From an article in the Business section of Friday’s Used-To-Be-Macon Telegraph:
The Telegraph announced Wednesday it will outsource a portion of its advertising production team. The move will mean a reduction in staff from 10 to three people effective April 11 … The ad production work will be done by Elgin, Ill.-based Affinity Express … The company has more than 900 employees and maintains large production centers in India and the Philippines ….
Jim Daugherty, regional human resource director for The Telegraph and the Ledger-Enquirer in Columbus, has also announced that the newspaper is considering outsourcing its editorial board.
“We believe The Telegraph can achieve significant cost savings by offshoring op/ed content,” Daugherty said. “I mean, these problems that Macon has are nothing new. Somebody in the Philippines or India can get on the Internet and figure out what to say in a Telegraph editorial just as well as someone who actually lives in Macon.
“Displaced editorial writers will be offered severance packages. It’s possible that columnists and editors may qualify for other positions at the Telegraph, such as covering high school sporting events or divorce court.”
Telegraph Editorial Board member Phil Dodson responded to Mr. Daugherty’s announcement in an editorial which was forwarded to Jakarta for editing. WMCC News has obtained a copy of the original version of Mr. Dodson’s editorial:
The Telegraph editorial writers are saddened that the McClatchy Corporation would send our editorial writing jobs overseas to literary sweatshops where the workers are underaged children working in brutish conditions without even being provided their own copy of The Elements of Style, being forced to work as much as eight hours a day in order to churn out editorials at the alarming rate of sometimes more than one a day.
Dodson could not be reached for comment. He was covering the Perry High-Southwest High basketball game.
“Telegraph to outsource part of ad production team” macon.com 1/25/2008
7 responses so far ↓
1 Victor Jones // Jan 27, 2008 at 10:59 am
Dear Editors,
Please don’t mess with my farmer cousins. They ain’t got nothing to do with shippin local reporter’s jobs overseas. It’s Rupert, HaveMoresGeorge and their gypsy band of Acquisitors, who acquired the Intellectuals, who convince the Warriors to move to Iraq, who convinced the Laborers to take their stateside jobs while they improved the middle eastern infrastructure.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/georgiaimproper/545415450
columnist note:
as long as you can grow asparagus and tomatoes, you don’t have to suck up to the acquisitors who are using money borrowed from China and Japan to lend to the U.S. Taxpayers, to improve the Middle Eastern infrastructure.
After a brief word from our sponsors at Fruit of the Loom, back to the pothole beat..
2 augustus // Jan 27, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Outsource the editors? Great idea. Then maybe at least one editor would be a common sense conservative.
3 alvin // Jan 27, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Better yet, if work is outsourced to India, someone might know sum grammar more betterer than me. Purty easy.
They oft times know the King’s English in Mumbai. More than I can say for me. And I had amazing English teachers. I just type too darn crummy.
4 Cotton Avenue Solon // Jan 27, 2008 at 7:10 pm
In Sunday’s Telegraph editorial, “Keep the ‘Friendly Skies’ Friendly”, I was very surprised to see a mistake by Charles Richardson. US Airways is not an upstart airline, and is not based in Florida as he claims.
Perhaps he’s already getting his business information from a sweat shop employing 14-year olds in Bangalore, India.
5 Cotton Avenue Solon // Jan 27, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Councilman Ed DeFore was so shaken when he first saw the “flat Earth” photo above, he frantically called Johnny Wingers at Emergency Management headquarters and told him to man all battle stations.
Poor Ed thought we were under attack by aliens in flying saucers that looked like our mother planet.
6 rayjay // Jan 28, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Yo? Why not outsource “The Telegraph” to amore favoral place than macon where its made its living for over 100yrs. I have many ideas to where they ought to go,& all of them warm. Keep in line with sort of thinking & you may outsource yourself out of a BIDNESS.ya no. But while you are in India getting rich from a 50cent paper,please take your comrads for a STEAK dinner. I hope you can “outsource” a cow for us . im thru now,my soapbox broke
7 alvin // Jan 30, 2008 at 6:29 am
As obsessed as I am with that Tom Friedman book, it took me a lot of days to get the title and artwork of this post. I said to myself: Duh, Alvin.
My brother picked up on it instantly.
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