Thursday, August 14, 2008

Layoff love: Better Late than Never Edition

From the "acknowledgement" section of the job-cutting guidelines Corporate gave to the 84 community newspapers, now sending at least 600 employees packing:
  • These people leaving Gannett contributed to its growth and success 
  • We will thank them for their years of service and treat them in a way that acknowledges their valuable contributions
Earlier: Secrecy, and hurt feelings in my USA Today buyout

10 comments:

  1. Ok, that was the community newspapers, now what will be the story at USA Today. Why is the news being phased out? Could it be that the towers are waiting for reports from the fields to see how much money is to be saved, and then make the adjustment on how much they will ask Craig Moon to make the USA Today slice? I can see no other reason for waiting until Aug. 27 if the USA Today cut was only going to be 3 percent. Stay tuned.

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  2. Good point. Hard to believe USA Today will be exempt from cuts. Something is coming. Just don't know what or when. We'll probably learn about here first.

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  3. Anyone know if electronic devices will be allowed in the USA Today meeting on Aug. 27?

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  4. "These people."
    That's way too tacky, even for Gannett.

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  5. Olympics advertising and back-to-school ad contracts aren't meeting projections, I hear, which doesn't augur well for 8/27.

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  6. Anyone know how many are to be laid off in Nashville?

    Some back ground: About 140 managers were cut from circulation in summer 2006, and about 30 in other departments took buyouts in fall 2007. I don't see much room for cutting...

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  7. 140 circ managers? Cripes, who did they manage, each other?

    My paper is about 1/4 the circ of the Tennessean - and before the call center consolidation, we had six circ managers in house, plus four carrier 'managers.'

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  8. From Nashville: I haven't heard any numbers yet. In fact, I haven't heard anything from any "official" source here.

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  9. Anon@6:14...

    Yeah, that was every single manager in circulation paper wide. The circulation manager, all area managers, region managers, district managers, asst dist managers, all part time labor... Single copy and home delivery.

    Back then all were employees, even the carriers were part time employees. I think there were about 10 vested full time carriers.

    In June 2006 everyone lost their job. Gannett re-hired about 25 or so to fill newly created positions to manage distribution to contract distributors (they replaced employee district managers).

    Soon after in fall/winter 2006/2007 all customer service was cut and merged with Oklahoma (about 40 jobs).

    All told, the Tennessean over two or so years has cut between 200 and 250 (my reckoning, could be more) positions through restructuring, layoffs, and buyouts in non-newsroom areas.

    So that leaves me wondering just how many more can be cut at this paper.

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  10. I should clarify, that 140 does not include carriers. When carriers were employees there were about 650 to 700 carriers in metro alone (not counting state and suburban). the paper had about 140 managers in all three areas, metro, state, and suburban.

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