Gannett CEO Craig Dubow is reportedly on the road again this week, visiting Florida Today this morning/afternoon before (I believe) hitting The Greenville News in South Carolina, and The News-Press at Fort Myers, Fla. So, what's he saying during employee meetings?
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Monday, November 17, 2008
36 comments:
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In an e-mail, a reader who asked to remain anonymous reports the following about a meeting today at Florida Today involving Dubow and Gannett's official spokeswoman, Tara Connell. (Note: It's interesting that Connell appears to be going beyond simple press/employee relations, and is now publicly directing strategy.) The reader's e-mail follows:
ReplyDeleteDubow says revenue will continue to decline through 09.
Gannett is profitable and has a plan. It’s making strategic acquisitions.
We have to become “customer facing.” We need to “truly provide what the consumer wants.” We’ll do this by taking local content and making it national. Connell said “we don’t use content efficiently.” Her example was not having so many papers cover NASA, when FLAT does it so well. She said content is also a product. The local autonomy of newspapers is inefficient and we need to reduce or eliminate AP. Dubow said he’d rather pay local people for the content than AP.
Dubow’s paycut was symbolic, which I found to be insulting.
We must be confident. “Confidence is everything.” (I’m confident that Dubow needs to step outside his box of corporate business speak and learn to say things other than a few catchphrases. I’d also like to know where he keeps his crystal ball.)
I am sure the AP, which recently sniveled to Gannett by giving that idiot Currie an award, will be pleased to hear Ganentt wants to end its AP contracts for news content! Good luck with that, by the way, since these are iron-clad two-year contracts - cancel now and you still pay for two years!
ReplyDeleteWould one of you poor journalists explain to me how you make something local, national?? I am not in the newsroom, but I really feel for you folks because it has become more and more clear to me how confined by Gannett you are.
ReplyDeleteI agree with 1:40 on a couple of items but not all. Dubow said numerous times that he did not have a crystal ball how our future will pan out.
ReplyDeleteJim, Tara can speak! She must not like you.
Good God...."customer facing"??? that's a good one. He must have called SCJ for that one....Dubow is an embarrassment. It's that simple.
ReplyDeletePerhaps Dubow needs to call a meeting with local business people at the places that are performing well and explain to them why Gannett is forcing their fellow community folks into the unemployment lines---in the name of money that's probably going outside the given community.
ReplyDeletePeople aren't stupid. They talk. They compare notes about the decline of the news products. I can only imagine what they're saying when they see inferior products and see their friends losing jobs. That's not a good reason to remain confident.
Make Dubow face the customers. Then he'll get it, maybe.
ReplyDeleteAnd I really thought first-five-graphs training was going to solve our problems. I hope someone gets "hyper local" in the "information center" and pisses on his shoe.
ReplyDeleteJust takes it out and pees right on his shoe, nodding sincerely as he spouts his nonsense.
Rely less on AP? Hell, we're forced to use it many times because GNS promises something that never comes across or does so late that it blows our deadline.
ReplyDeletePoint of clarification: Dubow did not say HIS paycut was symbolic, the question asked referenced his pay cut as a model to offer other employees. Dubow's answer was: "pay cuts are often just symbolic, unfortunately most of the time they don't help us reach our bottom line"...
ReplyDeletePoint of clarification: Dubow did not say HIS paycut was symbolic, the question asked referenced his pay cut as a model to offer other employees. Dubow's answer was: "pay cuts are often just symbolic, unfortunately most of the time they don't help us reach our bottom line"...
ReplyDelete11/17/2008 3:25 PM
You're splitting hairs here.
Not "splitting hairs", just trying to be accurate. And he's right - cutting salaries, but still having that person on the books and paying for benefits doesn't always help the bottom line.
ReplyDeleteToo bad Kate Marymont didn't attend the Florida meetings, because she is very familiar with the situations at the Florida sites and now is supposed to be leading newsroom content strategies for all the community newspapers. It would be nice to hear what she has to say. Maybe she can explain whatinhell Dubow and Tara are trying to say. (If Marymont did attend and it just hasn't been reported yet, pardon my impatience.)
ReplyDeleteThe local autonomy of newspapers is inefficient and we need to reduce or eliminate AP. Dubow said he’d rather pay local people for the content than AP.
ReplyDeleteJim, this is NEWS!. It deserves its own headline and blog entry.
