Reuters U.S. Journalists to Protest Offshore Outsourcing of Jobs

[liveoaktx]

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/04-06-2005/0003335662&EDATE=

***Here's another reason why corporate media sucks.

U.S. employees of Reuters Group Plc
(LSE: RTR; Nasdaq: RTRSY) will protest the offshore outsourcing of editorial jobs on Thursday as their union begins its legal challenge to the company's attempt to cover Wall Street from Bangalore, India, the Newspaper Guild of New York said.
The Guild's charge that offshoring U.S.-based editorial jobs violates its contract with Reuters will be heard before an independent arbitrator, whose decision is binding. The case could take months to complete. As the lawyers square off, journalists and other employees will picket Reuters U.S. headquarters in Times Square and other U.S. bureaus at lunchtime to call attention to the dispute.
"Instead of focusing on producing the highest quality news, Reuters is now focused on producing the cheapest news," said New York Guild President Barry Lipton. "This change is not just bad for our members, it's bad for Reuters and its clients."
Even after the Guild alerted Reuters managers last August that the exportation of jobs violates their contract, the London-based news and information company announced plans to expand its Bangalore-based editorial staff that was set up to write about American companies and other selected U.S. financial news.
"This is remote-control journalism, with low-paid reporters in India writing U.S. news to U.S. editors' specifications," said Lipton. "It produces a cheaper product but adds no value to stories with reporting at the source."
Although no Guild-covered employees have lost jobs to offshore outsourcing to date, that could change in a few weeks with the company's plans to move other U.S.-based editorial jobs to Canada and Singapore.

[lastknowngood]

1. Fu*k'um where were they when everybody else was being

outsourced? Just supporting the shrub and other corps, those chickens have come home to roost.

[KlatooBNikto]

2. What makes Barry Lipton think a highly paid American reporter can

produce better written news than a reporter in India?By and large, Indian journalists are better informed, write English well and are very savvy people.The only drawback I see with them is that they are not (not yet anyway) highly paid whores like our news reporters.

Like they say this a is a whore business and Reuters has just found itself a cheaper whore around the corner as far as the internet goes.