There Is No Bottom, Chain Newspaper Division: Rick Edmonds of Poynter reports that Gannett will outsource hundreds of business-side jobs to India.
Congress is considering several measures to help local news outlets, including subscription and ad subsidies. Any owner that ships jobs out of the country should be ineligible.
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Steve Ross
I am surprised that there are so many “back office” jobs to outsource. These in general would be strictly billing, collections and so forth, as Poynter article suggests. Looks like Gannett had started to automate, didn’t want to invest the upfront cost, sold the company… and buyer does not want to invest, either.
Both ways, good ad sales folks lose the ability and insights to craft clever ad sales programs for local advertisers… losing another edge over national social media.
Jerry Ackerman
Quick and very dirty math:
485 jobs at current average gross salary + benefits/yr of $75k = ~$36m/yr.
Transfer to India @ 1/3 that (people in India don’t work free), = ~$12.5m/yr
Net payroll saving $23.5m/yr
Amount left to go to meet $300m total annual target cutback — ~$276.5m/yr
And where will that come from?