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Journatic worker takes ‘This American Life’ inside outsourced journalismby Anna TarkovPublished June 30, 2012 9:11 pmUpdated July 3, 2012 3:01 pmNot long after he started working for Journatic, Ryan Smith felt there was something not quite right about what the company was doing. The Chicago freelance journalist started working for Journatic, which provides outsourced journalism work for newspapers, in January of 2011, and he was glad to have steady work, even if it paid $10 an hour with no benefits.At first, Smith worked primarily for Journatic’s sister company BlockShopper.com. That’s when he noticed information was often pulled from LinkedIn, writing was outsourced to foreign countries like the Philippines, and bylines were sometimes fake.But Blockshopper was small, Smith thought. Then things started changing. After moving to Journatic proper, Smith started seeing names like The Houston Chronicle and Newsday on his copy-editing assignments. Because he knew that Journatic produced its content at a very low cost, it made him fear for the newspapers they serviced. “I felt like the company I was working for was accelerating the death of the newspaper, luring many members of the industry into their own demise with the promise of short-term savings,†Smith said via email this week.He decided to do something about his concerns. At the end of 2011, he contacted Michael Miner, the Chicago Reader’s media reporter, to discuss his qualms about what Journatic was doing. Miner in turn contacted Journatic, which tipped off the higher-ups that someone was leaking information to the press as it was completing a deal with the Chicago Tribune to produce its suburban coverage. Journatic was not pleased.Smith said that Peter Behle, Journatic’s executive editor, sent an email to Journatic employees instructing them not to talk to the media and offering to pay $50 in “hush money†to anyone who reported getting a request. Miner reported on this and more in the piece that the Reader eventually published. In an interview with Poynter, Journatic CEO Brian Timpone said the email was sent only because Journatic was in the middle of the Tribune deal at the time and didn’t want employees commenting on it.Miner’s story was circulated on some media blogs, and there was a good amount of coverage of Journatic after the Tribune deal became final and layoffs were announced as a result.But Smith was concerned that the story was still not getting enough attention. “The whole thing continued to eat me up inside because I felt Journatic violated almost everything I believe in when it came to good journalism, and I felt like I need to do something about it,†Smith said by email.
