The International Business Times appears to be outsourcing its recently axed U.S. news team to India, which could save the company some money but cost it some talent.
The company is still reeling from a series of shakeups over the last few months. Its editor-in-chief resigned in March, as the company laid off about 15 U.S.-based reporters and editors; about 30 more people were let go last week. Now, IBT is apparently looking to fill some positions for the U.S. edition -- including a news editor role that became available on July 1 and a technology correspondent -- with people based in Bangalore, India.
Former employees, who were not authorized to discuss the internal workings of the business, told The Huffington Post that IBT always has maintained a presence in India. However, they said that only a few employees based there worked for the U.S. site except to post breaking news and tech stories during overnight hours. A former editor said that web copy from the India-based team generally was written quickly but lacked quality and needed to be cleaned up every morning.
The India property has come under fire for poor and downright misleading content in the past. Former IBT Editor-in-Chief Peter Goodman took down a story linking Israeli intelligence to the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris early last year, calling the article "wholly inappropriate." Goodman previously served at HuffPost's executive business editor.
Hiring employees in India allegedly saves the company quite a bit of money. A former editor told HuffPost that a fledgling reporter in New York or California might have made between $30,000 and $36,000 in a year, but that IBT might pay a similar employee in India about $8,000 in the same amount of time.
Former workers said they weren't surprised to see new jobs become available in India. However, they characterized IBT's apparent move back to a "content farm" model as a sad one. In 2013, IBT hired reporters and editors from all over the world to produce quality journalism -- and while there were concerns over the company's ability to pay them at all and complaints over meager paychecks, the former editor said "good journalists" were being hired all the time.
Still, the apparent outsourcing can be seen a logical move for IBT if it plans to spend most of its resources on cranking out content with less overhead, rather than focusing on original reporting. The former employees HuffPost spoke to overwhelmingly believed that IBT's news properties would be out of business within five years.
IBT did not immediately return requests for comment.