Now I wonder what mainstream newspaper journalists will make of this? Here is the view of Jeff Jarvis on the decision by the Express group to outsource its business section to the Press Association and thereby reduce the staff of the Daily and Sunday Express by a tenth.
"It makes sense, as far as it goes. When I was Sunday editor of the New York Daily News, I worked to outsource our TV grids and book. Papers have long since done this with financial tables. Why not whole sections?
But what about off paper and online? There, if you don't want to go to the expense of having a business section, if it's not core to what you do, then you can link to one. And that forces you to decide what is core. What is it that just you can do and that can't be outsourced?
When you've answered that question, then, finally, you've decided what your news organisation is really all about."
So there it is, a rationalist, futurist challenge to accepted orthodoxy. Jarvis appears to agree with the cost-cutting Express owner Richard Desmond. But that's only the appearance, isn't it? Well, isn't it?
