[Give P's a chance: Pope, poultry -- and 'Poopgate']Pick the more unlikely:
- Pope Benedict I, in San Francisco's annual gay pride parade.
- A dentist pulling teeth in a hen house.
- Newspaper division editor-of-editors Phil Currie, visiting an actual, for-real, away-from-McLean, Va., Gannett newsroom.
If you chose Currie, you must work at the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, N.J., where news staffers say he's visiting one of the company's more dysfunctional newspapers today. Hope he brought a mop and bucket -- just in case.
Maybe after Currie is finished in Cherry Hill, he should drive north to Westcherst County NY and visit the top managers running that paper into the ground. Oh wait, it's after 5p.m., they will all be gone for the day.
ReplyDeleteRare corporate visits for sure. It seems like yesterday when the "onsite" teams would descend on Gannett newspapers and it was all pretty negative. We'de be summoned to breakfast sessions and told we were the future then they'd leave and we'd hear horror stories from the top managers. Sometimes those top managers would be gone shortly after the visit. Phil Currie is a good guy who never bought into the beat-up game and a calming person they are lucky to have him come in for crisis management. In the old days of the on-site brigade culture this type of visit meant someone's head would roll. Probably not these days but we'll watch and see.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he can also find some time to find out what is going on down the hall from his office at corporate!
ReplyDeleteThe only way Currie's visit to Cherry Hill can be considered a success is if he returns to Virginia with the managing editor's head on a stick.
ReplyDeleteBy down the hall, might you be referencing his lauded, yet useless, #2. Boy, is that an appropriate title for her, or what?
ReplyDeleteW. Curtis Riddle was in the hizzow too, along with some cat from N.Y.
ReplyDelete#2 as in poop?
ReplyDeleteThis blog is getting stupid.
I thought No. 2 meant second in command.
ReplyDeleteSo did the author
ReplyDeletephil's a good human being
ReplyDeleteHe's more than a good human being. I don't think there's anyone at corporate that cares more about our business. And, no, this is not him weighing in.
ReplyDeleteWell darn.
ReplyDeleteI would love it if I could imagine that someone in that beautiful, costly Oz-like building in the no-cell-reception area of Virginia were reading this blog.
I think the "stop the negativity!" posts are written by mid-managers, but if the bigwigs are reading they haven't been tempted to speak up .... yet.
Hey, there are a lot of us who care deeply about our profession/business. But none of us has been in a position for decades to do something positive about preserving it like Phil. And from where I sit, it looks like he hasn't been very effective. In fact, some of his silly initiatives in the 1990s may have paved the way for the steamroller now flattening newsrooms.
ReplyDeletePhil's a good human being, but he's not a sufficiently forceful, dynamic personality to stand up to the beancounters and moneygrubbers.
Anybody on this board old enough to have worked under, or even remember, Phil's predecessor, John Quinn?
If Phil Currie cared deeply, he wouldn't leave a guy like Mark Silverman in charge of a newsroom, a mailroom, or even a Cherry Hill bathroom.
ReplyDeleteJim, will corporate comment on why they visited yesterday?
ReplyDeleteJust for the record (I think I need to leave these comments now and then, just in case the individuals we're debating are reading this): I don't have any personal grudges against Phil Currie. I've spoken with him a couple of times, and swapped e-mail -- although that was at least 12 years ago, when I went to The Courier-Journal in Louisville.
ReplyDeleteMy beef with Currie and all the rest of the folks in the Executive Suite is this: Someone has to be held accountable for the mess Gannett has gotten in. The folks at Corporate are getting the big, big bucks for the jobs they're in. If they're going to take six-figure paychecks, they're going to have to accept responsibility. It's unacceptable to say: This is an industry-wide problem; Gannett's just caught up in the same forces that have ensnared all newspapers. We don't work for Industry-wide Co. Inc.; we work for Gannett, and Gannett's in deep trouble.
Finally, in answer to the last commenter's question: I doubt Corporate would do more than confirm -- if that -- Currie's visit to Cherry Hill. The company's publicist, Tara Connell, is always polite and responsive when I wrote. But she IS the company's chief spokeswoman; like all publicists, her job is to represent the company in the most favorable light, so ...
The main reason for the visit to Cherry Hill was to present the latest Courier-Post reader survey results.
ReplyDeleteW. Curtis Riddle, senior group president of the Atlantic group also was on site. There was another high-ranker from N.Y., although I can't confirm who he was.
Currie met only with publisher, executive editor, managing editor and department heads. There also was a late afternoon luncheon for the top dogs.
All in all, somewhat uneventful.
Did Currie once go into the newsroom? Did he speak with any newsroom staffers AWAY from the newsroom?
ReplyDeleteTrust me, it's NOT routine for Currie, Riddle and another high-ranking official to come to a newsroom to deliver reader-survey results. If the results are good, they wouldn't bother coming all the way to Cherry Hill. The results are probably not good at all. They are probably so alarming that Currie, Riddle, et. al., felt the need to take the time to travel all the way down there. And, given all the bad publicity about Cherry Hill, I'm sure they talked about the workforce unrest.
ReplyDeleteThey big shots are back again today. Still nothing to report. No signs on EE or ME heads rolling. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteUmm, the big shots WERE NOT back again today. Don't know where anon@11:31 a.m. is getting their info, but it is incorrect.
ReplyDeleteWell, I don't claim to be an expert, but from my experience many of the corporate people spend a lot of their time on the road, working on all kinds of things. Many of them have worked in the field, so it's not like there is a lack of understanding of what goes on in a paper. As for the research, I heard the company does more than a handful of big research projects each year and the "bigwigs" from the regions make their way to the papers for the presentations.
ReplyDeleteYes, the research is invaluable when it doesn't result in the newsroom executive losing a job. Typical knee-jerk reaction comparable to a Zell kind of move.
ReplyDeleteAnother cheap ass in the newspaper is not good timing.
Westchester began their demise back in the late '80's with downsizing. And the Cherry Hill incident landed on the then publishers desk...the guard refused to clean...and was fired.
...goes around...comes around.