From CEO Craig Dubow's interview with SmartMoney magazine, not a lot new, although this exchange caught my eye:
Q: What are the chances of a Gannett sale?
A: Oh, gosh. Well, the most direct answer I can give you is, if there is a reason to take a hard look at something, that's our responsibility, and we always would. But I don't see that on the horizon.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
12 comments:
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Dubow and the board have a prime directive to live up to, and that is their fiduciary duty to Gannett shareholders, that is, the company's owners. Since they have failed in every respect to maintain, let alone increase, shareholder value, they need to hire outside investment counsel to give them a slate of options, which could include selling the company in its entirety or piecemeal. This should have been done at $50. Hesitation has cost the owners half their investment since then.
ReplyDeleteDubow is absolutely totally lost. It's embarrassing to read his answers to just about any question. I wonder how in the world he even got to the position as head of broadcast?? I don't know who talks in circles with buzz words and non answers more...Craig or SCJ. The two of them have wrecked the company in just a few short years. Then the board allows SCJ to continue the cycle and put her hand picked successor Dickey who will be a zero just like Sue was. What a shame, the Mike Coleman's, Larry Miller's, Tom Curley's, Carleton Rosenburgh's and Jesus....even ole no personality and meaner then a back alley cat GLW must cringe at the shell of a company they left. I personally never liked Gary but I do believe he knew how to run the newspaper division. One thing that has been told to many young managers over the the last 20 years about managing in Gannett was that often times "perception was more important then performance" (think, on sites). Dubow and SCJ must really buy into that theory. They speak nothing but gibberish and spend 95% of any conversation or discussion talking about 5% of their business.
ReplyDeleteDubow's way with words reminds me of someone else. You know, the person who upon hearing a speech from his guest said, "Awesome speech, Your Holiness."
ReplyDeleteNot many true professionals were left to pick from. Watson and Curley scared most of them away and groomed the worse of the lot...Silverman and Buchanan to name two. It always was a "rough and tumble" lot of people without much on the professional resume other than starting in classified ad sales. Larry Aldrich was one of the exceptions. And Riddle never got the big nod.
ReplyDeleteThere was at one point an "insider" executive publisher grooming program...which must have been disbanded.
Dubow. The Peter Principal from The Wharton School. Yet it was the SCJ's that hammered on marketshare at any price. You reaped what was sowed. No roses to smell. Sell it off...soonest.
Today's drop will not go unnoticed in the credit markets. We will soon be calculating the value of the real estate. Luckily, bond and commercial paper holders will intervene and demand action. It will be done in secret a big room with many well-dressed lawyers. I have seen it happen before and GCI won't get much of a say. I'm sure there will be an appropriate send-off for Craig, just like there was for SCJ. There will lots of blame assigned publicly to the economy and none assigned to management or the board.
ReplyDeleteYou had to know something was really really wrong when Frank Vega left after a long career. Mary Stier too....at one time (actually, probably at least 10 to 15 years ago)the corporate VP's were all pretty sharp and contributed a great deal. Now look, most people can't even remember their names...
ReplyDelete...yes, Curley kept the harem happy and proud. He got around quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteI know that Gary Watson could be, as Anon 12:18 put it, "mean as a back alley cat." And I certainly didn't always agree with his vision nor strategies. But as one who worked for him on the way up, I must say that GLW knew the business inside and out. He was, in most ways, the best boss I ever had. If I screwed up, YIKES! If I performed routine tasks well, he said little if anything. But if I accomplished a difficult task, he recognized its difficulty and acknowledged my accomplishment. He was no saint, but he was no phony like today's disasterous pretenders.
ReplyDelete$25 a share. Damn I'm glad I got out and took my $$ with me. It'll be interesting to see if those shareholders aren't calling for blood at the annual meeting. I would be.
ReplyDeleteIt'll take an outside agitator to shake this company up - starting with the overly complacent board of directors. No director seems to care much about the direction of the company and in particular, the stock performance. It'd be one thing if Dubow were a dynamic leader browbeating directors to see his supposed "vision" for the company. But he's not. And there's no fire in the belly of directors to either punish management for lousy performance (via bonus cuts or eliminations, for example) or look to oust them. Gannett's a slowly sinking ship, led by Dubow, the smiling Capt. Kangaroo.
ReplyDeletePathetic as Tony Ridder was as CEO of Knight-Ridder, he looks better and better as time goes on for selling the company to McClatchy for $42 a share. McClatchy's at what, $9 a share now? By the time Gannett's board wakes up and kicks into action, the stock will be below $20. It would have been very shrewd of the board to sell to a flush private equity fund two years ago when times were good. Too late now. That market's dead.
ReplyDeleteThe interview with SmartMoney was the most embarrassing piece I've ever read. This is a CEO (and Gracia Martore wasn't there to slap him????). This man is a time-bomb leading the company into disaster. When is the board waking up and get rid of him and his security system? What a weakling??? Gosh, even a regular employee could have responded better than this. This man has a college education - no wonder Europe looks down on us. If this is all Gannett has - lights out - Good night, Gannett!!!!
ReplyDelete