2008 : The year of newspaper outsourcing

Posted by Cyril Gros on December 17, 2007 at 12:01 PM

A wave of outsourcing will begin in 2008 in the newspaper industry according to a survey of 15 private company executives done by Deutsche Bank analyst Paul Ginocchio.

Outsourcing appears to be the most-sought solution to counter the advertising revenues’ swoon.

For instance, one week after the Global Media Conference in New York (from 3 to 5 December) McClatchy's flagship Sacramento Bee announced that it will move some ad production to India.

McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt said that only news and advertising sales must remain internal functions of newspapers.

A number of jobs in and outside of the newsroom are threatened.

The executives in Ginocchio’s survey, who control 235 daily papers were surprisingly lukewarm on the much touted partnership many companies have struck with Yahoo.

Only about a third were confident it will provide big revenue boost; the rest were wait-and-see or remained sceptical.

Advertising revenues are expecting to continue to fall in 2008 but not as fast as in 2007, according to the group.