Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Wednesday | Jan. 21 | Your News & Comments
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56 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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The only nice golf course I've ever visited was Pebble Beach, here in Northern California. (Of course, it was 7:30 in the morning. I was equipped with a camera. And I was looking for a certain executive's $8 million palazzo . . .)
ReplyDeleteI think someone in yesterday's post's did way to many drug's growing up
ReplyDeleteHay 1/20/09-3:53 and 9:46-11:28 I think you have the same guy in mind used to play guitar with him think he is OK
ReplyDeleteWhen Chris Saridakis is made CEO, the OC's will have to learn to compete on "Tiger Woods PGA 09" for the Wii.
ReplyDelete"When you look at it, you've got to build content with the publisher, you have to have someone who monetizes it from an advertiser perspective..."
So will GannettBlog sponsor the hole-in-one Buick contest on hole 7?
I would like to give a shout out to Tara for responding yesterday.
ReplyDeleteI know there are many reasons not to say anything, but it's good to know that our concerns are heard in Virginia, even if it takes a Romenesko plug.
Based on content, page views and unique visitors, Gannett corporate could have a wonderful pulpit to correct misconceptions, sell the message, advocate for change, explain decisions to Gannettblog readers.
That the opportunity to do so is taken so infrequently shows the level of corporate commitment to our plans to digitally recreate Gannett. If you can't drink your own miracle elixir, why should anyone else?
Jim--when did you become "alarmingly" independant?
ReplyDeleteUSAT is cutting jobs, furloughing those who remain and cutting costs (including the decision to send reporters out without any way to file stories -- ever hear of Blackberry???) but it can afford to pay for a nice going away party for the editor who led us into this mess and then grabbed one of Gannett's golden parachutes.
ReplyDeleteGood morale booster.
Jim
ReplyDeleteThink next you ought to dig your teeth into the $$$ that the folks at the golf tournament might be paying GCI, and put a STOP to that.
Why hasn't Gannett ever toyed with the idea of an early retirement package? Given the large number of employees in the 60-plus age group a token amount of health insurance and some severance could get a lot of takers. Maybe too many.
ReplyDeleteSo, in Salem, salaried employees are forced to take a full week off for their furlough and hourly employees can only take two days at a time. Is this the same at the other sites? It appears this is treating employees unfairly and may violate state and federal labor laws.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteDo any of the people still on here know anything of your paper's production processes? Ours is turning more pathetic every day. Today, with umpteen added papers to single copy, they monkey with the loading lineups and don't get single copy out until the last carrier is gone after 4:30. This is also hindered by insertion problems that seem to grow every 3 days. Does this kind of stuff happen with all Gannett papers or just a chosen few? Does Gannett ever see this kind of stuff that happens or do they just get what the papers know they want to hear? I would really like to know if my paper stands alone in this or is inherent upon Gannett as a whole.
ReplyDelete11:46 - Not everyone that posts to this blog (or works/worked for Gannett) has an editorial background.
ReplyDeleteBTW... your punctuation filter has a bug or three.
I think the top-tier corporates should take the same week as their furlough week, and file a press release in advance that includes those dates.
ReplyDeleteAnd when the stock price goes up that week, they should all resign.
I have always been amazed at how some newsrooms appear to have far too many editorial bosses while others are much leaner. For example, the Lansing State Journal (Gannett) is widely known for having a number of editorial managers nearly equal to that of non managerial editorial employees while the Columbus Dispatch (non Gannett) and Pittsburgh Tribune Review (non Gannett) newsrooms run a bit leaner on managers. I am just dumbfounded that Gannett's brass hasn't taken a hard look at some of these inexplicable layers that exist in certain newsrooms and thin them down. Doesn't it make sense to have fewer editorial managers and more minions compared to an equal number of managers to minions? Does it really make business sense to have nearly 25 people categorized as supervisors and managers when there are only an additional 25 employees for them to manage? That seems like simple business logic.
ReplyDeleteBTW, just so I don't get anyone "in trouble" with their bosses ... I have never worked for a Gannett paper but I have friends who do.
12:23 the more I read here, I think it has to do with overtime--exempt and non-exempt issues.
ReplyDelete7:55. USAT's priorities have been out of whack for awhile. The layoffs in December were probably one of the sloppiest fiascos I have ever seen at USAT. No rhyme or reason to how they were done or who was let go in certain cases. I too have to pin much of that on the editor at the top who was negligent in reviewing the legitimacy of the MEs selections of who got thrown out on the street. A couple of those who lost their jobs, in and out of the newsroom, were some of the best employees in my view. How did they get thrown out of a place that is so thin on talent and good work ethics? Why did Paulson watch other top performers leave the year before during the buyouts? At least that was on their own, but still... I too am not sorry to see Paulson leave. He might be a decent man, but too many oversights, some that have seriously affected the paper and people's lives, occurred under his leadership. He didn't have a grip on how badly certain newsroom departments were managed, and that led to a host of problems that we may never overcome.
