Publishing Executive wrote that Time magazine wants to outsource their editing jobs abroad. The Newspaper Guild of New York alleges that Time Inc. wants to streamline their business, due to loss of revenue from the decline of print subscriptions and the rise of online media, which would mean farming out those editing positions.
They want to do this by firing editors?
Wait a minute.
Did I read correctly?
Can you imagine content without an editor?
Writing well takes talent, skill and most importantly: editors. Ask any writer, and he or she will tell you the important role an editor has.
Why would you want to delete the highly skilled person, and farm it out to those much less qualified, who would be doing basic editing of typos, grammar and misspellings?
Editors assist in a story’s direction, its point of view, the cohesiveness of telling that story—I can’t imagine my work without them.
I cannot believe that a company such as Time Inc. would do this, but I can also understand their concern about revenue.
Consumers expect content to be free. With the Internet at their fingertips, that expectation has grown. Prior to the Internet, did we ever have free content? Yes, in terms of Pennysavers, fliers, and other local papers, but major newspapers and magazines have always had a cover price.
In this changing world, how does a company generate revenue? Would it be better if CEOs reinvest their money into the business that built them?
Streamlining their business means coming up with inventive ways to do new business that would bring in revenue. What if Time Inc. came up with their own game that could be downloaded?
Think of Scrabble and Jeopardy players. People who like the news could play a game using the knowledge they gained from reading the magazine. People love trivia. The game could be based on the content that is produced. It could be downloaded as an app and could generate revenue from those that play it.
This is only one possible solution. There are certainly numerous other options that wouldn’t require firing or outsourcing editors.