no wonder the execs (cyrus, et al) have been amending the terms of their pay/severance etc. recently. i want to say 'will cyrus, cookie and the rest lead the way by taking a paycut?' but i think rather, as the sportscaster would say, 'it's over, it's all over.'

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I think there's a Britisher (former journalist, I believe) who heads up a company that handles such outsourcing to India (especially matters such as page layout, coverage of city council meetings, etc.). I seem to recall that his company does this for South Florida newspapers. NPR featured him and his operation (I think on "Morning Edition" not too long ago)

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If the Newspaper Guild accomplishes nothing else at that meeting Monday, it ought to take a vote of no confidence against editor in chief Michael Cooke and any of his enablers who think this will result in a paper anybody still wants to (or is able to) read. If the goal is to keep the Sun-Times alive, you don't start by scooping out its brain. Bad enough for the copy editors and designers, but if I were a reporter there, I'd be horrified, too.

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Before we are quick to judge and apply steriotype Indian copy editors, please consider that the Times of India was the fifth most visited newspaper website in the US, see paper below. http://newmillenniumresearch.org/archive/Final_Compaine_Paper_050205.pdf Check out for yourself the quality of the top Indian and Pakistani papers, below: http://www.hindustantimes.com/Homepage/Homepage.aspx http://www.dawn.com/2009/01/12/index.htm http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ Don't forget that some of the best English writers in modern times are of South Asian origin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_English_literature Live and learn!! And open your mind! The label: "Slumdog copy editors" is rude and insulting, perhaps your rednecks have a better solution?

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CORRECTION: The first post had some hasty typos...below is a corrected version. We need to pause before judging and applying steriotypes to Indian copy editors. Please consider that the Times of India was the fifth most visited newspaper website in the US, see paper below (at pg. 32 of PDF). http://newmillenniumresearch.org/archive/Final_Compaine_Paper_050205.pdf Check out for yourself the quality of the top Indian and Pakistani papers, below: http://newmillenniumresearch.org/archive/Final_Compaine_Paper_050205.pdf http://www.hindustantimes.com/Homepage/Homepage.aspx http://www.dawn.com/2009/01/12/index.htm http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ Don't forget that some of the best English writers in modern times are of South Asian origin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_English_literature Live and learn!! And open your mind! The label: "Slumdog copy editors" is rude and insulting, perhaps your rednecks have a better solution?

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Hey, why not? They're closing 12 flags from the company that has propped up the Sun-Times for 20 years. Once you go there, anything's possible.

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Hey Slumdog, I read the Times of India and the Hindu practically every day, but that doesn't mean I'm not occasionally howling. I love the subjects in the very serious newsmagazine Frontline, too, but the prose is almost universally turgid and tortured. Newspapers are worried about fleeing readership, and this is not the way to keep Americans reading.

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Realist, would you like a third attempt at an error-free comment as you attempt to disprove the "steriotypes" of Indian editors?

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The union has no choice but to give in. It will happen whether they like it or not. Besides, the union will be under water by the end of this year anyway.

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They should have outsourced Michael Cooke and Cyrus Freidheim's jobs to India long ago. Maybe people in India could have gotten a website that worked and didn't look like it was designed by a HTML 101 student. The Sun-Times is less relevant than the Rolling Stones, just so happens people still pay money to see the Stones.

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Ridiculous. How can a Chicago newspaper be edited by people overseas? How about fact checking? The Sun-Times will merely become a blog with no credibility. I'd rather see the publication fold and all staff from top to bottom dismissed.

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Maybe you would, raqcoon, but what about all of us on the ST company payroll? Where do we go? And do you really want India keeping an eye on Chicago and Cook County for you?

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So we see that ST writer is glad to have a job for another 60 days or so, even at the expense of the credibility of the paper and the jobs of colleagues on the copy desk. How big-picture, to want to suck the last drops out of the bottle rather than let the Sun-Times die a more honorable death or find a new career elsewhere. Maybe the Tribune can keep an eye on things for us rather than the Bangalore Sun-Times -- even without Blagojevich story-planter Sneed on its payroll.

