The company announced today that Chris Saridakis (left), CEO of advertising software subsidiary PointRoll, has been named senior vice president and chief digital officer, responsible for "expanding and enriching the company's global digital operations.''That sounds like a chunk of the turf occupied by Jack Williams, who has been head of Gannett Digital. Indeed, Gannett said in the same announcement that Williams will now be president of Gannett Digital Ventures. It will oversee online classified companies and other businesses. Looks like a smaller portfolio to me.
This management shift suggests Williams may no longer be among contenders to succeed Newspaper Division President Sue Clark-Johnson, who announced her retirement last week. She leaves in May, but I would not expect GCI to wait until then to name her replacement.
Underscoring Saridakis' new, more powerful role, he will report to CEO Craig Dubow. Saridakis, 39, also becomes a member of the Gannett Management Committee. Williams, too, will continue reporting to Dubow and remain on the committee.
Saridakis was named CEO of PointRoll in 2005 after working two years as chief operating officer. Before PointRoll, Saridakis was senior vice president and general manager of the Global TechSolutions division for online advertising giant DoubleClick, now being acquired by Google.
Williams had been president of Gannett Digital, a new position, since January 2006. In that post, he oversaw all Internet and digital initiatives for the company’s domestic operations.
[Photo: Gannett]
Just what Gannett needs ... another highly compensated executive / officer while the sites continue to trim staff and resources. 'Cause I'm willing to bet Jack Williams didn't take a pay cut.
ReplyDeleteSorry to be skeptical, but on the surface it looks like more of the same and certainly nothing that'll move the stock price significantly at all. (Though, I will admit it's up a little this morning.)
That's what corporate gets to do. Move people who can't do the job into toehr jobs where they are ineffective. Gannett Digital is a mismanaged operation. Now someone else gets a crack at it.
ReplyDeleteThat's what corporate gets to do. Move people who can't do the job into toehr jobs where they are ineffective. Gannett Digital is a mismanaged operation. Now someone else gets a crack at it.
ReplyDeleteChris is a great addition to Gannett Digital!!!
ReplyDeleteThat's a relative comment. Anything is better than Jack Williams, as far as Gannett Digital is concerned ...
ReplyDeleteHopefully, Chris is all he's purported to be and will fix / resolve all of the existing issues.
Kudo's to DuBow for this move. I think Chris is a real visionary and has a great track record for building successful businesses. I now have a brighter outlook for Gannett Digital!
ReplyDeleteI wonder who will replace Sue Clark-Johnson. Can DuBow pull another trick out of his hat?
It's not unusual to see this kind of structure emerge in newspaper companies, because more focus and throughput is needed to develop new digital local information products while at the same time the existing (and new) classified products need no less time and attention.
ReplyDeletePointroll has a great reputation and Saridakis is widely respected in the online industry as well as in the newspaper industry.
Anyone familiar with the role Classified Ventures, cars.com and CareerBuilder occupy in the classified space can't be unaware of Gannett's accomplishments there: Those local/national strategies which Jack led helped save a franchise that otherwise the company would have lost by now, and now Gannett is an owner of the leading brands in various categories -- even kicking Monster's behind. However diminished that classified franchise might be due to the loss of print revenue, Gannett's situation would be much worse if the company hadn't done so much so aggressively so early (10+ years now) on the classified front. So I think it's a smart move to have someone on the company's top management team solely focused on digital classifieds while someone else worries about everything else.
Your thoughts on Cars.com rise to the level of insider puffery. Look at how another print based competitor, Autotrader transitioned to the web. Autotrader.com just smokes Cars.com in page views and traffic. Nothing wrong with playing catchup. The crime my friend is not in missing the train; the crime is refusing to admit you were late or blaming the tardiness on traffic or the weather or bad directions. The train is full of folks who dodged the gauntlet and managed to get aboard. I would just once like to hear corporate say, 'We missed it; we misjudged the market; we misjudged how our readers wanted content delivered, we lacked the capability and framework to deliver that content to our customers, we had a content team that chased its tail for five years. The results speak for themselves.' Maybe Sue can go back to Harrahs.
ReplyDeleteIt appears a high level Gannett flack is posting on every comment board. Hmmmmm
ReplyDelete