Walter Abbott
Local people can give the content. But who is going to report the real news that customers want to read?
ReplyDeleteAgreed, 4:16pm, telling employees Gannett is trying to eliminate use of AP is MAJOR.
ReplyDeleteWhen questioned about the shocking comment, Dubow replied, "Well, fiddle-de-dee...I'll always have Tara!" ;-D
the idiot still in power and Gannett is dying
ReplyDeleteNext thing you know, Dubow will be asking papers to use copy from Joe Six Pack "Citizen Journalists". Why pay cow reporters when you can get the milk for free?
ReplyDeleteAs a Brevard employee, I think people atending the meeting wanted to ask Dubow and his traveling companions tough questions but were too afraid to because the impending layoffs. Also, nobody in the room could hear any of the questions raised becase only Dubow and his two travel partners had microphones. They limited questions to about 10 minutes tops. Everyone I talked to afterwards said they came away from Dubow's rah-rah rally more worried than before. They are just not realistic about solutions and relying on the acquistion of "Ripple" and a new adminstration in Washington to fix the sagging ecomony is little in the way of substance. We are up the creek, I'm afraid. These guys are not in touch with reality and the ship is sailing...
ReplyDeleteJim,
ReplyDeleteA VERY credible little birdie told me that Nashville is going to cut around 50 active employees as well as counting a bunch of vacant positions in the cut (Names witheld for fear of retaliation). Looks like the newsroom... (Oh I'm sorry, I guess I should use the lame, supposedly cooler sounding "Info-Center" term,) is going to lose the largest number of people departmentally speaking (Big surprise?). Sadly some of the writers they are going to axe, are the only reason that my neighbors (and probably a bunch of other soon to be former subscribers) take the paper in the first place. Many of the rest are long time employees, some just a year or two from retirement. In my opinion, it just seems like Craig Dublow and Mike Dickhead are just playing the numbers to make Gannett look good on paper so they can blame everything on the economy and not take responsibility for their crappy piloting of the Gannett ship. We literally can not put out a quality paper with the already reduced staff we have, let alone cut another round of people. I have to laugh at the comment about reducing the use of AP! That's practically all the Tennessean does is cut and paste from the AP! The bottom line is that there are a LOT of people who would read the Tennessean if it were only worth reading! I hear this from countless people. Many of us have made this abundantly clear to management on multiple occasions, but instead of sending a few reporters out to actually ASK people what would make them consider buying the paper, they pay people in "Focus Groups" to critique some lame marketing ideas, and run with it. Sheesh! I'll bet the Nashville Scene will have a freakin' field day with the Tennessean now! The whole atmosphere has been crap around here since You, not management was the first to announce the latest round of layoff's. Ellen Liefeld must read the Gannett Blog because just a few minutes after the layoffs were announced here, she blasted out a copy of Mike Dickhead's email. As an aside, you can hardly walk down a hall without seeing roaches or spiders crawling around because god knows when the last time they sprayed the place. I've seen trash cans with what appears to be at least a weeks worth of trash in them, There are only 2 daytime porters for the entire building so do the math! They do have some outsourced company that works at night, but they spend more money and time catching them stealing stuff then if they just kept the damned porters that they laid off in the first place! Also from an aesthetic point of view, most all the walls are painted a dull grey, (thats great for "Shui"!) and haven't been painted for years, either because the Maint. dept. is so understaffed and overworked, or more likely, they just won't pay for paint. Yet when the Advertising director (who just happens to be Ellen's pet) say's Blackberry's and laptops for everyone! they will pay for that in a hurry. Well guess what? the laptops have proven to be a crappy idea, and all the Blackberrie's do is add yet another leash to the poor advertising sales minion's! Anyhow I have written enough! Not like this isn't the same story at every other Gannett property! My heart just goes out to the poor people I pass in the hall whom I know won't have a job in the near future.
I think it is comical that we have Dubow who knows NOTHING about newspapers and Tara Connell who knows nothing about communication visit our property today.
ReplyDeleteOverall, the feedback from everyone was very negative. We just elected a new President that promises change and provides us hope as a citizen. I look at Craig Dubow as hopeless in McLean. he is NOT inspiring, nor is he intelligent.
Dubow appeared to be a fish out of water and it clearly shows. He needs a script for him to speak to our staff. You can tell he is nervous and is not comfortable. I (and the rest of the Florida staff) do not believe anything he says.
