Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Wednesday | Sept. 10 | Got news, or a question?
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37 comments:
Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."
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ReplyDeleteFour more lay offs at the Asheville Citizen Times. I heard it was OC members. All of them. Strange, they are usually the last to go. I was told these departments lost their OC members. HR, IT, Production, and Circulation.
ReplyDeleteWhen I get more information I will post it.
In salem Oregon, they laid off our Production & circulation Heads. The Production head, Harold, was a very hard worker. He worked hands on with Advertisement in helping with large sales and special sections. He was always the first in and last to leave. can't figure out why others didn't leave instead. We have managers out here that we have no clue what they do besides gripe and irritate everyone.
ReplyDeleteFrom Salem Oregon
I left Gannett a while back. My partner walked out the door yesterday with a mediocre buyout. Who cares? He's gone....yippee. yippee.
ReplyDeleteLIBERATION.
Seriously, it's a beautiful thing to have Gannett off your back after way too many years. Just think of the possibilities now. Heck, I could start my own newspaper. Nah. At this point, we'll be doing something smarter (and more fun) than that.
just curious... about how much money do typical advertising directors make? anyone? how about publishers?
ReplyDeleteThe numbers of unhappy employees are shocking. I would have to agree with others that have commented that more cuts need to be made at the top.
ReplyDeleteIt is the only way to begin to gain back confidence of the workers. I remember the days when i started here 18 years ago. We had parties, we got turkeys at thanksgiving and christmas, we had a fun employee christmas party.
All of these things vanished years ago yet management continued to suck out and hack away at the very guts of the operations that provided nourishment to the rest of the body. The little people.
I wonder now if they realize that the reactor core has started to melt, and there may be no stopping it now.
Your blog has quite some impressive following and audience ! im impressed but more so with the candid way you address issues!keep it up
ReplyDeleteMany Production & circulation heads are gone. This is not a sign of merging papers in the future, this is a big step to the fast death of the print newspaper. GCI wants the elimination of print to happen fast so they can cut more jobs
ReplyDeletePut your money on the fact that now retired, exited, resigned top executives knew that this was coming. Even with the VP's and OC members gone someone will have to pick up the pieces and perform. And the beat goes on.
ReplyDeleteThe news: Big news organization sheds 100 jobs, mainly in HR, advertising, circulation and IT.
ReplyDeleteWhat's this mean to Joe Blow, a regular print subcriber whose daughter gets her news online, cousin has a litter of puppies he wants to sell and freshly unemployed wife is job seeking?
Apparently nothing to at least one publication that shared the "news" in a very reader-unfriendly way, telling them so-and-so is now the this that and the other for Gannett.
Why, I ask, why, would a communication company not want to keep it simple for readers, reassure them and let them know what they want to know---which is simply this: Gee, wonder if I still call the same person about that ad or job and wonder what this does to those forums I read online?
Are Dubow, Gracia and Dickey positioning GCI as a more-attractive takeover target in addition to improving short-term profit performance?
ReplyDeleteGCI's current market cap is $4 billion.
Consider the following:
- GCI recently upped its stake in CareerBuilder by 10% and gained a 50.8% majority position. The incremental cost was $135 million, so the estimated total market value of CB is $1.35 billion. BTW, Monster's market cap is $2.4 billion. In any event, print recruitment advertising is likely forever dead.
- The elimination of 1,000 non-management position saves an estimated $75 million a year, including benefits.
- The elimination of 100 management positions flattens the corporate structure and saves an estimated $15 million, including benefits.
- The increase in the single copy price to 75 cents (from 50 cents) at many newspapers increases revenue while reducing operting (newsprint) costs. These are top-down pricing decisions, i.e., not local.
- LT debit is down 25% for YE 2005
- If Murdoch paid $5 billion for WSJ, what is USAT worth?
- What is the value of the long-dead local newspapers' and broadcasts' archives? Can they be monetized?
- Where could a single purchaser (of GCI) acquire a network of 100+ local community outlets (print, broadcast, and web) to promote and/or complement its other business lines?
- The current dividend yield of 9%would go away thus freeing up valubale cash flow for acquisitions and other business investments.
- The balance sheet is strong.
The list could go on.
One poster here decried the loss of joy, newsroom fellowship and Christmas parties to budget cuts.
ReplyDeleteI believe the lost of training and travel are far worse.
In the days when there was some training and travel money, people went to seminars and workshops, discovered they didn't have it any worse than anyone else, picked up new ideas or at least new-to-them ideas and came back to the newsrom energized.
