I receive heartbreaking e-mails like the following several times a week now, as Gannett eliminates more advertising production jobs -- shifting that work to India under a contract with 2AdPro of Los Angeles. This note came today from a Journal News employee who says three generations of his family have worked at the Westchester, N.Y., newspaper:"Just wanted to say thank you for doing this blog! I lost my job yesterday due to outsourcing to India. I worked in the ad design department at The Journal News at Westchester County, N.Y. . . . I had almost nine years of service to the company. My father, who got me the job, had 38 years of service, also in advertising. My mother, stepmother, sister and grandmother all had worked for the Journal News in one way or another! It used to be a fun place to work. . . . All I felt was sadness for those left behind, waiting for their turn, and a bitterness to the powers that be that have destroyed a once vibrant and interesting newspaper!"
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Unfortunately, it's people like the worker laid off who really do critical work for papers like the Journal News. Yet the fat-cat upper management/editors are the ones pulling in the big salaries. If they were laid off, the paper's quality wouldn't suffer, it would actually improve.
ReplyDeleteYour job and mine aren't important. Neither are you nor I.
ReplyDeleteWhat is important is that a handful of Gannett executives, who are important, continue to receive fat salaries and fat annual bonuses for continuing to run the company into the ground.
What's the matter, don't you understand business?
Corporate Amerika has decided that the middle class needs to be phased out. We all have to do our part.
These are always heart-breaking stories and I feel for people who lose their jobs this way.
ReplyDeleteOTH, I still want to know the answer to this question: Since the off-shoring began, are the local properties issuing more or less credits to advertisers.
Credits are given when the company screws up an ad and has to run a make good ad. Those costs will be important in determining whether the off-shoring is actually saving any money.
The papers in the Gannett chain simply can't afford to continue propping up useless and unnecessary bigwigs at corporate headquarters. They are pure overhead, in their own words a drag on earnings, adding no value whatsoever. At this stage of the game, they are in self-preservation mode, knowing full well that the chain model no longer works. They won't initiate a breakup, a la Knight Ridder and Tribune, because it would jeopardize their jobs. What needs to happen is for the outside directors to take charge and hire an investment banking firm to weigh their options. Time to sell the papers and stations to the highest bidders.
ReplyDeleteThere are a few things the local advertisers in Westchester should be made aware of; Local Ad Design jobs are being lost to India. And they should also be aware of the 2008 circulation numbers not the 2006 numbers that The Journal News gives to advertisers.
ReplyDeleteSpread the word. Spead the honesty by yourself. The circ numbers were always bogus at best.
ReplyDeleteTry figuring out how much large retailers were over-charged with inflated circ numbers. For years.
The arrogance comes home to roost.
The chains can't sell themselves.
Even at rock-bottom prices.
Dolan will regret Newsday...and it will show.
Leave Gannett hanging with the bag...they deserve it.
Incest at the executive level. They all cover each others ass.
ReplyDeleteDubow has a contract.
Watson wanted to scuttle Collins but couldn't because of Curley. Sherlock should have been bounced given the horrible record in Westchester. But his buddy Watson covered his ass. McCorky was the charm boy with his Harvard BOD friends.
Dubow...why not? Who else was left with half a brain.
Cutting the Ad Design artist will not help Westchester in the long run. They need to clean house of the upper management. Not the Publisher, but all the incompetent people under him, starting with the two idiots from USA Today. On the other hand GCI might like that the horrible management is driving everyone out, it might make it easier to sell.
ReplyDelete"Not the Publisher"?? Why not? Because he's a "nice man"? Cause he says "hello how are you" when he passes you by without really knowing your name?? Don't fall for that crap. These jobs are outsourced because he wants to try and impress the corporate big wigs. Do you really think he had no hand in it? Get real. Fisch has made a carreer out of showing everyone on the outside what a "nice man" he is and then blaming others for any negative deeds done at the paper. Granted, he's a huge improvement over the ass Sherlock but I wouldn't be giving him a pass because of that comparison. He ends up doing things the same way but hides behind the dept. heads.
ReplyDeleteWait a minute, I thought Gannett was all about local, local, local. Doesn't that include its own employees and jobs - no matter the department?
ReplyDeleteI hope employees who lose their jobs to this atrocity (even those who remain) make it VERY clear to local advertisers that their ads are not produced locally, but in India.
Jobs being off-shored - not for better quality or customer service - to save a buck and maintain unrealistic profit margins. Oh yeah, and to fund Dubow's $1.75 million bonus. He's doing a such a great job ... the stock selling at half its value of a year ago.
