Saturday, October 18, 2008
Saturday | Oct. 18 | Got news, or a question?
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31 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've begun going back to the gym after a six-month absence. It's not fun.
ReplyDeleteJim,
ReplyDeletewell at least you made the big step of going back to the gym.
I am glad I learned of this site a few months back. It is amazing what I hear on the site and later comes true. There is more people at my work now learning about this site... some have been around longer than me.
So anybody know of anything new coming to the Northwest sites?
From,
BLM
next week in Asheville...
ReplyDelete"We have some very important folks from corporate coming to visit next week.
They will arrive on Tuesday and will be here for a couple of days. We need everyone's help in cleaning up their desk....If you have papers of any type lying around on your desk or on the floor next to it, please find somewhere else to keep it temporarily...This includes anything that is sitting on top of the cubicles or on your desk
that is not work related (cars, toys, etc.). If you have family pictures you can leave them sitting on your desk."
Over the weekend they'll be bringing in the tumbleweed.
Looking through CareerBuilder, I note that USAT has about a dozen jobs listed - personal finance editor, "fantasy sports editor/writer," technology reporter, NBA editor, "home front editor," correspondent in Baghdad (don't all put your hands in the air at once). Many are on the digital side. Yet layoffs are coming? Just for print?
ReplyDeleteOH! THAT's the reason we're going down the tubes - desk toys! Here we've spent millions of dollars and formed zillions of task forces and launched thousands of readership studies and pulled out our hair and worked ourselves sick - and all along it was that pesky Zen garden, Simpsons snow globe or Dwight Schrute bobbel head doll!
ReplyDeleteRe 9:40 a.m.:
ReplyDeleteIn other words, let's make the workplace as sterile and antiseptic as possible. The only way to prove to corporate that we take our jobs seriously is that there be absolutely no glimmer of anything that could possible lighten our load.
Oh, and thanks for acknowledging that some people have families.
and of course they don't name these people. it's not important that we know who they are, just that they are coming so clean up and behave yourself.
ReplyDeleteSo our stock has hit $10. Why doesn't Wall Street believe in us?
ReplyDeleteWell, we are a Newspaper company that doesn't believe in Newspapers. If we don't believe in our business why should anyone?
Newspapers are doomed you say?
Ask the Arkansas Democrate-Gazette
how they are doing. Ten years of circ GROWTH! That's impossible!
No one reads newspapers. We live in the digital age for goodness sakes! WRONG!
The Digital age is not an age at all and Digital is just another medium. It's not magic.
Here's the truth. The Ark Dem Gaz
values it's franchise. So it asks readers to pay for it. Want to read local news or Obits online.
No problem, if you already subscribe to the paper it's free,
you get a password. If not, then pay for it online. Simple.
The answer is in Arkansas. Not in McLean.
We need to be honest with ourselves. Online should be an addition to what we do. It should be about growing sudience not converting audience. Let's face it, that's what has happened. The young audience demo is not reading us online (They've never read the newspaper and never will, You don't start caring about local news and who's died until you get older and settledown). You know who is? People who use to subscribe to the paper and current suscribers. I was on the digital side or the business for many years. I don't hate online. I understand what it is and what it should be. We can't force it to be something it's not. Banner revenue will never replace circ and preprint revenue. All our online money is in the Classified verticals, where it should be. If we password protect our site but leave the verticals and national news free we'll be just fine. We can still deliver millions of impressions on our home pages. That's where the majority of our traffic is anyway.
How many people have you spoken to that tell you "I use to buy the paper but I read you online now"?
The right answers to most problems are usually the simplest.
If we announced on Monday the we were going to invest more in local
news, hire more people in the NEWS ROOM, deliver the information people need to live their lives better than anyone else AND move
to a subscriber model our stock would double that day.
We are a Newspaper business.
We need to believe in what we do AND show the world we do as well.
If they can do it in Arkansas we can do it everywhere.
Firing our best people and outsourcing is not the answer Craig!
We were told to make sure we didn't act scared if Corporate people talked to us.
ReplyDeleteTHEY should be scared of what we might ask them. I'll be sure to offer my sympathies on the loss of the $25,000 Christmas party.
OK I have to share one of my best corporate visit stories from APP - back in the day when Curley was still around. He was set to visit the Freehold plant, where the presses are and also satellite ad and news offices. There was a looong crumbling driveway for the plant, maybe 200 yards plus, that was just chock-full of potholes you'd have to dodge every day driving in (and which all the delivery trucks had to negotiate.)
ReplyDeleteYep, you guessed it - the morning of visit, I pulled into to a newly-paved drive. They literally paved it the night before he arrived - for all of an hour walk-through by Curley, who, of course, never spoke to any of us peons. I suggested to the EE we name our new access road Curley Drive. He was not amused.
At least we got a new driveway out of it.
I hate to say good things about Gannett, but...Curly was once Publisher at the CN. During the onsite from corporate, then CEO Curly walked through the CN and said hello to all the employees. He remembered names of people he hadn't seen in 15 yers...he even asked about spouses and children by name. I know he was a worm, but at least he made you feel as though he cared about the people and not just the numbers.
ReplyDeleteThe story quotas that our management told us was a Gannett idea (later deemed to be a lie) apparently haven't helped the stock price.
ReplyDeleteDammit. I thought 35 post-ups about the Optimists Club Wild Game Dinner would have saved the company by now.
