The Walnut Creek focused “Crazy in Suburbia” blog was concerned after reading Maureen Dowd’s column about a Pasadena publisher who hired reporters in India to cover local news by using the Internet and phone.

Dowd went on to quote MediaNews Group chief executive Dean Singleton as saying he favored outsourcing including possibly having one news desk for all of his papers, “maybe even offshore.” MediaNews is the majority owner of the Contra Costa Times.

That prompted the Crazy in Suburbia blog to ask Kevin Keene, executive editor of Media News Group’s papers in the East Bay including the Coco Times, whether coverage of Walnut Creek City Council meetings and other local news will be outsourced to India.

In an e-mail, Keene told her “no.”

“The Contra Costa Times has no plans to outsource reporting or editing positions to India, although we are exploring other options to reduce costs during the current economic recession.”

Soccer mom wrote:

“That’s good news. I’m a daily reader of both the Times’ print and online editions. I’m actually one of those old-fashioned types who enjoys my morning cup of coffee while turning the actual newsprint pages of both the Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. Yes, the Times often drives me crazy, especially because of all the cool stories I think it doesn’t cover in Walnut Creek. But it would be a tragedy for this newspaper to go out of business, or for its coverage to be provided by writers half a world away—both for the people I know who work at the Times and for the East Bay community. We need local news, both from the Times and from bloggers like claycord.com,” a local news blog for Concord and Contra Costa County.

As for the picture, that’s what Soccer Mom has posted on her Web page, but she explains in the “About Me” section that it’s not her in the photo (it looks like Victoria Beckham). “I’m not that skinny and I’m not rich. However, I do have a son who plays soccer …”