The lesson that should be learned from the rise and fall of Journatic is not that outsourcing doesn’t work, but rather, it’s quality that matters.
I understand why both the Sun-Times and Trib were suckered into a deal gone wrong. It’s the alluring fantasy of a media retailer to get gobs of content for pennies.
In reality, it’s a little bit harder. But only a little bit.
The next move by sellers of very local news is to bring the third world model home.
We’re likely to see more efficiency, but with the best of luck we might also see a couple more jobs for talented local people at rates higher than 35 cents per article. If they can keep the quality up (which means paying people to do good work), there may be a new model for reporting high school sports scores and town hall minutes.