When Outsourcing Makes Sense

(Picture credit http://www.mirasoft.com.ua)
Here's an example of a situation where it make perfect sense to outsource. Consider the criteria and guess who I'm describing:

when the quality of the product is already exceedingly low

when the outsourcers can't help but do as well as (or better than) internal staff

when customer expectations have already sunk to Marianas Trench-level depths

Yes, of course, I'm talking about Reuters! Or, rather, Al Reuters   is the term they prefer, I believe. In any event, their unionized employees are ramping up a campaign against the outsourcing of U.S. jobs:

...To support their position that outsourcing undermines the quality of Reuters' journalism, union activists point to a string of high-profile errors, most originating from a small newsroom set up last year in Bangalore, India. The errors include misidentification of the Polish city of Krakow as being in Portugal and saying Army Reservist Lynndie England, who was involved in the prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq, was commander of her unit rather than a private...

The entire concept of 'undermining the quality of Reuters' journalism' seems like an oxymoron. If an outfit reports stories like a fabricated holy-book-flushing incident or John Kerry's re-energized 2008 Presidential campaign... well, hey, we all make misstakes [sic] sometimes!

Truthfully it all sounds pretty much par for the course for Al Reuters   - I really don't see the problem here, do you? Given that the whole MSM has outsourced much of their fact-checking work to the blogosphere, does this really come as a surprise?

Perhaps Dan Rather, Eason Jordan, and -- soon, perhaps -- Michael Isikoff could comment on the news outsourcing trend from their perspective.

Newsday: Union protests over Outsourced News