ReplyDeleteI know publishers from other chains feel Gannett is top heavy with management.
ReplyDeleteHey Jim, the story made the business section of Fark.
ReplyDeletehttp://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=4158167#new
12:32, you are right on the "money."
ReplyDeleteWe're about half and half in our newsroom. Most of the salary people work far too many hours, but there are a few golden ones who don't. Which creates more work for those who work far too many hours.
What was that ethics hotline number?
ReplyDeleteIn Louisville, hourly employees are allowed to take the furlough one day at a time, or as a five-day block...which is more beneficial for collecting unemployment. They're scheduling it like vacation...seniority rules.
ReplyDelete7:14 am: You win the prize! (Your comment is the first I've seen, showing someone noticed that addition.)
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question, I like to think I've always been "alarmingly" independent. Still, I added that about a week ago, after another journalist interviewing me for a story asked if Gannett Blog was independent of the company.
While on one hand, splitting up your furlough days seems like a good idea as far as not hitting your wallet all at once ... I do have to wonder if the company is hoping that's what we nonsalaried people will do so as to avoid UI hits and hassles.
ReplyDeleteI would have liked to take an early retirement like was said earlier, but unlucky for me I was caught up in the September management layoffs. Restructure or whatever.
ReplyDeleteBut landed on my feet, little more salary, little worse boss. Got my pension payout in 54 days without much problem at all. Kerrie at corporate was very helpful in making it happen.
Does USA Weekend make any money?
ReplyDeleteAre we the only paper (Morristown) that works (um, gets paid) for 37.5 hours? Everyone else looks like they put in a 40 hour work week.
ReplyDelete9:47: I'm also in Salem. I'm an hourly employee and I was allowed to take the time off in a week. I'm guessing you are in a position where they don't have anyone else to do your job and it would be easier for them to have you split your time. Perhaps you should discuss the labor law implications with your manager and see whether it wakes him or her up.
ReplyDeleteSo who won the Jersey Caddilac? Can the person trade it for the week off with out pay?
ReplyDeleteA Caddilac in Jersey? So which advertiser is getting special treatment? Unreal
ReplyDelete"I think someone in yesterday's post's did way to many drug's growing up
ReplyDelete"1/20/2009 11:46 PM"
I think someone in today's posts needs third grade remedial spelling classes.
I finally called YBR about my 401k, they told me my info was mailed on Dec 15, is the pony express still in use? I demanded they re-send my info. Now on to the pension call, I took the advise and called Carrie Oman's office and found out my paper work was never sent from the HR dept, good job APP! Corprate is trying to assume that my supervisor didnt know when my last day of work was and is holding up the paperwork! HUH? More to come...
ReplyDeleteMaybe somebody should look into our wonerful health care we are are paying alot for. I remember when Gannett to our paper over they told us "We have 40,000 employees which means we will get the best deal out there" My question is? Best deal for who !!! Maybe this another undisclosed revenue stream, or another avenue to move money around for Gannett
ReplyDelete9:45... I think you're talking about something like a buyout. Those were done back in August. A handfull of people at my site (Wilmington) were offered them, and only one or two took them. Now, I bet, those who didn't are kicking themselves. It was a very nice deal.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the obstacles was that they said the bought-out people weren't allowed to freelance for the paper after retirement. Freaking stupid asses.
Anyone see the little public ehtics beating Obama gave his new staff today? Our company's leaders could take a lesson or two.
ReplyDeleteThe layoff in August provided one week's salary and benefits for every year worked, i.e. 30 years means 30 weeks severance. The December layoff dropped to a maximum severance of 26 weeks, no matter how long you worked for Gannett. The next layoff may cap severance at...who knows? So those of you who are near retirement, who are either offered a buyout or can volunteer for a buyout, you are wise to take the money and RUN.
ReplyDeleteNJ BUYOUT/UNEMPLOYMENT QUESTION AGAIN!
ReplyDeleteI know that other NJ employees took the "voluntary buyouts" in May 2008. At the time of the buyout I applied for unemployment and was denied. Since there was salary continuation I have no problem with that.
Now-- salary continuation has ended for me, and the NJ State Unemployment Office has told me that I will most likely not qualify when they do a telephone interview on February 24. The claims representative I spoke with (after hours of phoning) said to "brace myself" because unemployment benefits would most likely be denied.
Since we did receive a letter from Tom Donovan threatening involuntarily layoffs if enough buyots were not taken, I feel there was pressure put on us to take the buyouts. In addition, my position was never replaced so it is very apparent that I would have been laid off very soon anyway.
