After beating the outsourcing horse bloody, C/net has decided to outsource some of the “writing” jobs to India, according to a report on Newsforge which snagged a memo written by C/net Builder.com editor, Rex Baldazo.

bq. “… with Q2 it appears my monthly article budget will be slashed dramatically. We’re talking somewhere in the 40% range. Unfortunately article fees are the biggest discretionary items in our budgets so whenever they need to find a place to cut these are the biggest targets…… And it gets worse. I hate to have nothing but bad news in this email, however they (they == TPTB) [The Powers That Be – Ed.] want me to try outsourcing some of our content. So we are currently negotiating a trial period with an outsource editorial firm in India (yes, India). They will provide a certain number of Builder articles over the next couple months. That will further reduce the number of freelance articles we purchase in Q2. The India contract is just a 2-month trial so I don’t know at this time whether it will affect the number of articles we purchase in Q3. I’ll try to keep everyone in the loop as we move forward on this effort.”

Meanwhile this site adds:

bq. The irony thing is, Builder.com already hires freelancers from India, who may be bumped off by fellow writers from their own country.

Washington Post’s Art Buchwald adds his two cents.

bq. Written by a Chinese person, this column would cost only 50 cents. It scares the heck out of me.