Mat Honan, writing for Wired:
“We outsourced Thomas Friedman to an Indian content farm, where they produce for pennies a word, any kind of material you want. Really, it’s terrible and I felt kind of guilty after I did this. But you hire them to write a blog post or an article, and I hired this company to write ten stories about globalization and the economy. I basically told them I wanted them to write a Thomas Friedman article, I told them I wanted then to write an article about globalization and its effect on the workforce that’s positive about globalization, speaks about the challenges, but in the end works out for everyone. I told them to quote a cab driver. I just gave them Friedman’s theses, and asked them to write 800 words, and they did.”
“The joke here is that Thomas Friedman is always talking about the benefits of globalization,” says Taibbi.
“And so instead of paying Thomas Friedman whatever the New York Times pays him, I paid a couple hundred bucks and got a month’s worth of columns,” said Pareene.
“To show the effects of globalization,” laughed Taibbi.
“Exactly!” agreed Pareene.
“We can have Thomas Friedman for 1,000 times less the cost,” said Taibbi, with his brow furrowed seriously now.
I love it.
Sad that The Racket didn’t make it!