There were many voluntary buyouts taken in May 2008 at the NJ Newspaper Group. If anyone from that buyout group has already faced this major hurdle, I would appreciate hearing from you. If you know a former employee who has now reached this time frame and
has applied, please pass this on.
I may be contacted at RRandyTBear@aol.com
It is has been inferred that I have panicked in this situation.
I assure you that I am looking for extremely important information and am not trying to annoy anyone.
Thank you!!
Something tells me that the company is on the cusp of implosion. So many poorly planned dictates and initiatives. There are to few people left to fully man each of the little ships and they are sailing farther and farther off course with each man tossed overboard.
ReplyDeletePity, that the once proud and sturdy Gannett is now the weak and shattered shell of it's former glorious self. The near empty offices and the silent cubicles. Abandoned press rooms filled with only the sounds and voices of the ghosts of the machines and the men that ran them, and pallets of undeliverd special sections and other non-dailys collecting dust.
Check out the story "Chain Reaction" in Lafayette, La.'s independent weekly. Interesting take on what's going on in Lafayette -- tyrant Leslie Hurst's terrain. It's worth the read (theind.com).
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Morristown, how is Flax doing in running the show? I see Abbott is no longer a columnist, just a GA.
ReplyDelete6:15
ReplyDeleteGood Point!
Public Ethics? This company hasn't been ethical since day one.
ReplyDeleteThis is from a non-Gannett Newspaper located in Cedar Rapids. Gannett Corporate could learn from this type of management style...
ReplyDeleteGazette working on transformation
By stevebuttry
Every reporter or editor should have the experience of dealing with the news media. We are a pushy lot who ask difficult questions, often just the questions you can’t answer.
I have spent much of the past week dealing with the news media. The easiest questions came from a television reporter for KWWL, wondering what’s going on here at Gazette Communications. The tough ones came from the reporters, photojournalists and editors on my own staff.
As I did with the staff, I will tell you right away that we don’t have all the answers yet. We’re trying to be as open as possible with the staff and public as we consider changes that will fundamentally transform how this organization operates and how our staff works.
I have worked for newspapers that were making big changes and the managers kept employees in the dark until all the details were worked out. You can answer all the questions at once that way, but you damage trust and make clear that management is deciding everything in a one-way process.
Either way, it’s a scary time for our staff and leadership. David Lee, a copy editor, spoke for many of his colleagues when he wrote in his Write On blog last week, “I’m worried about my career, I’m worried about the newspaper I work for, I’m worried about my profession.”
Management has to set the strategic direction and makes the final decisions. But employees deliver the success or failure of any organization, so this week we have been informing our staff of changes that are taking shape in our company, even as we continue making crucial decisions.
I have told the newsroom staff that all of our jobs are fundamentally changing. The jobs in our new organization, including mine, won’t be the jobs we currently hold. We posted some new jobs earlier this month and will post more this week. I have told my staff the general framework of some new jobs, but I’ve asked them to help me shape those jobs.
News spreads quickly by word of mouth, so you might already have heard some of this from your friends and neighbors who work for this company. News also spreads inaccurately sometimes by word of mouth, so you may have heard wrong (some of the rumors that made it back to me were certainly wrong).
The changes we are making are no surprise: Chuck Peters, our CEO, began discussing them with the staff about two years ago, long before I showed up last June. He began blogging last April about the need to change.
Still, when you’ve been operating much the same way for 126 years, as our company has, or for decades, as many of our loyal employees have, it takes a while for the changes to sink in. They’re still sinking in for me, and I’m supplying some of the ideas.
For all of those 126 years, our success has been tied to a packaged product, a newspaper. Even though our customers like that packaged product and many even love it, they aren’t buying it because of the package but because of the content: stories, photographs, columns, graphics, editorials, obituaries, calendars, box scores, lists of information, advertisements.
If the content of this newspaper was in a different language, or if it was dictionary entries, pornography, gibberish or children’s riddles, we would have had an entirely different set of customers, or none at all.
Of course, we can present content in different ways: We can package content digitally or we can focus the content on particular niches. We can publish content in different packages – magazines such as Edge or books such as the popular “Epic Surge.”
Products come and go. The first newspaper I carried as a boy in the 1960s, the Columbus Citizen-Journal in Ohio, went out of business in the 1980s. The first newspaper to give me a writing job in the 1970s, the Evening Sentinel in Shenandoah, Iowa, went out of business in the 1990s. I was present for the deaths of afternoon newspapers in Des Moines in 1982 and in Kansas City in 1990. But the newspaper industry has never seen – at least not in my career – as much upheaval as it has in the past year. A web site called Paper Cuts counts more than 15,000 newspaper jobs lost in 2008 and that has continued this year.
Tribune Company, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun, filed for bankruptcy protection last month and the Star Tribune in Minneapolis did the same last week. The Detroit newspapers cut daily home delivery to three days a week.
