APN begins editorial outsourcing

Media began outsourcing editorial production work in New Zealand yesterday, in a strategy being watched by media outlets in other countries.

A contractor, Pagemasters New Zealand, is now doing the editing and layout work for The New Zealand Herald and several regional and weekly papers.

APN says 20 full-time sub-editors at Pagemasters started work on Sunday in Auckland on an extension of the group's computer editorial production system.

APN deputy chief executive Rick Neville said that by the end of 2007, Pagemasters will have about 45 editing staff to edit the seven newspapers. That is nearly 30 fewer than the newspapers employed for the job.

Pagemasters is a subsidiary of the Australian Associated Press news agency.

The Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union has said the move will erode the quality of news coverage because stories will be handled by editors unfamiliar with local issues.

This YouTube clip is of a union protest at the Qantas New Zealand Media Awards held in Wellington on Friday 18 May.
Several journos from the APN group wanted to raise the issue of APN's outsourcing of sub-editing. They got the banner up, but were shutdown and shoved off the stage pretty quickly.

We think we've got problems with outsourcing

Local newsgathering outsourced to India

I've written before on APN's outsourcing of sub-editing, but what about out-sourcing an entire newsroom?
Radical hey?

The California-based Pasedena Now website is advertising for a freelance journalist based in Bangalore to report on local council issues and other daily event coverage in Pasedena.
The website editor thinks he can justify this because the council meetings are broadcast over the web anyway. Here's a taste of AP copy on the story:

James Macpherson, editor and publisher of the two-year-old Web site pasadenanow.com, acknowledged it sounds strange to have journalists in India cover news in this wealthy city just outside Los Angeles.

But he said it can be done from afar now that weekly Pasadena City Council meetings can be watched over the Internet. And he said the idea makes business sense because of India's lower labor costs.

"I think it could be a significant way to increase the quality of journalism on the local level without the expense that is a major problem for local publications," said the 51-year-old Pasadena native. "Whether you're at a desk in Pasadena or a desk in Mumbai, you're still just a phone call or e-mail away from the interview."