Invest in Media

I really liked this article and I whole heartedly agree with the sentiment. I used to work for an online encyclopedia (not the free one everyone knows of, hence the used to work for…) and we switched from using AP wire feeds to one based in Korea to cut costs.

It was very strange to see headlines poping up on breaking news at the New York Times and BBC and be told to wait for the story to be reported on in South Korea so we could spend the least amount of time on adapting the story before posting it on our site. When we did get the wire story it was often filled with sentences like “according to the New York Times,” or “it was reported by the BBC” so it felt silly waiting for someone elses’ report on the same article I read hours ago, but I knew they were getting the report cheaper from Korea.

Any way, I agree that a lot of the news that the average American sees on TV or hears about on the radio is such a tiny fraction of what is being covered by international media groups. Many U.S. media companies don’t seem to think we’ll pay to find out about other parts of the world. It’s not that they don’t thnk we can handle too much more information. If so they wouldn’t run the ticker headlines, ball game scores and stock report during an exclusive interview with whoever is big at the moment.