successful applicants will need “a solid background in journalism and copy editing, excellent spelling, grammar and a sound general knowledge”<<

Which is why we needed to write the advertisement in Hindi…..

Only one solution. Don’t read any of the publications. They won’t last long.