Dean Singleton, the CEO of the MediaNews chain, is adamant: "If you need to offshore it, offshore it."
He told a publishers gathering this week that his company now considers outsourcing a routine matter, because it makes no difference technically if a desk is across the room or across the ocean. He says outsourcing some functions, particularly in copy editing and page layout, may be necessary for the survival of a newspaper.
Disclosure: Our newsroom now in-sources (to a central production unit inside our company that also handles pages for dozens of other newspapers worldwide) the mechanical part of pagination. We make the editorial decisions on stories and pictures and have the final say on display type. But it permits our editors to work more with content and less with the tedious part of pagination --- the part that was thrust on newsrooms about 15 years ago and isn't taught in any journalism school
