Tuesday 13 January 2009

Outsourcing to Oz: subbing costs £45 a page

Pagemasters, the Australian company to which Telegraph Media Group has outsourced subbing the Daily Telegraph's Money, Motoring and Travel sections as well as production work for the Sunday Telegraph, charges as little as £45 to subedit one page, MediaGuardian reveals today.
It says Pagemasters has quoted a fee of $A100 - £45 - to sub pages to at least one other newspaper company.
The Sydney Morning Herald ran a report on Saturday about the deal and claimed: "Industry sources said moving production to Pagemasters would allow the Telegraph to save on night and overtime penalties for workers in Britain and get more expensive staff off its books."
Pagemasters was set up in 1991 and Fairfax Media and Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd each own 47 per cent of its parent, AAP.
Its chief executive, Bruce Davidson, a former News Ltd executive, was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald saying the company hoped to expand further: "There is no doubt the centralisation of the production of newspapers is on the radar of a lot of publishers not only in Australia, but around the world."
Some newspapers in the UK are currently looking at proposals to outsource subbing work to the Press Association.

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