Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Gannett doesn't have a lock on 'moms' sites

The San Francisco Chronicle, now under the editing direction of former star Gannett editor Ward Bushee, has just launched Bay Area Moms. Hmmm; sound familiar? These "moms'' sites have been rolling out across Gannett ever since The Indianapolis Star started the company's first one. (Update: Hearst had added these sites earlier at other newspapers, including at the Houston Chronicle, before Bushee's arrival.) Still, San Franciscans are already pissed.

5 comments:

  1. Scripps is also launching moms sites at its TV and paper sites.

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  2. Anyone think these moms sites are here to stay?

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  3. We had such a crappy meeting for all of The Des Moines Register with President Laura Hollingsworth. She started out saying that we are in a R word, Recession since all the media outlets are subscribing to that idea. Then proceeds to tell us revenues are down in all areas for advertising. Then updates us on all the buyouts, such as 5 graphic designers jobs outsourced to India, and Iowa City production losing 43 jobs to buyouts because now it will be printed at The Des Moines Register. Old news for all of us, but supposedly this is news for every employee to just now find out. Of course don't forget the paper is getting smaller from 48" to now 44" as of May 6, 2008. Top side she said was it will be a more "portable" paper. Also, Iowa City paper will feature more color since it will be printed at Des Moines Register.

    All the depressing news, with no claps, then proceeds to take questions, but wait they are 3 questions already on paper provided for earlier, on how are our jobs and how can we ensure to keep them? Which she stammers maybe seek out HR and take classes which they will pay for to make yourself marketable. Then another one was "Are there going to be more buyouts in the graphic artists area?" In which case she stammers and says she does not know, as Gannett required 150 ads to be handled by 2AdPro and that is all she knows right now. One person asked if ads were really done out of the country and she had to be specific and say India.

    Then she had a presentation that she is starting to give to chamber events on how is the newspaper business evolving, and she says in her speech that we are not in the newspaper business but in the website business, look at our new website for caucuses on Des Moines Register website, look at Des Moines Moms website, look at Juice website, look at cozi website. Free websites, so basically all the focus is off newspapers.

    Must be why no editor wants to print much business news because they don't have the staff, why we got a call from management and have to have a meeting with Laura Hollingsworth, and Kevin Hall asking why we are losing so much money on color printing on the newspapers and we can't use so much color anymore because the costs of color are outrageous.

    So to answer your question, are the Moms sites sticking around.

    Yes. But look for more black and white newspaper pages, less color and a smaller portable newspaper with less news.

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  4. The following comment was left by an Anonymous reader; I hit the "reject'' button when I met to hit "publish,'' so I'm publishing it now under my own name:

    8:18 is correct that the meeting was dull, dull, dull. However, I was pleasantly surprised when LH dissed the COE (multi-site customer service center) AND put the blame squarely on corporate for running scared. I was less impressed with the Circ VP's analysis that "Customer service is a lot better, because sales at the COE are now up 50% of what they were when we had customer service in-house."

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  5. Make that "up TO 50% of what they were", etc. In other words, after almost a year, the COE, which is framed as a sales department with service on the side, is only selling half as well as the old customer service department could. That doesn't even address the bad feelings from people who hate calling out of state to ask a question about their hometown paper.

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