Friday, November 28, 2008

Friday | Nov. 28 | Got news, or a question?

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71 comments:

  1. I should be in bed right now, but those newspaper profit margin reports were a lot harder to decipher, once I waded through all 100-plus pages. More on that later.

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  3. I can't sleep, either, Jim! I feel like a turkey on Thanksgiving day, waiting for the axe.

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  4. when are you going to post it?

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  5. Larry St. Cyr to the rescue!

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  6. I am really noticing a huge drop in volume on this blog since Jim created all the hype about the FBI and Corporate looking into our computers.

    Jim, I used to like this blog and was a big fan, but now I am afraid of being caught by corporate IT.

    Also, for anyone thinking of using my moniker STOP IT!

    Dangerman

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  7. I'm noticing quite the opposite. Seems comment numbers are picking up.

    Also, Jim didn't create the hype. Blame the person who posted the threatening comment.

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  8. Hey Dangerman,
    Does your Mom, know you are up on her computer, pretending to be an adult? Don't you have to go to school today?

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  9. Faux Dangerman @ 6:06AM
    Actually I predict that bloggership will go up after they recover from turkey overdose today. I don't plan to quit the blog that Jim has provided for us. Sorry! And I am not so caring about the moniker thing. Go ahead, I've got many more. Feel free to listen to those inner voices. I watch amused.
    D.M.
    PS - Is Gannett IT coming to my house to monitor me? If I were you, I would make sure Mom offered them milk and Cookies. IT guys like chocolate chip. The more sugar, the better. D.M.
    PSS - Are you really Craig Dubow? You know like you claim? D.M.

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  10. Jim & Sparky:
    Hope you guys enjoyed yourself on Thanksgiving.
    To all: Good wishes to you and yours.
    A lot of people are gonna be on pins and needles today. I don't know how productive some of my co-workers will be the closer December 3rd gets. They normally bust butt to get the paper out on time, but with the layoff looming in the near future, I see some them have already given up and stopped busting butt. They are like a defeated group. I am under no illusions that I will or won't lose my job, but I refuse to lay down and die before December 3rd happens. I care about my paper, not my company. It's a work ethic thing.
    D.M.

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  11. I love the smell of fear on this blog. Goodbye you losers!

    Danderman (aka D.M.)

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  12. Dangerman is a loser living in a comic book!

    -Sleepless in NJ

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  13. thanks for that AFL update in NJ yesterday. how far did the "TALKS" go and how soon will this happen?

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  14. When will the pressmen in the Freehold, NJ plant lose their jobs? And will the building be sold as well? That's a valuable piece of real estate in there in Freehold!

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  15. If the pressman lose there jobs,Who will produce the product?

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  16. Larry St. Cyr maybe???

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  17. APP rumors for a while were that they were going to sell the Neptune building and move those people to Freehold, which seems a more likely prospect, especially since APP prints HNT and Courier News as well.

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  18. At the risk of drawing the wrath of several on both sides of the staffing/layoffs/USAT "elite"/housing prices/large salaries; let me make a few points.

    1. Publicly held companies, Gannett included, are in business to make shareholders money. Usually, that means showing profit growth. That's not the case at Gannett, where profits are declining and will continue to through at least 2009. Like most companies in most industries, cost-cutting is a way to at least stem profit declines.

    2. USAT may have lost good people last year, but honestly, many of those who took the buyouts were ready to and were compensated handsomely. No one pushed them out the door. And I doubt few of them regret it, particularly now.

    3. Losing an additonal 20 staffers will not hurt USAT. In fact, it may clear out some of the dead wood - particularly the unproductive, highly compensated kind - that have hurt morale and undercut fellow staffers for years.

    I notice one such overpaid, ex-assignment editor now employed as a rewrite staffer just posted her profile on Match.com, listing her salary at $150,000 + a year. Good God!

    I know overall, layoffs suck. They're hard to rationalize. But all things being equal, the cuts should have been the same % as the Gannett papers. Workload? Shift it around and make more on-line people get actual reporting and writing experience, and make on-line training mandatory for print people. You want an effective merger that benefits staff, management and the product? Provide the real-time reporting/writing training skills for many on-liners who now gather info rather than report it. Provide old school print types with the technical expertise to use the Internet. Cross-training is an effective tool used across industries. Why not here?

    4. Kill the international division. Losing $2 million a year? What's the justification? While its in the same ballpark as what CEO C.Dubb pulls in, it's $2 million that could be applied elsewhere.