When that opportunity was lost, editors tried to replace the experience with insipid brown bag lunch sessions where co-workers deemed to be superior performers droned on about how they did whatever they do.
Not even close. Even worse, it was a morale killer.
I was referring to the mood of everyone at the paper. I did not mentions anything specific to the newsroom in my comment. Every dept contributes to getting it out the door.
ReplyDelete1:01 p.m. - Jim, you should really break this post topic out as a specific blog post. I'd love to hear more comments about this.
ReplyDeleteHere's mine:
The Asbury Park Press was notorious for not only refusing to send anyone anywhere, but also doing those awful brown-bag lunch sessions. The APP stopped paying for events like NICAR as early as '05. If you wanted to go to stuff that Poynter was doing on the other side of the country, you were screwed. IRE convention? Pay for it yourself, insect.
That attitude was awful. It prevented many of us from seeking out continuing advancement opportunities. It emphasized mediocrity within the newsroom.
But ah, to pour salt on the wound, in came the brown-bag sessions. Instead of listening to top-flight journalists from all around the country impart their wisdom, we got to sit in conference rooms listening to some "star" on the projects team explain how to write a story every season or so. It was a gigantic morale shredder. It communicated to the staff that management liked the guys who were either copy machines and could crank out a dozen stories a day, or the guys in the cushy positions who didn't have to do all the bullshit grunt work and who could occasionally - when the planets aligned just so - produce real journalism.
So this wave is over, and I can say I am surprised to see so many high-level H.R. people left. Here is a position that didn't exist 20 years ago, and doesn't need to exist today. All H.R. people do is generate new forms for employees to fill out. There is no reason why the EE and office managers can't share the duties of this job.
ReplyDeleteAt the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, NJ, Mike Morris (marketing guy) and John Schaller (Circ Director) both gone. They should have gotten rid of the Ad Director, Joan Mason, and the bumbling idiot EE.
ReplyDeleteWe are looking for a marketing manager at the family owned Fayetteville Observer in North Carolina. Resumes invited to greenj@fayobserver.com
ReplyDeleteWhat about the loss of recognition for a milestone anniversary with GCI? We used to have luncheons honoring employees for 5-year increments. No one at the top in Corporate cares any more whether you've been there 5 or 25 years.
ReplyDeleteConferences are a great perk and morale-builder if you can afford it. The NICAR and IRE ones can even teach you something. Problem I've seen and not just in Gannett is wishful thinking -- ie, you already know that stuff, so we won't send you, we'll send somebody that we wish would learn it. It doesn't seem to work. The people who are ready to learn, learn.
ReplyDeleteNo surprise with any of the over two hundred blog comments here.
ReplyDeleteIt is easy to manage when revenues and profits are high, and resources abundant. Even though Gannett still screwed people with meager raises and violated labor laws with overtime. Our focus also was in putting competitors out of business, another law broken.
Their legacy is now sown. You lop off the top executives and brainpower and put the burden on middle mgmt. and publishers. The same publishers, some of them cronies leftover from Watson and Jackson regimes.
Broken promises, broken careers, and a broken future. No way back now. Fold the tent.
I would give nearly anything to go back to a family owned paper. Goodness knows they had/have their issues but I worked at four of them (all but one now gobbled up by Gannett or Newhouse) and I would go back to those good old days including lower pay and not-so-great quirks in a heartbeat. It was when we were still journalists producing news; and we were employees, not liabilities.
ReplyDeleteBeware Asheville- this Hammer guy is ruthless and a corporate climber all the way. We had him at our paper in Pensacola as an EE when I was there and he will do whatever it takes... if you know what I mean.
ReplyDeleteAdding my two cents to the conference/travel discussion - I was fortunate to get a Poynter seminar under my belt before Gannett cracked down on travel at my paper, and what I learned there in a week carried me through the next several years. Gannett higher-ups should realize that outside conferences and seminars can energize their workforce.
ReplyDeleteOh wait, I guess we're less trouble if we're just sheep...baaaaa...
9:29 p.m.
ReplyDeleteYou obviously left Pensacola before the dick schneider regime (the ee now.) No personal attacks but Hammer can do journalist circles around dick any day of the week. Hammer has a love of journalism which I admire. Sure he's not perfect all the time, especially during these times, but who is? I respect very much his abilities and especially his opinion. There is nothing I respect about the current ee. Nothing.
