As a journalist anytime one writes a story about outsourcing, and disagrees with the John Kerry-Lou Dobbs cabal, chances are that they get nasty emails that pretty much say: wait till your job gets outsourced. Experienced it first hand, though my recent story had nothing to do with outsourcing perse except it was about the new four letter word called India.

Can journalism jobs be outsourced? Are magazines Next? asked Folio, one of the more established media trade publications, in its June 2004 issue. New Yorker wrote at length about Office Tiger, one of the companies in Madras which wants to become the editorial content outsourcer. “I think the opportunity is that one can inherently make a new magazine start-up less expensive. One can reduce the production costs of putting a magazine out,” Atul Vashista, CEO of outsourcing consultancy firm NeoIT told Folio.

Vashista, in my opinion is a talking-head who has no idea how the business of magazines works. He is the Rob Enderle of the outsourcing industry. Quote-a-minute sort. We at Business 2.0 decided to outsource one of our sections to India, and tried to see if it can be done. The results are interesting, and for that you will have to read the August issue of the magazine.