    5. Closely examine the purpose and necessity of GNS.What does it duplicate?

    6. EVERYONE: Stop the self-righteous indignation. Look at virtually every industry and see what's happening. Even government is cutting jobs. No one is an expert at this and no one should expect Ken Paulson to be.

    7. Upper management: Get out of your offices and useless meetings and talk to people in the newsrooms. You are leaders, not funeral home directors.

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  19. I've got a #8... Gannett management; Stop treating your employees as the enemy.

    #9... Stop reaching into their pockets for every ounce of profit.

    #10... Also to management: When you screw up, admit it. Don't banish your workers to the corn field for pointing it out.

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  20. they can lease it to AFL, as posted yesterday

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  21. #11. For corporate, including the attorneys: Make a habit of reading what readers are writing on the sites' forums.

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  22. If they lease/or sell off the printing operations then they loose ALL Control over it

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  23. 12. Recognize there are talented people wasting away in jobs because they don't suck up, are the wrong skin color/gender or have better things to do than not question ideas/motives/policies meted out by management.

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  24. AE's make $150 plus a year????
    WTF!

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  25. even people off today are not on this blog. Traffic to this thing is declining rapidly!!! Good job Jim. You scared everyone away. My only friends were on this blog.

    Dangerman

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  26. dangerman
    you are so hilarious. i think you're some midlevel manager who thinks they're "saving the company" by posting stuff on here. you'll get tired of your silly little games after a few days. that's what i predict.

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  27. DANGERMAN IS A DISTRICT MANAGER

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  28. I hope everyone here had a satisfying Thanksgiving. May I suggest that everyone continue to say "Thank You" to a colleague every day? Or "Good Job"? I spent a lot of years in customer service jobs, and people are usually a lot more eager to complain than compliment. Your kind word could be the highlight of someone else's day, and we're all going to need that the next few weeks.

    8:18 said "1. Publicly held companies, Gannett included, are in business to make shareholders money."

    That's where the economic system went off the rails, IMO. Companies SHOULD be in business to make products to sell to consumers, and by extension, employ workers and help create a consumer market. If the company was successful in that respect, the investors would reap some of the reward.

    Somewhere along the way, someone convinced us that the goal of business was to reward investors by any means necessary. That left business free to farm jobs out to the lowest bidder, lay off productive workers in order to shore up artificially high dividends, and abdicate their responsibility to, and respect from, their communities.

    It makes me angry, and sad, when I realize that each day I work, I am not being judged by how well I contribute to getting a great product to consumers, but by how much of an impediment I am to giving more money to the shareholders who did nothing more than click a button on the computer to buy their shares.

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  29. Dangerman,
    If you profess to hate Jim and this blog, why do you stay and continue to post on it? It’s almost as if you enjoy tormenting yourself and others by doing it. If your antics weren’t so hilarious it would be so very sad. Oh, and I love the whole “Good Twin, Evil Twin” dynamics to your posts.

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  30. Anon 11:28 said:
    Somewhere along the way, someone convinced us that the goal of business was to reward investors by any means necessary. That left business free to farm jobs out to the lowest bidder, lay off productive workers in order to shore up artificially high dividends, and abdicate their responsibility to, and respect from, their communities.

    AND when this happened, Gannett newspapers diminished the role of journalists who saw their job as as much a vocation as a way to earn a paycheck. They cut the fat, then the muscle and finally, now, the soul ...

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  31. 11:28 - It's called capitalism. AKA the free enterprise system. I'm not sure what business model you're proposing. But even a company that doesn't answer to shareholders has to be profitable to sustain itself. Inflation, rising costs, (i.e., healthcare, raw materials, transport) economic conditions, competition and other forces impact all business.

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  32. Thanks to everyone working on Black Friday!

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  33. 10:29, you are a poser and a loser and a sick, sad, sorry excuse for a human being.

    You may think I'm a loser and you may wish that I too lose my job next week. I might. If I have to pump gas to feed my family, so be it. But at least I know I haven't lost my integrity by saying the kinds of vile, hateful, childish things you have put on this blog.


    I will always hate Gannett for what they've done to the newspaper I grew up with, the newspaper I work my ass off for. I will always despise the boss who tried to crush me under his heel. He is another sick, sad, sorry excuse for a human being.

    You are a prime example of what's wrong with Gannett, with all the hateful, vile things you say. God help the people left behind who have to work for you.

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  34. Gobble, gobble

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  35. "Publicly held companies, Gannett included, are in business to make shareholders money. Usually, that means showing profit growth."

