One of the factories where The Rikers Times is produced.

          July 12, 2020

WUHAN, China— The trend of underpaid and child labor in China has been exposed to the world in the last few decades as large companies find it far cheaper to outsource their businesses to China than to pay minimum wages in European nations or the United States. The slogan “Made in China” is universally known and is almost an expectation on everyday products.

          As journalists from The Rikers Times were undergoing an investigation into these “sweatshops,” they found extremely incriminating evidence that they could not ignore, despite risking their own jobs. During their time in China, the journalists were invited to see the factory where The Rikers Times is produced. After a long day of visiting sweatshops in multiple cities, they were tired but excited to see the factory. They entered the factory and took in their surroundings with awe. This is where their work was incorporated into the final product: a physical newspaper. Thousands of workers were cramped together to create the newspapers. Unsanitary conditions included rodents running around and even working for the factory. Children wore tattered clothes and worked on assembly lines with dangerous equipment. Supervisors overlooked this scene and screamed obscenities at the workers.

          The journalists were dreamstruck to finally see how their art became a masterpiece, until one of them commented, “Wait a minute, this is just another sweatshop!” This realization hit the journalists like a train. Although they had come to China to research and expose underpaid Chinese labor, they had never guessed that their own company used this same labor to produce the newspaper they had dedicated their careers to creating. Further investigation showed that the rodents were supervising the factory workers and actually made a higher wage than most of the workers combined. The journalists immediately booked flights to return home and urged writers at the Times to expose their own newspaper for what it truly is, resulting in this exposepiece. Unfortunately, executives at The Rikers Times speculated that this article would increase readership and increase the company’s use of sweatshops, where this article would inevitably be produced. The children in the sweatshops will now have to work twice as hard to produce this article and The Rikers Times has no intention to increase wages or provide better conditions for their dedicated workforce in China.