Christchurch Press doesn't give a fuck about Kiwis!

[300weatherby]

The Christchurch Press has just fired the creative staff that work at the Press in Christchurch. They get to finish just before Christmass, best Christmass present ever!. They are being replaced by Indians working on the other side of the planet, job being done on the net and emailing. After beating their chest about being "upstanding for Christchurch", representing themselves as being honourable supporters of, and representitive of Cantabrians, they outsource to a third world country to save a dollar, callously ignoring kiwis living in a fucked city with fucked houses, fucked roads, fucked infrastructure that gave loyal and dedicated servivce regardless of the personal stresses living in this city imposes.

Funnily enough, they are keeping this very quiet, one assumes, this is because they KNOW what thay have done is WRONG!

Cancelling my paper, and will work on making sure all of my customer base knows about this and bins advertising with them

Fuck I am angry, and will not let it go anytime soon!

[Robbo]

Totally agree weatherby, all these companies like the telcos, the power companies and many others and now the press. They all expect to do business here in NZ and make their money from us Kiwis and yet have outsourced their customer services etc offshore. Have you ever tried to communicate with these services and been able to understand them or have them understand you. Generally english is their third or fourth language making communicating almost impossible which is bloody frustrating. It's time we stopped supporting these companies, where possible, and support companies that employ kiwis here in NZ.

[Banditbandit]

How do you know about this? Can you source the info? Just asking - because members of my family work there ... I'm now worried abotu their jobs ...

Cancelling my paper, and will work on making sure all of my customer base knows about this and bins advertising with them

Like that's going to save jobs - means less income for the firm and therefore more job losses ...

[Paul in NZ]

Agree - shitty thing to do and stupid. Who do they think buy the poxy paper?? Not unemployed people or people in india

[neels]

So an Australian company owned by obscenely rich people have found a way to do business that will make them more money, and doesn't give a shit about a few jobs at a newspaper in Christchurch.

Who'd of thought that would ever happen?

[HenryDorsetCase]

How do you know about this? Can you source the info? Just asking - because members of my family work there ... I'm now worried abotu their jobs ...



Like that's going to save jobs - means less income for the firm and therefore more job losses ...

I have bought maybe 20 newspapers in the last year. Thats why their business model is in the toilet. They give away their content for free why would I pay for it?

sucks about the staff though no one shoule be surprised. The press is a Fearfax organ anyway. why would a multi national company care about a few people at the arse end of the world.

I get all my news from Kiwibiker anyway. Fast, relevant, unbiased and honest.

[mashman]

So an Australian company owned by obscenely rich people have found a way to do business that will make them more money, and doesn't give a shit about a few jobs at a newspaper in Christchurch.

Who'd of thought that would ever happen?

[Hitcher]

1. The Press newspaper is just a newspaper masthead. Most of its content is shared with other Fairfax outlets. All of its staff are Fairfax employees, a few of which live in Christchurch.

2. Most of the production work needed to produce The Press has been done outside of Christchurch for some years. Indeed during the post-quake period, nearly all of it was. Some Wellington Fairfax employees were extremely miffed that they got no credit for keeping The Press running, when the fact that The Press continued to appear each day during the crisis was attributed exclusively to some Christchurch-based people.

3. The newspaper industry is rooted and going through its death throes. This is largely due to inept management that could not see beyond the rivers of gold that once made newspaper owners rich. Those rivers of gold came from advertising, not from reader subscriptions. Trade Me, E-Bay and other online channels have totally killed newspaper classified advertising, its former cash cow.

4. Newspaper owners think that online will save them. How is unclear, as there are many ways of subverting paywalls and increasing numbers of web users are availing themselves of advertising blocking applications.

5. New Zealand isn't a total loser, as our journalists are paid much less than their counterparts in Australia. That is why Kiwis, like the Magnificent Mrs H, spend their evenings producing Australian newspapers while their Aussie cousins have all been laid off. In this household we know much more about the daily minutiae in Newcastle and Illawarra than we do in Dunedin or Hamilton. How long this will last is anybody's guess, as Fairfax continues to look for ways of reducing costs. Quality of news has long disappeared, if it ever was a business driver for newspaper owners.

[nerrrd]

Been happening now for a few years, don't ask where most of the ads in your "local" community newspaper are made up .

But is it any worse than having it owned by a foreign conglomerate in the first place? I think there's a couple of south island papers that have been sold back to locals and are making a go of it.

But yeah the days of the printed newspaper are numbered, so if you work in the production side of things (like me) you're screwed sooner or later, I expect to be on the scrapheap before too long.

They'll still need journalists to carry on providing stories for the web though and they still have to be locals (won't they???) Time to retrain.

[Hitcher]

They'll still need journalists to carry on providing stories for the web though and they still have to be locals (won't they???) Time to retrain.

No they won't. Fairfax and others are already using "citizen journalists" to provide content for them, for free. All they'll have to do is pay by the story and source content from suitably qualified authors and they can wave goodbye to their reporters.

Don't believe me? Who's writing that essential mums nonsense on Stuff, as well as Stuff Nation? Who's writing most of the motoring and business news sections? Content is the least of a newspaper publisher's worries.

[nerrrd]

No they won't. Fairfax and others are already using "citizen journalists" to provide content for them, for free. All they'll have to do is pay by the story and source content from suitably qualified authors and they can wave goodbye to their reporters.

Don't believe me? Who's writing that essential mums nonsense on Stuff, as well as Stuff Nation? Who's writing most of the motoring and business news sections? Content is the least of a newspaper publisher's worries.

Still think they'll need some actual journos to provide a semblance of credibility on the 'real' news side of things, even if it's only aggregating the citizen-sourced content, regardless of the fluff. No doubt they'll try and contract that out to a third party provider if they can (iykwim).

I wonder if there are any half-decent company management providers in India...can one out-source oneself?

[SPman]

Still think they'll need some actual journos to provide a semblance of credibility on the 'real' news side of things, .........

Credibility?

Newspapers?


It used to be so once........do they still have actual journalists, that hunt out the truth and publish against all the odds?

Yeah - right!

[Berries]

Don't worry about it. You can have some of our jobs - DCC outsource to the Indians in Chch

[300weatherby]

How do you know about this? Can you source the info? Just asking - because members of my family work there ... I'm now worried abotu their jobs ...



Like that's going to save jobs - means less income for the firm and therefore more job losses ...

I may know someone on the same floor.

[AllanB]

Bring back the page 3 girls I say. Shit some of those Indian girls are attractive too - could outsource the models too?