    Precisely why media companies such as Gannett should not be public. We are not in the manufacturing business; what we do and what we produce is far too important to be subject to the whims of Wall Street, or some financial equation showing when enough profit is enough.

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  36. Jim, I realize you're hesitant to delete posts, but the trolls who have shown up in the last couple of days are really making a difficult time worse by bringing their anonymous vendettas here.

    Can you please try to keep the children behaved? Thanks.

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  37. I'll do my best. Like children, though they ache for attention. I find it best to ignore them.

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  38. 8:18 a.m. said: 3. Losing an additional 20 staffers will not hurt USAT. In fact, it may clear out some of the dead wood - particularly the unproductive, highly compensated kind - that have hurt morale and undercut fellow staffers for years.


    Amen and amen! I so hope the MEs are going to consider performance. We have several people in my department who watch TV their entire shifts, accomplishing nothing. Now that I think about it, though, those people kiss so much ass that they'll probably hang on to their jobs.

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  39. To the person who posted yesterday about how in the Plangere days the APP was ahead of the technology curve.

    Yes, for about six months.

    In their desire to be cutting edge they bought into a proprietary system without keeping abreast of what was being developed in the desktop world. In short, PostScript.

    They invested probably millions in dumb terminals leading to a dedicated program that locked them in for almost the next 20 years to those huge monstrosities calle the Coyote Terminals and into using SciTex while PhotoShop was leaving it in the dust.

    Part of the reason was that they had invested so heavily in that counter-intuitive system that to junk it and join the real publishing revolution would have cost them a lot.

    The major part of it, though, was that the people they paid to get trained in those systems -- people who only understood those systems and not what was happening in the entire computer universe, kept any innovations from happening. Otherwise they may have lost their jobs.

    The day I put together a page in PageMaker complete with photos and printed it out through the system I nearly lost my job for "endangering the equipment."

    And the executive almost bought it. The managers stifled any new ideas that they did not steal themselves.

    And as one IT manager put it: "I will not let one more MAcintosh in this building than I am ordered to." He was afraid of losing his PC job.

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  40. Cherry Hill Friends. Yipee next week is almost here. Tell me & let me go. I'll start a new life..even if that is scary. Might be hard to stay & wait for the next round. Our work load wil be greater, but those of us with time will wait it out. I enjoyed working with you, it takes a long time for co-worker to feel like family. Love Ya!
    Jersey Girl

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  41. "What we do and what we produce is far too important to be subject to the whims of Wall Street, or some financial equation showing when enough profit is enough."

    Okay, then, let's consider more market-oriented metrics. What do these papers' local circ penetration, and print and online readership coverage look like? How about their shares of local advertising expenditures? Unless those metrics are increasing or, at least, holding steady, then what these papers produce is not all that important to their consumer or business customers, either.

    If the community papers are down by both financial and market metrics, then how do you judge the importance of what they produce? By writers' own egos?

    Let's not fantasize about some glorious government watchdog function. If all these properties were doing such a bang-up job, their audiences would be up instead of down. What you do can't be all that important if no one gives a shit about it.

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  42. People have been commenting here about the arrogance and hubris of the online people versus the newsroom people and I can say there is plenty to go around.

    While there are plenty of people on either side who are a professional pleasure to work with, there are those who standout because they are God's gift to the universe.

    There's the reporter who, as part of a circulation action team, said: "We should just get rid of the ads, people will pay $5 a day to read our news."

    And the online person who, because she knew some HTML, was ready to dictate to the newsroom exactly what news they should post and how it should be written.

    The basic job of a reporter and editor is to gather relevant news and compose it in an easily understandable way for the reader. Whether that reader is reading off a screen or processed wood pulp makes no difference.

    Newspapers have survived the advent of television because they can delve more deeply into a topic than a reporter with two minutes of air time. But they were also restricted by the area of the newshole.

    Well now that is gone. and reporters and editors should welcome the expanded area.

    As for audio and video, these are new technologies that will have to be mastered and used for the same end as writing a story.

    But it will always take an objective journalistic approach to distill the story down to a quick bulletin that does not cheat the reader and then be able to organize a longer story so it maintains interest and doesn't lose the reader in a sea of trivia.

    So start co-operating people, the future needs both sides.

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  43. The second graf should have finished with "those who standout because they think they are God's gift to the universe."

    The poster regrets this omission.

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  44. 4:19, I see you failed basic reading comprehension.

    I do not hate the paper I grew up with, which I why I've stayed. I pray for the day when perhaps we can be the kick-ass product we once were.

