Fighting the Attack on GOOD JOBS: Dateline, India: Reuters Opens Door to Outsourced Reporting

Imagine opening your morning paper and reading news from India — not about India, but news that a writer thousands of miles away was able to compile from computerized reports without interviewing anyone.

It's already happening at Reuters, with a staff of about 100 in the Indian city of Bangalore producing brief financial reports for the news service's U.S. business subscribers.

While their work doesn't yet threaten the jobs of reporters who cover city councils, schools and state politics at papers across the country, journalists say it's a slippery slope in a world where companies are more concerned with profit than with quality jobs and professionalism.

"If a sterling news organization like Reuters can do this, can others be far behind?" TNG-CWA President Linda Foley told Newsday last year in a story about Reuters being the first major media company to embrace outsourcing.

In addition to the office in Bangalore, Reuters has sent photo editing and caption writing work from London and Washington, D.C. to Singapore. Peter Szekely, a Reuters reporter and TNG-CWA vice president, said workers in Singapore aren't necessarily low paid but, unlike their counterparts in Britain and the United States, they're not represented by a union.

So far movement of work hasn't led to layoffs as affected employees have either been reassigned or took buyouts. But the union is paying close attention to the company's business strategies and is prepared to fight for any jobs that are threatened by outsourcing.

During tough contract negotiations last year, CWA helped the Reuters local run an ad campaign that drew public attention to the overseas editing and the potential for errors.

"We obviously have an obligation to protect our members' jobs, but as the Guild we also have an obligation to stand up for good journalism," Szekely said.

He said a key problem is that overseas writers and editors don't have the American familiarity that can prevent simple errors involving names and places, or help recognize a major story.

For instance, Szekely said Reuters was late to do a story in 2005 about the financial health of a drug company that had been in the news for failing to produce enough flu vaccines. Writers in India wrote a brief on the company's quarterly financial report without realizing that that it was part of a bigger story in the United States. "Our competitors had a lot more substance with that story," Szekely said. "That's important to us because our premium customers are paying for depth."

Reuters claims that it's freeing its reporters for more in-depth reporting by turning over such basic news to its Indian staff. While that's true to an extent, it's not necessarily a good thing, Szekely said.

"It used to be that a reporter would have to do the grunt work of putting out a (financial) table. Everyone hates it but it's part of the job," he said. "But in doing it you became familiar with a lot of little details that enhance your knowledge and can improve your reporting."

Some of the work being handled in India used to fall to news assistants and interns in the United States, giving them a chance to learn the ropes. If other companies follow Reuter's lead, Szekely said it could take away many entry-level opportunities for would-be American journalists.

For news consumers, journalists say the result could be far more rote news coverage, facts presented without the fullness of details or interviews.

JANELLE HARTMAN