At the Courier-Post, they have lied to employees and advertisers for years! The circ numbers they tout are the 'gross' numbers used for production. That is, the number of papers out the door but not less returns. Does anyone think that the employees have been told that the actual (latest) daily average circ is in the 67,000 range?
ReplyDeleteHey that's nothin! During the couple of months preceding the launch of the mycentraljersey.com website, all employees were "strongly encouraged" to blog, blog, blog on the centraljerseymoms.com website launched earlier this year. The purpose of that, of course, was to show a potential advertiser how many hits the site got, therefore getting their on-line business. How's that for using employees to falsely skew the numbers? Wonder how long it will take advertisers to realize that their advertising dollars spent were a waste because there really aren't as many visitor as originally portrayed.
ReplyDeleteThe same will happen with the outsourcing. After the ad space is bought, wait till they see the kind of quality and what kind of reach their ad gets!
This will pass. And I suspect the dirt is already well known.
ReplyDeleteWestchester can't and won't get fixed. The word is out...and has been for over a decade.
It is a hell hole. It will not attract well-meaning people. The die is cast.
And then there's the Nashville publisher who told employees during a weekly meeting they should click over and over on Tennessean.com during down time in order to generate more web hits.
ReplyDeleteThese are the dregs of people left over from the Fear Regime. They should not be working for daily newspapers...lucky to be employed by a lousy shopper. If that.
ReplyDeleteWestchester is a great place to be if you don’t have much talent and want to kiss-butt your way up the ladder. And the no talent butt-kissers get rewarded with in house awards with $1,000 dollar cash prizes. But they still cut most overtime and no pay raises, outsource and layoff. How about cutting those meaningless yearly in house cash awards, but they will not do that it’s the only awards they can win.
ReplyDeleteDon’t get me wrong, there were some talented people hear but most were smart enough to get out.
And I thought it was just the NJ papers who told employees to make the newspaper their home page on their office computers.
ReplyDeleteThe staff has been told time and again that the page views are showing a healthy interest in the Web sites.
I wonder if they'll resurrect the old trick of programming the page view count so it includes every graphic on a page as a page view.
What I want to know is: Does our only major competitor here in NJ, the Newark Star Ledger, know what's going on with the Gannett papers? They could really corner the advertising market by letting the area's advertisers know who's doing their ads. It's just Un-American, I tell ya!
ReplyDeleteBack to 2AdPro, for a moment. I understand that each ad that is sent to India costs GCI roughly $20 to have done. Now, in my market, I know we run ads in our weeklies for as little as $12. So either we price our small advertisers out of the paper to fix the disparity, or we keep some artists on to do the work we would otherwise lose money on.
ReplyDeleteWhen we cut staff, the new $12/hour artists will go, and the 25 year veterans at $25/hour will stay. And they'll stay to do $12 ads.
Can anybody with experience dealing with 2AdPro tell us how it went? How your advertisers took it? Any real benefits? Thanks!
After circulation, artists, finance, online, photo toning, production and IT are outsourced, it's going to be a big empty building with just the sales staff, one writer and 13 editors.
ReplyDelete....and once crowdsourcing takes off, the writer is going too....
I recall getting an email from a manager at the APP that directed all of us to set our browser's homepage to the Press's web site.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean "How did the advertisers take it," are you sure the advertisers know? The don't know the real circulation numbers, what makes you think they know about the off shoring.
ReplyDeleteAt Cherry Hill 2adpro was supposed to be for overflow only. Now we are supposed to send 25 a week no matter what. I'm pretty sure that number will go up. I don't even think our sales people know the ads are being done in India because in their meeting they were told 2adpro is in California. Which it is, but the presentation of 2adpro as all-American is a bit misleading. Then again, many of us learned about the potential buyout-related layoffs in NJ from other news sources and not by our managers.
ReplyDeleteWe are just biding our time. Welcome to the Titanic. Enjoy your cruise.
Lifeboats for the exempt employees and Corporate staff. Screw the rest of you. Swim.
ReplyDeleteThe Journal News = TITANIC
ReplyDeletewe are not allowed to tell sales staff if the ad went to india. we are supposed to send 100 ads a week out, be with the price of gas the salespeople are NOT driving around all day, hence, not bringing 100 ads inso we send them out. PS I heard the Star ledger is also sending ads OUT TO INDIA!!!!
ReplyDeleteThe ad design group in NJ was just told today the layoffs that were supposed to happen this week have been pushed back now beacuse of problems with 2Adpro! How can they justify this bullshit! Telling us in February/March that 8 of us were going to lose our jobs..Now they are holding us hostage!! This company has some set of balls. Just give a holla when your ready!
