I Too Speak English ‘Goodly’

The Orange County Register is trying a new way to cut costs:

[O]utsourcing to India. Mindworks Global Media will copy edit some of the papers stories for a one-month trial starting next week. And a community newspaper owned by the O.C. Register’s parent company–it didn’t name which one–will outsource page layout to Mindworks, which is based outside New Delhi. …
Copyeditors do a lot more than spell checking; they also take on syntax and grammatical issues, thinking about local idioms and sayings.
Is that outsourcable? Chief copyeditors at places like the New York Times and New Yorker are revered. If that part of the newsroom is sent overseas, what’s next, reporting?

As a matter of interest, I had offered my weekly column, “Return to Reason,” to the Orange County Register. I had proposed to undercut any of the crappy syndicated columns the paper features. I had promised to suitably tone down and tailor the tenor of the column too.

You’d think a libertarian paper would give preference over its editorial pages to a few of America’s underappreciated libertarian writers. Or, at the very least, choose to “reinvent itself” with something interesting, instead of the banal, boring, oft-immoral columns that are distributed to hundreds of newspapers across the country.

(I even submitted a shortened version of the fiercely libertarian “They’re Coming For Your Kids,” whose passion and reason only writer William N. Grigg approached. I’m sure he too would not mind replacing the syndicated Larry Elder in the OCR.)

But, I was lucky to get a reply. Courtesy is scarce among the American editorial-page establishment. On the odd occasions my column was published, it was expected to be gratis.

I’m a little tied up now with writing obligations—columns and book—but hey, OCR, if India disappoints, I’m an ace editor. I speak and write English goodly; exceptionally goodly. I’ll both outperform and undercut Delhi.