If any of the journalism reviews have analyzed something that has caught my eye, I am not aware of it. It seems to me that there is less international news about other countries in major newspapers now that Iraq dominates foreign news. Though news from Iraq is foreign news, it is focused on the occupation by the U.S. Filling the foreign news hole with articles about the war may have squeezed out pieces about other foreign countries. Domestic news gets first priority at all newspapers. So, if there is limited space, I think non-war related foreign news likely gets left out. Could just be a personal impression. I wonder.

The Wily Filipino, Benito Vergara publishes a blog that chronicles news in Asia, especially in the Philippines, as well as in the U.S. He has been thinking about outsourcing.

We Internalize Storylines

While doing some surfing for yet another long-simmering project completely unrelated to the St. Louis one, I came across this report on outsourcing labor to the Philippines. The customer service / call center business is already well-known; the projection that the "aggregate growth rate" for this particular niche would grow by 50 percent to $864 (million?) doesn't look too farfetched at all.

The description of the Philippines' advantages over other Asian countries is rather interesting, though, as it could be read in funny ways:

In Asia, the country is in the best position to gain a large share of e-services contracts in view of the following reasons: affordable quality human resource; affinity to Western culture; strategic location; hospitable lifestyle and expanding infrastructure.

Or, if you will: low salaries, hostility to labor unions, a legacy of colonialism, and the desperation to do anything for cash

But there I am grousing needlessly about what is apparently a genuine economic boom that actually doesn't stink of sweatshop-style exploitation, so I should be a little more positive. I do like the way the dry and rigorous economist language gives way to culturalist explanations of Filipinos' seemingly natural affinity for, in this case, the animation industry:

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