This one was so amazing we thought it was a hoax when we first heard about it last week.

A "news" website in Pasadena, Cal., said it was taking outsourcing to a whole new place by hiring a pair of "journalists" located in India to cover the local city council meetings from 9,000 miles away. We're not making this up.

The plan was for the "journalists" to watch the meetings on the Internet and file reports to the www.pasadenanow.com web site -- all without ever stepping foot outside of India or inside Pasadena.

Fortunately, we got word today that this ill-conceived plan had been shelved by www.pasadenanow.com editor and publisher James Macpherson, who used to run a clothing manufacturing business.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but what the heck was Macpherson thinking. Covering the local city council isn't like making tee shirts. You kind of have to be there.

One of the journalists was a graduate of the journalism school at the University of California, Berkeley, which is one of the country's finest programs. It's really too bad that www.pasadenanow.com or some other media outlet didn't hire him to actually go down to Pasadena City Hall and cover the council meetings.

We are hopeful no one else picks up Macpherson's bad idea and runs with it, but we are afraid someone will. What might be next? Maybe they will move the Rose Bowl Parade to Mumbai..