Orange County Register outsources production to India

A salutary tale from the US.

Outsource to India, says the deputy editor of the Orange County Register, California’s fifth-largest newspaper. On a one-month trial basis, Mindworks Global Media, an India-based company, will copy-edit some of the Register’s stories and lay out pages for a community newspaper at the same company that owns the Register.

Similar moved were made at the Irish Independent last year, except they outsourced production to an Irish firm RE&D and to some based in France I think. As best I can tell, that particular outsourcing project may have not been as successful as IN&M painted, or wanted, it to be. I would imagine this is to do with the disconnect between the production teams at a different premises, and the journalists who write the stories. They could bring some production back in-house later this year.

Still though, I guess there’s no harm in testing it out, as in the case of the Orange County Register.