MediaNews group, a newspaper company that publishes 57 U.S. dailies, has outsourced its customer care to a Philippines-based company, APAC, according to a company statement Saturday.

Joseph Santiago, chairman of the House committee on information and communications technology, said the decision will push MediaNews' rivals to do the same in order to stay economically competitive.

Santiago added that newspapers in the United States and elsewhere face tough financial challenges due to rapidly declining readership in the Internet era, ABS-CBN News Online reported.

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

APAC, whose customers come from various industries, already has almost 80 newspaper clients from the United States alone.

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