Customers of the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper San Jose Mercury News will now have to speak to Filipino call center agents after the paper's owners outsourced its customer care needs to a Philippine-based company. MediaNews group, one of the largest newspaper companies in the United States wit

Customers of the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper San Jose Mercury News will now have to speak to Filipino call center agents after the paper's owners outsourced its customer care needs to a Philippine-based company.

MediaNews group, one of the largest newspaper companies in the United States with 57 dailies across 12 states, recently outsourced the company's customer care to APAC Customer Services, Inc., Catanduanes Rep. Joseph Santiago said in a statement Saturday.

The San Jose Mercury News, founded in 1851 and based in San Jose, California, is the 34th largest US paper with a daily circulation of 230,870. It also won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 1986 for its reports on the corruption of the government of Ferdinand Marcos.

Santiago, chair of the House committee on information and communications technology, said the decision of MediaNews will also drive its competitors to do the same.

"We expect MediaNews' decision to start offshoring some back-office services to the Philippines to drive the group's competitors to eventually do the same in order to stay economically competitive," Santiago said.

Santiago added that newspapers in the US and elsewhere face mounting financial challenges due to rapidly declining readership on account of growing Internet use.

APAC's Philippine call hubs will initially provide customer care and back-office solutions to San Jose Mercury News and two other sister publications, the Contra Costa Times and the Oakland Tribune, which will include inbound customer calls, subscriber retention, and delivery and billing inquiries.

APAC's main customers are involved mainly in healthcare, financial services, publishing, business services, communications, travel, and entertainment. It already has almost 80 newspaper clients from the US alone.

MediaNews followed The McClatchy Co., the US's third largest newspaper firm, which began outsourcing customer services back in July 2007.

McClatchy includes in its fold The Sacramento Bee, The Miami Herald, The Kansas City Star, The Denver Post, and The Charlotte Observer, all among the top 50 US dailies.

"Global BPO providers based in the US have been crediting their Philippine operations as among the most productive worldwide, largely owing to the country's ample supply of highly cost-effective human resources," the Santiago's press statement said.

Philippine call centers are projected to have more than 300,000 seats employing 506,500 Filipinos and generating as much as $7.3 billion in annual revenues by 2010, it said.