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I bet those jobs, if they leave the paper, go to Canada. And for anyone who actually works in journalism, tell me how often you actually have to stand face to face with a copy editor. It happens on the phone and by email exchange. People file their stories, they go home, and the copy desk calls. Moving out is radical. But once the rim gets up to speed, it's not that different. It's not that this is not problematic, but it is an idea to keep things afloat. It's ugly, but it may stave off the inevitable for a while longer.

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Slumdog realist: How about letting Indians put out their own damned newspapers and Americans put out theirs? If American papers keep insisting on shooting themselves in the foot every day of the week by putting their stuff online for free, they'll continue to suffer. India isn't the answer to that problem; a big pair of forceps to pull newspaper execs' Web-obsessed heads out of their behinds would be a good start. .

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I'd like to know what the business people were thinking when taking on the huge debts needed to put these chains together. Many privately owned small papers or chains of four or five local dailies seem to be doing much better than the large publicly traded ones - they can get by on much smaller profits during normal times. Having said that, outsourcing these areas isn't going to save the day - it is to try and make some more cracks in the unions solidarity. Asking the union to come up with how to cut the newspapers costs? Take the fifth or suggest that top management take a large pay cut. The company execs should figure it out - as that is what they are paid to do. Either way the company will do what it wants, regardless. Appeasement is no solution.

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You simply can't send intellectual property overseas. That's downright wrong. That type of work needs to stay in-house. I can't believe you're all ready to give up your soul and integrity. If that's the case, send me your copy and I'll undercut what India charges. Here's my email address: plagiarism@libelouspseudojournalists.com

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Tisk, tisk. The staff of the Sun-Times has had a great hand in turning the paper into trash. Granted Cooke and his tabloid ways didn't help. Face it staff. When there was a chance to make a difference most of you ducked under your desk. You cut deals, got lazy and basically spent your work day sucking up. And the Guild? If Guild leaders would have stayed strong and urged a strike when there remained the chance to turn the tide and show strength, Guild leadership, it seems, looked after some of their own self interests instead. So quit the moaning about the impending death of the S-T. The staff let it go to hell.

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I thought they had gotten rid of the copy editors a couple of years ago, judging by what I am finding in the Sun-Times, such as a major columnist writing "pouring over the pages."

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My newspaper outsourced the ad design (layout) to India and well, we had an ad that list a "steak and king crap" special on a restaurant ad. Could it happen if it wasn't outsource? Yes. But it was much harder to fix on deadline.

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over the last year i've found that most of my Tribune and most of my Sun-Times remain on my floor in my bathroom... I just don't spend that much time there. However, as much as I would like to rally for print, since that's what I've done for the last 30 years, eventually you have to realize: it's over. And sooner or later, advertisers will realize there is very little benefit to tagging such sources to garner customers. Don't you all just Google what you're looking to buy to find the best price? And who, in his right mind would buy inside the city of Chicago with a 10.25 sales tax? Say goodbye to ink as you know it. The bigger problem is that the information we really want doesn't come free. It does cost. And sooner or later we'll all be seeing that what we get, well, what we get is what we pay for....

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Outsourcing is nothing new and certainly not at the Sun-Times. Advertising, I.T. and other departments are on the outsource block. The latest being the Editors. The "leadership" seems oblivious to the fact that the soul of their paper just won't translate well when it's not from Chicago. And, I just wonder, of the 13 Vice-Presidents, how many are really needed? Most of what they were responsible for is now in India. And how much of a bonus will they get for selling their departments to another company? If you want to win REALLY big, take a page from the I.T. department, go to India, set up a company, outsource your department to it and rake in the cash. It worked well with at least one V.P. so it should work well with another. Too bad they didn't just fire the department head caught in a rather indescrete moment last year with a subordinate. That would have saved some cash. The News paper business isn't really dying in Chicago, it's just being outsourced. Hopefully the new leadership sees that most of their senior management is little more than friends of VP's and upper management who hire their friends and family as consultants. This will account for the hideous amounts of money spent on projects that go nowhere and only produce red ink.

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