As for Tara Connell. She should just give it up. It seems like she is taking on a new role as the head of all editors. I heard from a senior person formerly with Ft. M that she is going to move into a new "news" role.
HOT SCOOP>>>>I just heard that GNS is going to be cut completely. I also heard that Tara Connell is taking over GNS in some new form with Michael Maness from the DIG.
ReplyDeleteQuestion Jim...If Digital is the future, then why isn't Dubow traveling with the Head of Digital on his tours? Isn't it weird that he is talking about digital being the future for Gannett and no where is Saradakis with him? We were discussing this after Dubow departed from our office with his entourage.
ReplyDeletei agree with the earlier poster...Many of us were even more depressed after his presentation.
Anon 2:46p...Dubow doesn't have a crystal ball, because he does not have ANY BALLS
ReplyDeleteI agree 8:26 pm -- but I'm still unclear about the purpose of these Dubow-led meetings, so maybe there's a good reason for Saridakis to be missing in action.
ReplyDeleteMichael Manness has zero responsibility and respect from his other manager colleagues. Since he took over the DIG job, he has basically shut off any outlet for employees to "contribute" our ideas. He prides himself on innovation and I am not sure what he has done other than find an innovative way to kiss Dubow's ass!
ReplyDeleteManness mentioned to someone that the reason why his office is so close to Craig Dubow's is because Dubow truly depends on Michael for the future of Gannett and that he wanted it to be on the same floor so Manness can kiss his ass all day long.
That is one headcount that we can remove. All in favor?
Jim,
ReplyDeleteI think his purpose is two-fold from what he has been saying. First he is trying to get our to the papers to "feel" their pain and understand what is needed and to calm the troops. Secondly, he is supposed to talk to employees about the future and all the positive things Gannett has going for it even in a tough market. It seems like anything new for Gannett is related to digital.
I agree with the prior post, when Dubow was in Cincy, all he spoke about was Digital and that being the future from Gannett.
7:56 pm: Worth noting: Former Tennessean reporter Tim Chavez wrote in a comment on Nov. 7: "The Tennessean newsroom is preparing for job cuts of 20 people. It also will greatly cut back or eliminate contract writer.'' See his full comment at: http://tinyurl.com/5be69u
ReplyDeleteHow many folks currently work in the Tennessean's newsroom?
ReplyDeleteI'm interested to know what percentage of their newsroom staff equals 20 people to draw a comparison.
7:56 pm: Worth noting: Former Tennessean reporter Tim Chavez wrote in a comment on Nov. 7: "The Tennessean newsroom is preparing for job cuts of 20 people. It also will greatly cut back or eliminate contract writer.'' See his full comment at: http://tinyurl.com/5be69u
ReplyDeleteJim, I have to disagree that this post is "worth noting". Chavez has not worked at the paper for a few years and has no idea what the impact on the newsroom will be.
Why are we cutting AP when Gannett just entered into a new, huge contract with AP for all the Gannett sites? We're basically opening the floodgates on AP content from all domestic and international English markets. What's the truth, Craig?
ReplyDeleteHas he stopped to consider the impact of competition from non-US markets? I'm getting the details of the financial mess, written in an understandable way with graphics, video, context and background, first from a non-US based publication. Great US ads for jobs, house swapping, etc., too. Frankly, I don't go for the BJ lessons, advertorial, photo galleries and silly staff blogs that are cluttering up the Gannett sites and dumming down the news.
ReplyDeleteIt's good to see that Craig is at least admitting that he doesn't know what's going on anymore.
ReplyDeleteTalking about cutting AP so that he can pay for more local copy while executing the layoffs of local reporters. Doesn't he think people will latch onto what he's saying? Or is he so stunned by this freefall that he can't even tell he's contradicting himself?
I think Wall Street sees through the posturing, which is why the stock prices continue to fall. It's just too bad that he's killing his papers a good 20 years before they would have died of natural causes.
3:55 p.m.:
ReplyDeleteKate Marymont was at the Fort Myers meeting.
3:55 -- Did Kate have anything to say? If so, what was it? She is supposed to be leading all community newspaper newsrooms, but we aren't hearing much if anything from her.
ReplyDeleteWhen Dubow and Dickey were in Louisville they talked about the same thing of sharing information. Someone asked if this meant eliminating AP and they said that it would probably happen later down the road, but not immediately. The impression I got was within the next 3-5 years.
ReplyDelete