    I do hate Gannett. I love what I do and I continue to do my very best.

    Trolls like you are the problem with Gannett.

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  45. I really fail to understand the feuds between online and print. Yeah, our online people get pushy by insisting on regular updates on a breaking story. Yeah, they post stuff super-fast, often before running spellcheck. But it's not all that different from the olden days (showing my age here) of multiple editions. Online/update editors are the rewrite editors of today.

    What does torque me a little is seeing people make grand strategic decisions about online operations who don't have a clue about how people use the Internet. Before everybody stopped advertising earlier this year, my site was gung-ho to hire a Flash specialist - someone dedicated to making fancy graphics and interactive maps and timeline bullshit just for the Web. People want information, not flashy junk. They want it to load up quickly and be easy to read and comprehend. And they don't want to have to keep downloading some annoying new plugin each week.

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  46. Hey Jersey Girl!

    Your post is very hard to comprehend. What in the heck are you saying? If you work in Cherry Hill, all of us should be fearful of what is coming in a few days. Look at the financials Jim posted earlier today. Cherry Hill is one of the worst performers in terms of gross profit on sales (for the reported period). Is it the unions that are causing this terrible return or is that there are too many unproductive people at that site? Maybe it's a reflection on the incompetetent publisher there. If the staff reductions are to be based on the return on investment (against gross sales) then Cherry Hill and several of the other newspapers with horrible numbers are in for a major jolt this coming week if Gannett is looking at these numbers and using them to make fixed overhead reductions There are dozens of people working(?) here who are overpaid and do practically nothing. The place is bloated, especially in the advertising department. There are more so-called managers than real workers. Everyone in the building wonders how these people continue to stay on board.

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  47. Here is some great advice for those looking for jobs next week. Also, take note who wrote it.


    http://tinyurl.com/552gnk

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  48. I think SLEEPLESS IN NJ is going to lose even more sleep when they throw his Jersey ass out. This is the most unprofitable paper around.

    Dangerman

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  49. I am so freaked out. I am going to get fired tomorrow...no wait, I can't, because I am Mr.Yesterday.

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  50. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  51. I just removed a comment that comprised the entire text of a USA Today story. That violates copyright law; please don't do that.

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  52. RE: Corporate monitoring our computers:

    Am I the only one who is not only right in the thick of it with everyone else, firmly on the side of "good god, can corporate screw it up any worse?" and all things good ...

    ... who also thinks it's entirely inappropriate to be reading blogs - this or any other one not related to my beat - at work?

    I hate to be a pollyanna. But I'm doing your work while you're surfing. And that burns my bacon.

    C'mon - don't give 'em more reasons to keep carving away at the staff.

    Bust on Craig & Co. from home. It's safer. It's less stressful. They deserve it. But most important, it's the right thing to do.

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  53. More people need to speak out about the injustice of the pending USAT layoffs. We down to a few short days before 20 or our friends and colleagues will be cast off for no damn good reason. If you don't stand up now, they will eventually come for you. These layoffs are not due to the economy. There is enough evidence out there that we are being lied to. I urge everyone to do what they can to save these jobs.

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  54. USATers...flood this blog with your disapproval about the layoffs! These layoffs are not going to make or break the paper. We are being deceived. USA TODAY employees must unite quickly. Don't remain silent.

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  55. Welcome to the club, USATers. I for one am happy to see USAT included in this round of layoffs, and hope it is a prelude to bringing this maverick operation to heel. There is scant justice in GCI's operations, but it is only fair USAT be required to carry its own weight and stop raping the community papers for its far-flung operations.

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  56. Why do these community papers have to run such exhorbitant profits? It's to fund USAT, which is draining money from this company.

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  57. or to justify continued high corporate salaries

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  58. Jim said: "Like children, though they ache for attention. I find it best to ignore them."

    Seriously, Jim, don't let these spammers ruin this site - not that this critical time.

    The next discussion down about profit margins is full of random cut-and-pastes having nothing to do with the discussion.

    They're trying to drown out the truth - don't let them.

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  59. 8:32 and others

    I don't understand how you can say Cherry Hill is one of the worst performers. The percentage might be under 10% but I wouldn't say 40 million is worth tossing away.

    Can you explain your logic?

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  60. these numbers are through the first 3 quarters of 2007, so in order to get an estimate of the whole year you would need to divide the revenue by 3 then multiply it by 4 - In Cherry Hills case the estimate annual number would be about 53 million - this could be conservative because the fourth quarter is usually the strongest which also could cause the profit margin to get slightly better for the year

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  61. 9:46, take your bacon off the stove, there's no reason for it to be frying.

