Sumpter speaks against journalism outsourcing

A UPI story that moved yesterday about the OCR's contract to outsource copy-editing to India had this from our own Dr. Sumpter:

With declining advertising revenues and readership, "I sympathize with publishers," Randall Sumpter, director of Texas A&M's Journalism Studies Program said in a statement.

But, Sumpter explained newspaper editing requires technical skills and knowledge of the newspaper's community. "That ability comes from living in the same city and having the same problems the readers have," Sumpter said.

The Register is one of several U.S. newspapers, including The Miami Herald and The Sacramento Bee, that have moved some of their editing and layout work overseas, the statement said.

"Let's hope outsourcing news room operations to another continent never progresses beyond the experimental stage," Sumpter said.