Have you heard Hammer's latest? The news reporters are assigned stories by marketing to "warm the market" for advertisers. They had to do a seven-day series before tax-free weekend to get more people out buying stuff for back-to-school. Then Hammer had the gall to THANK the newsroom for helping bring in extra ad dollars by protituting themselves. Next is an effort to get people downtown to buy stuff from advertisers. Hello, newsroom? Anyone with any ethics still awake there? Is there an EE there or did he/she get let go, too, and everyone else is afraid of losing their jobs? And meanwhile, certain people still have time to sleep -- around, that is.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of travel - now many Gannett eds at APME this week in Vegas?
ReplyDeleteCincy newsroom is plastered with photos of editor Hollis Towns on the town with Elvis. It came from an APME bulletin of some sort.
Nice to see after 60 buy-outs last week and two "directors" axed this week (IT and Circ). Great morale booster for the Local Information Center. Hope he's learning lots about "fighting for journalism's future" in his depleted and demoralized newsroom. Or maybe winning a few bucks to spend on lame thank-you-for-working-so-hard pizzas.
Par-tay on dude.
I was lucky to flee Gannett several years ago when the stock was $80 a share. I of course cashed in the works at once. Now Gannett stock is worthless. I have little sympathy for the newsroom Gannetteoids ... all the ones I ever dealt with were arrogant and condescending. At a meeting in Arlington a few years ago, it was clear to the editors of the smaler "community" Gannett papers that they were viewed as money-generating sites only, and the journalists there viewed as "outsiders" and "little folk" who were barely tolerated. I escaped! And I am thrilled to see the demise of this terrible, terrible company that has ruined the careers of many good journalists!
ReplyDeleteGannett loves to show off Townes to prove how "diverse" the company is - they'll send him everywhere anytime... too bad he doesn't seem to do or know much.
ReplyDelete10:43 PM
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me what Gannett doesn't realize is that people are not stupid. They know the difference between news and promotions, and they are screaming out loud and clear, asking for real news from news organizations. Now, don't tell anyone at Gannett this, but everytime they write fluffy promotions and think they're passing it off as news, it casts doubts in readers' minds. Those kind of doubts wreck credibility. Without credibility, a news organization has nothing.
The comment about "credibility" is old thinking. Gannett doesn't care about credibility because in 2008 credibility is fluid. Media is what it says it is. Only profit margin counts. Only bottom line income statements count. "Credibility" is irrelevent in 2008 because readers don't matter any more.
ReplyDelete3:57 pm:
ReplyDeleteI worked in marketing at the Fayetteville Observer in 2002/2003. It was, at the time at least, a great place to work - the complete opposite of my experience at Gannett.
I could imagine still being there if I were not the trailing spouse...
I am one of the ones let go a few weeks back in the NJ group. I was at work on time, I had the respect of my team and I was loyal to the company and I can honestly say I didn't see it coming. I have had time to reflect and I don't understand the logic behind me being let go. I was not a part of the Good Ole Girls Club, so they keep someone who is badmouthed by her own team. If you go into the other office at any given time of the workday, you will find the office filled with sales people who should be on the road. It is a common joke there to "start on the road" so many so many of them don't show up at all. Starting time? Who knows. I had been to meetings there where I was the only one there until 9:30 or so. Do I sound bitter? Yes. I depended on my paycheck, and I EARNED it.
ReplyDelete12>38 AM
ReplyDeleteYou're right. Readers don't seem to matter. Thus the downfall, I think, of Gannett.
10:43 That is really disheartening news about Hammer in Asheville. Sounds like he went over to the darkside while in Louisville. and he was always the first guy to give you the " as journalists, the most important thing we have is credibility" speech. Wow. That is sad. Sorry to hear you're having to prostitute yourself like that. Times are tough- but he should be ashamed to put his people through that.
ReplyDeleteQuestion for those journalists thinking they have to prostitute themselves---
ReplyDeleteDid you have to sign an updated ethics statement? Has the ethics statement changed in any of the Gannett locations? Has anyone challenged assignments and used ethics as a basis for the challenge?
Hammer Time in Asheville:
ReplyDeleteThe first move he made after replacing the here today, gone tomorrow publisher was fire the EE, who had completely screwed up the newspaper's content and design by strictly following the Sue Clark-Johnson, David Daugherty LOCAL LOCAL LOCAL edicts. Then he wrote a page one apology to readers for the changes, reverted to the previous format, and blamed corporate and its marketing gurus for the whole mess.
7:52, sounds like you were targeted. I think I know who you are and many of us were surprised. I wish you the best.
ReplyDelete