An employee at a paper in the Midwest told me that he stopped reading the weekly News Watch for the same reason I (mostly) stopped. Under chief honcho Phil Currie (left), the News Department spiked two features in the newsletter that we liked most -- an easy-to-shop list of job openings at each of the 85 dailies' newsrooms, and a rundown of new hires. "When they were listed," the reader said in an e-mail, "it was a weekly must-read to get a bit of a feel for the company, for other sites -- maybe think about other opportunities. Now, as you say, it's just Kool-Aid for the executives."For me, the newsletter's roster of reporters, editors and other employees moving into new jobs was my local-local Gannett news fix: I liked seeing where former co-workers landed.
I noticed the change when Gannett substituted its CareerBuilder employment website for the old list of jobs that, at a glance, once showed openings companywide. I suppose that move was designed to promote CareerBuilder, while also reducing costs associated with creating the special list for News Watch. I don't know why the newly-hired feature was dumped, though.
Hello, Gander? It's Goose, calling
News Watch desperately needs a revamp to make it more, well, 21st century. I'm thinking of digital improvements like those we recommended last week for the Daily News Summary. Interactive tools so readers can offer feedback. Video showing how, say, an artist created a graphic. How about a team News Watch Blog edited by the News Department? In other words: How about the News Department using the very digital tools it insists the community newspapers adopt? (Don't have time for all that time-consuming Internets stuff? Well, tough shit! And welcome to our work-off-the-clock world. Hah!)
Consider last Thursday's edition: The top editor at the Pensacola News Journal, Dick Schneider, writes about his paper's asking readers for money-saving ideas to help them through rocky economic times in Florida's poorest urban county. Schneider's content is OK; it's the one-dimensional presentation that's nuts. His piece is basically a text document; I count one embedded link, to a three-week-old Schneider column in the News Journal, inviting readers to participate.His News Watch piece doesn't include an e-mail address, so readers could contact him with feedback and follow-up questions. What's more, the article is illustrated with what I finally realized is a screen shot (inset, above) of a Gannett News Service story that appeared in the Pensacola paper, apparently as part of its new money coverage plan. Want to read it? Don't look in Schneider's article for this easy-to-add link; the News Department didn't include that, either.
Do you read News Watch? Got any other examples of ways the News Department and Currie could improve their digital support? Leave a note, in the comments section, below. Or use this link to e-mail feedback; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green sidebar, upper right.
I was under the impression that only salaried employees could read News Watch.
ReplyDelete@8:10 p.m.: Why, no. That's why it goes on the public pages of Gannett's website; I think non-employees, like journalism students, read it, too.
ReplyDeleteMaybe News Watch should start by shooting video in India, showing the world how Gannett saves money by sending ad production work offshore. The video would get lots of hits.
ReplyDelete