Demand for the packaged newspaper product is falling at the same time that newsprint prices are rising and the economy that supports our advertisers is in turmoil. But demand for information content – news, photos, videos, answers to questions – is stronger than ever. The community always needs to connect and engage.
So the leaders and employees of Gazette Communications are working to reorganize into a company that can meet the information demands of the future and continue connecting and engaging the community effectively.
Products come and go in response to market conditions but information always remains essential to the community. So we are developing a new organization that separates content from products.
We will have a separate operation, which I will lead, to gather information content and publish it digitally in large quantities without regard to the limitations of packaged products. We will work out ways to tag the content and make it easily searchable, so you can quickly find what you’re looking for or browse by topics of interest, looking for nothing in particular.
Another operation will manage a portfolio of packaged products such as The Gazette, GazetteOnline, Hoopla, Edge, Penny Saver and IowaPrepSports.com. Those products will draw heavily on our information content as well as content from other sources. They will manage those products in response to changing market conditions.
Other parts of the company are organizing to provide production services or to focus on sales, distribution or customer care. No one is unaffected. We are committed to creating an entirely new media company, focused on and structured for the challenges and opportunities of the future.
Some of the newsroom staff will work in information content, others in product management, but all of our jobs are fundamentally changing.
Even as I sympathize with employees in turmoil who want quick answers to their questions, I am excited about our plans to transform this company and pleased with the willingness – and at times eagerness – of our staff to lead the way in developing a new organization that will serve our community long into the future.
Another staff member, Angie Holmes, wrote in her Frumpfighter blog last week: “I see opportunity and forward-thinking in The Gazette’s plan. Will everybody who works there now make it through the restructuring? Probably not. I am guaranteed a job? No, nobody is. But I do have a sense of resilience that will keep me going no matter what happens.”
Re: Morristown: Flax is an idiot. He'll soon kill that paper like he did the Courier-News and the Woodbridge News-Tribune years ago.
ReplyDeleteRe: Asbury Caddy: Not just a Caddy, but a dozen tickets to Bermuda for some lucky sales reps and, reportedly, a number of laptops to other lucky sales reps.
Enjoy that furlough!
7:52
ReplyDeleteyou don't get more useless than the EE in Morristown.
His Sunday column last week was recycled from his days at the Courier.
Lazy, arrogant, and useless.
5:43pm: Please keep in mind that the executives have better health coverage plans than the rest of us pinions. And their premiums are a just a drop in the bucket to them.
ReplyDelete3:20 - Louisville has 37.5 hour work weeks, for hourly employees. Exempt employees? Different story.
ReplyDeleteIs it true that Leslie Hurst's staff never knows if she is working from home or in the office? I can't believe those stories so I thought I'd ask.
ReplyDeleteMorristown folks - sorry to hear things are not better under Flax. Looks like another Hackensack retread (remember Donnellon?) who is going to be a disaster.
ReplyDeleteDid anyone else notice a large stack of today's edition in their newsrooms? At my NJ paper I noticed a few hundred extra copies sitting around of the inauguration coverage at the end of the day. I guess the expectation of selling extra copies didn't pan out. A bit different from the unexpected demand for papers the day after the election.
ReplyDelete9:19, since when? I'm putting in 40 hours, not counting the mandatory half-hour lunch break we've been told we have to take.
ReplyDeleteGannett is one big snowball heading downhill when will it stop?
ReplyDeleteGuess what it's not. It does not matter what age you are if you have years to work before retirement it's time to get out. If you have another opportunity jump on it. Some workers have been there for years and you may lose a little pay and vacation time but shortly down the road you will be glad you got out. There is no future and Gannett will keep you on as long as they need you which won't be long for most.
10:48 - since always. Don't be a chump. Don't put in more hours than they are paying for.
ReplyDeletedid the unions at the couier journal in louisville except the furloughs????
ReplyDeleteIn regards to the union @ the Courier, ( at least the mailroom), they're voting Thurs. afternoon, according to my husband...I know how he's going to vote, but when asked how he thought it would go, he said he honestly didn't know.
ReplyDeleteI just found this site...My husband as been at the CJ for 28yrs., in the mailroom...It seems most of the posters here are in sales or journalists, ( and my thoughts are certainly with you), but I'm curious how anyone see's this whole thing playing out in the production area's, i.e. pressroom, mailroom, etc...The hubs just turned 50, and I guess we thought he'd retired from there in 10 more years, but now we're not so sure...My dad worked at Standard before the Binghams sold it, and was let go by Shea in his mid 50's, so it seems to all be playing out again.
Fortunately my husband is in great shape for his age, and still capable of doing physical work...Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure how to build a resume around a career in a mailroom...Good luck to everyone!!
11:23 - I assure you, I'm no chump. I know what I was told.
ReplyDelete