We may begin seeing, pretty soon, big American cities with no daily newspaper...

We may live to see one such day in the US, argues this piece by Arun Venugopal on Salon. According to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 2,400 journalists left newspaper newsrooms in the US last year leaving the journalism industry with the smallest workforce since 1984. The way out for American journalists, he prescribes, is to move to fast growth centres like India where journalism continues to boom (unfortunately, in terms of business and not quality).

Sure, there are a lot more foreign-sounding bylines in our papers these days, Hindustan Times leading the pack. Two that I can recall immediately, Barney Henderson and Robbie Corey-Boulet. Surely, there must be many more even though there are none at the magazine I work. It should be interesting to find out from them and their Indian colleagues about what new perspectives do they bring to the newsroom. Do they fit in well, despite possibly travelling to India for the first time? Whatever may be the answer, they sure do bring in stories from corners we Indians may overlook. Like this one from Corey-Boulet about a Noida firm outsourcing sub-editors to American papers.

Away from the shrill of rhetoric about Indian jobs being taken away, I think a multicultural workforce in journalism has become a necessity given the globalised times we live in.