You’d think if the Record Searchlight wanted to cast a worldwide net for newsroom writers, it would start with an ad in its own paper.

After all, the RS has ads in its classifieds for an RS forklift operator, RS ap/accounting clerk, RS contract home-delivery paper carriers, RS circulation director, and, my personal favorite, RS audience development manager, delightfully satirized in this blog by Greg Pate.

Seriously, though. If one believes this solicitation on elance.com, writers are the RS’ latest outsourced workers.

Elance.com is summed up in this U.S. News and World Report excerpt like so: “This website has become a major spot for foreign workers to sell their services to Americans . . .Seventy percent of those offering their skills on the website come from outside the United States.” 

We shouldn’t be surprised. We already reported how the RS outsourced its advertising production work to India.

But outsourced writers? Of all the dumb RS management moves (so many from which to choose), this one even surprised me, when I saw this ad with my own eyes. 

Sure enough, there, among all the other projects in search of worldwide writers was a May 22 post by Carole Ferguson. Her ad specified a budget of less than $500, an April-12 bid deadline and this subject line: News you can use articles.

If Ferguson’s name doesn’t ring a bell, she’s the Searchlight’s new managing editor. She replaced Greg Clark. You probably don’t know her since she never assumed two of Clark’s most public duties: editorial board member and column-writer (in the editor’s absence). Maybe she’s too busy outsourcing newsroom writers.

“News you can use” was Clark’s mantra (along with ”What does it mean to the reader?”).

Below is the full text of Ferguson’s ad. Read it and weep: 

The Redding Record Searchlight, a newspaper in Northern California, is seeking articles on a regular basis on the following subjects:

Health (fitness, exercise, medical, nutritional tips, etc)
Personal finance (tips on saving money, investing, coping with the real estate market, saving gas, etc.)
Food (articles and recipes based on seasonal foods and holidays, as well as kitchen tips)
Family(tips on raising kids of all ages, intergenerational issues) 

It is preferred that articles contain sources from Shasta, Tehama, Siskiyou and Trinity counties in California, but articles of general interest will also be considered. 

That’s rich. Can’t you just imagine a writer in Alaska or India conducting phone interviews with a north state map in front of them as they type and pretend they’re local? Can’t you just hear how they’ll innocently botch Placer (Play-sir), Butte (Butt-ee) and Tehama (Te-hamma)?

I don’t blame the elance.com writers. They’re just people looking for work. (And some elance posters live in the north state and offer a variety of skills.)

I wonder: Does the RS have something against local people? Golly, the RS has no trouble sucking up local money from advertisers and subscribers. But it seems with each passing month the paper gives less back to the community.

Case in point, about 17 fewer people work in the RS’ editorial department than when I was there last year. Surely those job losses freed up another trainload of money to chugga chugga chug to Cincinnati.

Gee whiz. The RS is already using freelancers, whom you can bet are paid even less than than the youngest reporters. Gosh, could it be that even local freelancers were too expensive for the RS? Hard to fathom.

Judging from three of Ferguson’s want-ad subjects - health, food and and family - she pretty much described Currents, the paper’s once-fine, now-gutted features section.

The only head-scratcher in Ferguson’s want ad was the ”personal finance” subject, since the topics mentioned in that category - tips on saving money, investing, coping with the real estate markert, saving gas, etc. - have traditionally appeared on the RS’ business section.  

What’s next? Outsourced copy editors? Outsourced photographers? Outsourced sports writers? Oursourced breaking news?

While we ponder those questions, here’s another:

If a local paper outsources all its key labor outside the north state, at what point does it cease being local?

If the RS is looking for outsourcing opportunities, I suggest two positions: publisher and editor.

Now that would be some news we could really use.

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