Friday, October 03, 2008
Friday | Oct. 3 | Got news, or a question?
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25 comments:
Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."
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Good morning. I just signed on at Chill Cafe. What's new?
ReplyDeleteDue to the incompetence of our management 97,000 copies of a wrapper for Cincy had the wrong page yesterday and had to be re-run. This was our first go at this new job.
ReplyDeleteI would like to hear from anyone in production at the Asheville Citizen-Times.
ReplyDeleteYou may e-mail me at webmaster@shameongannett.com
Thanks,
Mike Heine
From what I hear is going on in the NJ Group, I think I was let go just in time. I hear that weekly numbers from sales are VERY low and that morale is even lower. Don't tell me that with my attitude, I should have been let go. My attitude had nothing to do with it. I was just not a part of the Good Girls Team.
ReplyDeleteHollis was on site at APP yesterday, had all metro editors in some big planning meeting that lasted for hours. Phil Currie and Kate Marymount also on site, apparently to pick some brains. Any first impressions of Hollis?
ReplyDeleteI will continue to read the print paper because I am so sick of the interstitials that pop up for ads on the online versions.
ReplyDeleteThis is frustrating to online readers.
Too intrusive.
I was asked, "Have you heard that Gannett might roll our frozen pension into our 401K?" Two questions:
ReplyDeleteAnyone else hear of anything like this?
Can they do that?
Star-Ledger owner hopeful it can avoid closure
ReplyDeleteBy ANICK JESDANUN – 22 hours ago
NEW YORK (AP) — New Jersey's largest newspaper came one step closer toward averting a closure or sale as at least a quarter of its full-time nonunion employees applied for a buyout.
The president of the company that owns The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., also confirmed that the paper has a tentative agreement with its drivers union.
But Donald Newhouse, president of Advance Publications Inc., said members of that union still must ratify the deal by the end of Tuesday.
Newhouse also said some employees who applied for a buyout have until Tuesday to change their minds, meaning there was a small chance the paper could fall short of its target of getting at least 200 of the paper's 750 full-time nonunion employees to apply for a buyout. He would not say how many have applied.
"I am very hopeful that we will have the buyouts and I'm very hopeful that the union will ratify the agreement, but I will know for sure" next Wednesday, Newhouse said in an interview.
With a daily circulation of about 350,000, the Star-Ledger has posted losses for at least three straight years and is on pace to lose between $30 million and $40 million in 2008.
Star-Ledger Publisher George Arwady has set three conditions for continuing to publish the paper past January. He has threatened to sell or close the paper by Jan. 5 and start looking for bidders next Thursday if the conditions are not met by Wednesday.
Add to ANON 8:22 -- In addition to impressions from APP about Hollis, what are reactions to what was heard from Marymont?
ReplyDeleteNo need to comment about Currie. Surely he will be dispatched to the dinosaur graveyard soon...
Follow the Gannettblog links to Cincinnati and Asbury Park for the older threads on Hollis. Choice stuff there. Must reading for anyone now under the rule of a tyrant transferred against his will to a state he has no interest in.
ReplyDeleteYes, they could roll the pension plan into your 401K. Corporate is suffering the same losses on Wall Street for the pension plan as everyone else, and handing it over to you to administer means they are no longer responsible for making up any shortfall.
ReplyDeleteCaution: Be careful how you invest it because, as you see from these last two weeks, you could lose it all in a New York minute.
Things are getting so bad in Asbury that the publisher is taking advertising advice from a Star ledger sales rep.
ReplyDeleteOn Esquire's Digital issue: a new lease on life for Newspapers?
ReplyDeleteThe front page display features blinking and changing text and simple images, reminiscent of the average Web page circa 1994. The inside spread is an ad for the new Ford (NYSE: F) Flex, and is much less hypnotic, but still way ahead of the curve in a market where the last breakthrough technology was scratch-n-sniff.