Does anyone have that press release about the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile coming to town ... ?
The Curley Drive story is hilarious.
ReplyDeleteIt also proves my theory that site visits did serve an important function: Properties got cleaned up.
No publisher who expected to spend three years at a site before being promoted would ever spend money on paint or rugs or office furniture. Those unnecessary expenses would reduce margins, possibly preventing the promotion.
The site visits forced the local publishers to fix potholes, paint the pressroom and repair long-broken water fountains.
I bet there are a lot of places in Gannett that haven't seen a fresh coat of paint or new rug since the last site visit.
Bulletin: The office of the Detroit Free Press' Lansing bureau will be closed, and the two reporters will work out of desks at the Lansing State Journal. ALSO: It appears that staffers at the Gannett-owned Observer and Eccentric suburban papers in Detroit will be moved from a suburban office to digs at the Detroit Newspaper Partnership headquarters in downtown Detroit.
ReplyDeleteEvery time I look at my desk and think, "I should clean up all this crap," I realize how much time it would take me to do it. And I already work too much. So my desk remains messy.
ReplyDeleteWhat will they do to employees who don't tidy up?
Yeah right---A company that splashes and clutters a bunch of moving flashing shit on Websites for the world to see is actually worried about a little office clutter?
ReplyDeleteHoly shit.
Cleaning up for corporate visits always reminds me of the M*A*S*H episode where Gen. MacArthur was coming to visit. The whole episode revolved around the prep work. In the end, MacArthur's jeep did not even slow down as it pass through the camp.
ReplyDeleteHere's the scope on Asheville: the corporate folks will be in Asheville to announce the consolidation to Greenville. The publisher will be gone, as well as the remaining department heads.
ReplyDeleteThe wave of layoffs hit directors hard but the hardest hit was to all the mid-level managers at each paper. They are now doing two jobs and are being stretch thin. So thin that many are about to leave or have left already. 60+ hours a week is getting old. Again, speaking from experience.
ReplyDelete9:32, you are so right. the best boss i ever had left after a year or so of doing two jobs for one job's pay . . . then they passed my boss over for the higher of the two jobs and hired an outsider with half the ideas for probably twice the money.
ReplyDeletemy old boss makes less money in a different field now, but looks a lot younger and is healthier.
4:58 - From where did you get your information about the Lansing bureau?
ReplyDeleteWe peons always liked the corporate visits.
ReplyDeleteIt was the only time the building got painted and put-off repair and maintenance work was finally done.
Curley at one point was said to have commented how sick and tired he was smelling new paint whenever he visited a site.
So our paper began the paint work literally the day they got the warning of a visit and it was usually long enough in advance the new paint smell was gone.
Nothing about today's visits even come close to the royal trappings of Black Al's royal arrivals.
Those were the days when the business manager personally delivered the mandated local paper to Al's hotel door by 5 am. along with the Wall Street Journal and the closest "metro".
He had to be met at the airport where the company DC-9 landed by the business manager with the latest financials. His room had to have a fruit basket (the exact fruit was specified) and there had to be two chilled bottles of his favorite wine - pouey something waiting for him.
The arrival sheet looked like the typical rock star's contract demands.
And Gannett stock was often over $100 a share.
Ahh, those were the days.
I totally agree with 9:32. The managers left holding the bag got hit worse than the directors that got laid off. I'm sure the managers are now doing both jobs, plus any others that are also vacant. There isn't enough money in the world to compensate for all they are going thru.
ReplyDeleteI think everyone at the ASHEVILLE paper needs to make it a point to ask those corporate people if they are going to have a job next week. I also think that a few toys left on there desk to remind them of their children is OK. Sounds like something the Ad Director would write. That is why we need Creative Directors running the Advertising Departments at Newspapers.
ReplyDeleteMaybe so 10:13 and 9:32, but I would ask those laid off whether they are enjoying looking for a job. There is not much out here and it's getting scarier by the week. I wouldn't leave if I were you until I had a job in the bag.
ReplyDelete8:25PM
ReplyDeleteSo where are the publishers and the other folks going to be. What happens to the peons in ad services and all the news department?
Where did you get your Asheville/Greenville info? Are you the same person constantly asking for merger info that no one ever responds to you?
ReplyDeletetft
7:18
ReplyDeleteWhy do you ask. Seems like everybody on this site sees consolidation coming except for you. You must be an Advertising Director.
Cleaning up our desk? Why is it that we can only get our trash emptied once a week? When we walk into our building the first thing you smell is garbage! Wonder how OSHA would feel if they walked into one of our newspaper!
ReplyDeleteYes I will agree. The stacks of old newspapers under the desk not only make a great home for mice, but also a fire hazard, trip hazard, and so on.
ReplyDeleteIs there any way we can clean up the asbestos before corporate gets here?
3:25 a.m. -- Yeah, Big Al's fave wine was Pouilly Fuisse, a Burgundy from France. They had to order CASES of it in Reno for his visits when I worked there.
ReplyDeleteThe clean-up-your-workspace thing dates back decades. I don't know how/why it was adopted, other than probably some overachieving eager beaver middle-manager or assistant (or, hell, a publisher for that matter) wanted to suck up to the bigs.
Of course, as we all know, a clean desk is a sign of a sick/cluttered/disordered mind (take your pick of various office-space signs available at your favorite net-sales website. . .)