Bean Counter

The Latest Nail In Newspapers' Coffin: Outsourcing

The Wall Street Journal has long "outsourced" copy editing and layout of it's European and Asian editions to South Brunswick, New Jersey. There was a lot of hand wringing at first as to whether people in NJ would get right the details of local European or Asian stories, given their presumed lack of knowledge of the regions and key players. Has it worked out - you can never tell because you can't tell how the papers would have done without the change. But you can tell that that the costs cuts were achieved. It takes vision to put the unprovable gains of quality against provable cost cuts. That type of vision is now very rare in the newspaper industry.