This feat took seven years of planning and research to pull off. The E Ink pages were manufactured by Chinese partner Nicobar, shipped to Esquire's printing presses in refrigerated trucks, and fed through RR Donnelly's (NYSE: RRD) binding process, specially modified to handle the extra-thick cover.
The rise of online information and entertainment has caused massive damage to the good ol' publishing boys. In the past five years, New York Times (NYSE: NYT) has lost 69% of its market cap while Gannett (NYSE: GCI) dropped 78%, and even Warren Buffett darling Washington Post (NYSE: WPO) has underperformed the S&P 500 benchmark. These guys could use a silver bullet, and fast.
These tricks won't be commonplace anytime soon, though. When they do go mainstream, the display technology might have moved to full-color light-emitting OLED displays. Universal Display (Nasdaq: PANL) is hard at work on flexible screens for military use, for example. But if the printing presses ever figure out a way to do truly movable type in a cheap, efficient manner, then the magazine and newspaper publishers could get a whole new lease on life -- if they make it that far. And you'd never look at a boring old black-ink-on-white-paper page the same way again.
source: The Motley Fool
Doub't that Hollis and Donovan are sweethearts after all they are Gannett executives. But the place was left in shambles by Collins and Skippy. I know the NJ people are all whiners. To expect to be treated with respect is so much to ask.
ReplyDeleteThe house just passed the bail-out bill. 263-171.
ReplyDeleteGawker boss says "Times are great now, may be bad tomorrow. You're fired."
ReplyDeleteTwenty-nine "journalists" bite the dust.
http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2008/10/gawker-media-laying-off-19-workers.php#comments
shhhhh, no one mention that the stock closed at 15.18 today because that one idiot always complains that we mention it when it does bad but we don't mention it on the days it does good. So please, no one talk about it because I do not want to hear him crying.
ReplyDeletegot my lump sum retirement check from Gannett today! Finally, see ya GCI!!! Gannettoids, et al. I am glad it took so long. I could have rolled that check into the market last week. Argggh!
ReplyDeleteGood luck to you and yours.
I am still waiting to get my pension paperwork after getting laid off in August. How long did it take you, 4:54 p.m.?
ReplyDeleteJust saw this on USAT from a blogger. Is it true?
ReplyDeleteThere is going to be a large event (a thinly cloaked a fundraiser?) at Gannet Corp's New Jersey's headquarters in Neptune, New jersey for Obama, I believe on Oct. 13. There will be 5 chefs. They are redecorating for this event.
So where are the pollyannas today crowing that everything is fine with Gannett because it is such a well-financed company? Corporate is going to have to make some very hard decisions very soon, and I am wondering if USAT is going to make it.
ReplyDeleteIt is not hard to drive from Neptune NJ to State College Pa. in about 4 1/2 hours, but for the record, Senator Obama is supposed to be at a rally at Penn State featuring the surviving members of the Grateful Dead on Oct. 13. In any case, the above post sounds pretty out there. Then again, I doubt anything would much surprise me these days, and maybe this is one of the jaw-droppers Jim mentioned a few weeks ago and hasn't filled us in on yet.
ReplyDeleteThe blogger has to be joking about a Gannett NJ for Obama event at the Neptune office. I suspect it's a racist "joke," at that, seeing as Hollis Towns starts this week as exec editor.
ReplyDeleteThe APP always endorses Republicans for president. It endorsed George Bush twice. And racism is rampant once you get south of Woodbridge.
Oh, please, like there's no racism north of Woodbridge. Take a little drive - $3.50 per gallon be damned - there are plenty of Obama signs in lawns in towns far south of your vantage point. Lots of these areas vote blue, and you can't lump them together anymore than you can say Hoboken is like Paterson is like Edison is like Freehold. Spare me the uninformed stereotyping. It's bad enough when it comes from so-called journalists who have never set foot in the state.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, I agree that it is highly improbable that the Press would endorse Obama.
I don't think the post necessarily says that APP is endorsing Obama -- maybe they are just renting space for the extra $$. No new revenue stream unturned these days.
ReplyDelete