Can Newspapers Save Themselves By Outsourcing?

The idea of getting someone other than your local newspaper staff to fill your newspaper with stuff certainly isn't new. That's the whole point beind wire services, syndication, etc. But the more ad money that flows out of papers, the more you're going to see of it.

Reuters has begun moving some of its most rote information-gathering jobs out of New York and other high-costs cities and placing them in India, and we understand that the system is working fairly well. But why stop there? From, um, the AP:

SANTA ANA, Calif. -- An Indian company will take over copy-editing duties for some stories published in the Orange County Register and will handle page layout for a community newspaper at the company that owns the Pulitzer Prize-winning daily, the newspaper confirmed Tuesday.

Orange County Register Communications Inc. will begin a one-month trial with Mindworks Global Media at the end of June, said John Fabris, a deputy editor at the Register.

Mindworks' Web site says the company is based outside New Delhi and provides "high-quality editorial and design services to global media firms...using top-end journalistic and design talent in India."...

[The OC Register]  has been through three rounds of layoffs in the past year, most recently in April when up to 90 employees lost their jobs. Employees were also offered a voluntary severance program in 2006.

Of course, there alternate, much more palatable outsourcing strategies, which most of the Web 2.0 world figured out long ago - get the readers to do your work for you. The New York Times has caught on: