"We seek a newspaper journalist based in India to report on the city government and political scene of Pasadena, California, USA."

That was the text of the recruitment ad on an Indian website seeking a reporter for pasadenanow. com. The website's editor and publisher, James Macpherson, had hired two reporters within days. He expected the move would "increase the quality of journalism on the local level".

Video of the proceedings of the local council, dealing with issues of everything from sewerage works to local planning applications, is carried live on the council's website. This, according to the publisher, will allow the reporters to cover the local political beat.

The first articles, with bylines, started to appear late last week.

The two full-time reporters, filing 15 stories a week, are expected to cost the website around 15,000.

Publius wishes we could tell you this is the first time writing work has been outsourced to India. But Reuters began getting reporters in Bangalore to bang out earnings stories based on corporate press releases. Hey, at least they haven't replaced hacks with, say, machines, right?

Actually, that's already happened too. Thomson, the financial data company in merger talks with Reuters, revealed last October that computer software was churning out earnings news stories faster and presumably cheaper than human reporters.

EXTREME ONLINE DEBATING PUBLIUS wishes to congratulate RTE on staging Ireland's first online election debate last week, conducted by chat on the RTE website.

However, much like reporting on the inner workings of local politics by watching the proceedings on the other side of the world over the internet, the experience may deprive the audience of some nuance.

In the course of the debate, we discovered that the minister with responsibility for Ireland's bit of the interweb thingy was quite revealing about his technological prowess or lack thereof . . . at first.

"Stephen Hayden: Do you use the internet (not email) regularly and what technologies have you personally embraced over the past few years?

Noel Dempsey: I use the internet pretty regularly, not just for emails. The mobile phone with all of the emails and so on I use on a regular basis, I use a blackberry for that. I'm in constant communication with the office and with home. I have an iPod as well but I haven't figured out how to use it yet!"

But later on in the 'debate', Dempsey added an amendment:

"Note: I have figured out how to use my iPod i just haven't had the time to put music on it!"

Because of the nature of the debate, it was impossible to see whether or not Dempsey had a mysterious box-shaped bulge under his jacket, a la George Bush's debate appearance in 2004.

For the record, enterprise minister Micheal Martin revealed to this newspaper last year that while there is an iPod in his home, it's "lled up by others and generally uses it when "sent out for a walk" by his family.

EXTREME CARLSBERG PROMOTION MARKETING magazine got the scoop that Diageo has awarded the Carlsberg business to Irish International BBDO after a Creative Deathmatch with Owens DDB, the incumbent.

While Publius congratulates the winners and looks forward to the resulting work, we do feel that Owens DDB deserves credit for the Shark-winning work they have done.