    Some of us ARE posting from home on our own computers during the day on our own time. Remember, the entire world doesn't work 9-5. Some of us are creatures of the night.

    And oh, yeah, I'm posting on my day off, so it doesn't matter what time I post. Corporate has no right to my personal computer so they can kiss my hard-working ass.

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  62. USAT is "raping" the community newspapers??? Somebody sure has an inferiority complex.
    My USAT stories frequently are picked up by the community papers. Does that mean they're raping USAT?
    Give me a break, people.

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  63. Want to know what GCI profits are today? Subtract about 19 percent from the figures Jim posted, and you will get a rough idea. Look at the graph Alan Mutter put together and you will see we are in truly deep troubles:
    http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/

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  64. what's the latest with asbury

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  65. why aren't comments working? i've tried to post but i don't see the comment?

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  66. 7:01 p.m. --
    Amen! I couldn't agree more. What I find most frustrating is that the "flashy" people are brought in, and trusted, and the ones who already know storytelling for readers (ie, the designers) seem to be left out of this online move, in favor of the flash. What I see happening is a lack of consistency and integrity in presentation across the board at the local level, and I *wish* I had the power to jump in and do something.

    The designers are the ones with the trained talent to tell stories that readers appreciate; video, flash, audio -- all of those are tools that would enhance the skillset of the most trained storytellers. Yet, we're ignoring them, in order to get the latest and greatest thing online.

    Style and design matter online, too. Granted, most of us are a cookie-cutter website -- but I sincerely believe that the rest of the items that have local control need to be in the domain of the design editor or design department at papers where one still exists.

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  67. Hi 11:23 - Posting from home is cool - I didn't mean to imply that most, or even many, are reading Gannett blog at work.

    But considering that there's been a fair bit of teeth-gnashing over "corporate monitoring our computers" (see upthread) and what I've heard around the office ("Do you think they can tell we've been on the Gannett blog?") it's reasonable to assume that not all are as stand-up as you.

    At home? At the library? At a friend's place? Got to it, and with a vengeance. I do.

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  68. Jim, is it really possible for corporate rats to monitor our access to your blog? I'm at home now but I have commented before from work. I'm worried that it could affect next week.

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  69. At my Interstate site, the only time we investigate internet history is when it a) there's a weird usage issue (somebody's sucking bandwidth by downloading monster files constantly, or at odd hours) b) there's a request from H.R. or the publisher.

    If it's B, it's because someone saw you screwing off, we were fixing your machine and found porn, you clock eight hours and do no work, etc. Or it's because you need to be gone, and firing for cause is cheaper than any other reason.

    Is it being done? Hell yes. Have you noticed the odd posts marked "test" or "time check"? Exactly what I would do if I were trying to nail someone for posting on work time. As the blog is set for eastern time, and occasionally there is time lag, you need to tie a post's time to when a specific machine was on Jim's site.

    For all of Gannett, that could be a little time consuming. But if there was a Cherry Hill post at 11:51 saying their publisher was a child molester, how hard would it be to peek at the domain logs and find out how many machines at the CP were visiting Jim? My guess from the comments would be about 25 machines or so at CP are here at any one time.

    As that's a fairly serious charge to make, a publisher may decide that chasing down that poster would be worth the IT time. As collateral damage, they also find out the other 24 people who were screwing off when they were on the clock.

    The bottom line is that although everybody does a little screwing around on the internet, pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered. You have no power to bitch if the rule is "work only usage" and they nail you for inappropriate use of company resources.

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  70. Anon 7:45 (I think) wrote:
    really fail to understand the feuds between online and print. Yeah, our online people get pushy by insisting on regular updates on a breaking story. Yeah, they post stuff super-fast, often before running spellcheck. But it's not all that different from the olden days (showing my age here) of multiple editions. Online/update editors are the rewrite editors of today.
    Ah hah! someone my age on here!
    The BEST was an EXTRA! with staff members standing on the curb with papers in carrier sacks, hawking the breaking news to pedestrians and passing motorists. And people snapping the papers up ... even pushing and shoving to get a copy.
    Those WERE the days.
    Today's equivalent = website crashes because of high traffic. Equally exhilarating.

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  71. 832
    whats so hard to understand? If the courier doesn't want me, I need to find work elsewhere. Not my choosing, but if they pick me...I must move on. What else can I do? Make the best of it and trust God for a new direction.
    Jersey Girl

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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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