ReplyDeleteat least they gave you some notice!gannett has no shame!
ReplyDeleteYes they gave notice but then took it back! We were told back in March the layoffs would happen before June 1 beacuse there was NO MONEY in the budget, now all of a sudden they have a situation brewing with 2Adpro! Their work is TERRIBLE! Oh sorry..there is a gag order in place about the 2Adpro ads, we are not supposed to talk about it!
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of problems with 2AdPro? Design problems, content problems, technical problems? Customer complaints about the ads? Also, is anyone else here in ad production under a similar gag order with regards to outsourced ads? Gannett staffers who are about to be forced to send ads to 2AdPro are curious.
ReplyDeleteAll of the Above! India has no idea of design concept. Everything is done with a gray scale and the same typeface. The art they use is absolutly absurd. I dont know how the advertisers are reacting but I am sure the sales staff has been horrified and embarrased by the quality of work. Gannett is getting what they pay for! CRAP!
ReplyDeleteThe Journal News is the Titanic? I read the paper every day online -- their work regarding expenses at the county board of legislators has been top notch. Their coverage of the Kisco officer accused of killing the immigrant has been top notch. Some of their entertainment blogs are actually worth reading!
ReplyDeleteAs an outsider (but a miserable reporter at a chain that makes Gannett look like Doctors Without Borders), I think folks are being a little dramatic here.
Oh yeah, and I worked there for five years.
Here in Central Jersey, they dropped 55 people from the rouster last week. In ADS (Adverting Design Services) that being artists and copy entry/proofreaders. They just closed the art depts in the APP bureaus and shipped the remaining artists and leads to the mother ship in Neptune. A manager in the dept was dropped on Monday. No One Is Safe. Next on the chopping block the HNT? Just waiting. The bosses are visiting there on 6-04-08. Then the Courier in Bridgewater? Only time will tell and this blog. By the by... the connection to India (to send the ads and ad material) is done at East Brunswick. The Death Toll is echoing thoughout the slowly empting halls on Kennedy Blvd. Keep you posted.
ReplyDeleteNope - no one dropped from the ADS department in the Home News or Courier News. And we understand the Courier News has twelve (yes that's 12) staffers on board. That's three less than the Asbury Park Press.
ReplyDeleteAnd what's the circulation on all three papers?
You do the math!
Hi, regarding 6/04/2008 12:57 AM post from anonymous (me). Still have a jobs & my co-workers. But we have to send 10 jobs a day to 2Ad Pro, and it has been slow here. Counting the days. Hate it , Hate it.
ReplyDeleteHere the latest crap of 2 AD Pro for the NJ Papers (hnt & app). We have to proof the ads that come back now. Because of all the spelling and grammer errors in the ads that have gone to print. bull shit. Can you spell that 2 ad pro?
ReplyDelete2adpro has a gallery of ads on their website. Look at them and judge for yourself. Yes they are the real deal, I know, because some of them are mine.
ReplyDeleteto the person that wrote:We have to proof the ads that come back now. Because of all the spelling and grammer errors in the ads that have gone to print. bull shit. Can you spell that 2 ad pro?
ReplyDeleteI assume that if I look up the adq numbers for the jersey papers, I will see perfection prior to 2adpro?
In reply to: The quality of 2AdPro Ads
ReplyDeleteTHEY SUCK! Good luck getting what you want local advertisers! Good luck getting it spelled right in the meantime!
Whatever money they save by this contract they will lose as advertisers stop falling for the trickery.
sorry you lost job but these things happen in globalization.Know who wins in this system?Bankers,politicians.
ReplyDeleteYou americnas have lost all of freedom.Your govt bails out big corporations but never worries bout manufacturing plants going bust,high end work sent overseas.
thanks god some of my indian brothers are getting jobs.maybe some day all your newspapers(including wall street journal if it will exist) will be edited in india.
I wonder if all this will put a damper on The Desert Sun's OC, certain managers and favored employees from taking their yearly, week-long, no vacation time used, all-expenses paid trip to Hawaii or Costa Rica this coming year???
ReplyDeleteSomehow I doubt it... it never stopped Bob Dickey, Michelle Krans and their hand-picked cronies from doing so in the past.
Funny how this type of management story never seems to get picked up by the all-knowing, all-seeing Media.
Hard not to notice that there doesn't seem to be any OC getting the axe.
I can't even begin to figure out how these people are going to get these ads done... in a timely & accurate manner... and with the personal touch that so many clients expect.
Not only do I feel terrible for the ones getting the boot... I also feel for you folks that are still there... I didn't think it could get much worse... but I was wrong!