Hundreds of USA Today newsroom employees are meeting at 5 p.m. ET today to learn more about the approximately 20 jobs being eliminated as part of the 10% newspaper workforce reduction Gannett has mandated across the company by early next month. (The layoff rate will vary by paper, however.)USAT staff dialing in for this afternoon's meeting: As employee questions are posed and answered, please provide details. Post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write gannettblog[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green sidebar, upper right.
Hello, USAT? Anyone there? The meeting should have ended nearly two hours ago . . .
ReplyDelete. . . it's [i]almost[i] as if they were told not to say anything . . .
ReplyDeleteMaybe they are all shell-shocked!
ReplyDeletemaybe they are still in the meeting or they were told that the IP address for your blog was being watched and if they commented, they were out
ReplyDeleteThere's not much to say. Newsroom has to cut 20 staffers. Asking for volunteers. After that, management decides who gets the axe. Should be completed by about Dec. 5.
ReplyDeleteSo they're chopping people instead of cutting jobs? There's a huge difference.
ReplyDeleteYour ip address is being watched. If you don't know what this means you shouldn't work for Gannett anymore.
ReplyDeleteI need to emphasize this periodically: Gannett CANNOT access any of my reader's individual IP addresses -- so long as readers access this blog from a NON-WORK computer.
ReplyDeleteJim, we've got to get you up to speed on your Internet geek terminology.
ReplyDeleteIP address=Internet Protocol address. That is a series of numbers that web "nameservers" use to route traffic to and from various sites. Every domain/site has a unique IP address. Yours is 209.85.133.191 .
So: Any IT department can set up a sniffer, if they so desire, to see who's hitting your site by domain name (or, heck, just by web url). Frankly, I doubt anyone much bothers to do this (especially considering how hideously overloaded our IT departments are these days). The traffic in my newsroom alone means half the employees would be wiped out if there was a 'religious purge.'
Oh, yeah, I should add: I assume I'm going to trigger some haters when I write this, but I thought the USAT meeting was handled about as classily as could reasonably be expected. I was impressed by the questions that people asked, too.
ReplyDeleteIt was professional all around. There was no big surprise...the HR people got put on the hot spot a couple of times and got a bit mushmouthed, but that is to be expected for the usual legal boilerplate reasons.
In the end, this sucks; we all know why it sucks; we all have to get through the suckage together.
One thing that leaped out at me: the frank admission that the International Edition LOSES a couple of million a year! Why not shitcan that useless thing and shift those resources elsewhere?
ReplyDeleteEveryone reads the blog. You will not get in trouble.
ReplyDeleteYou really have to read this blog to know what the hell is going on, because the company sure isn't telling us anything. I work at the mothership, but I don't work in the USAT newsroom. I hear about things through this blog or from a coworker whispering, "Hey, did you hear about...?" It's ridiculous that they don't share information.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I'm writing this on my home computer. But occasionally, if I'm at work and somebody says, "Hey, did you hear about...?" then I visit this blog for a minute or two, just to see if what I'm hearing is on here. I mean, where else would I go?
Lowlights of Monday's meeting:
ReplyDelete- Ken and HR's inability or lack of willingness to answer a question about whether volunteers for layoffs would be eligible for unemployment benefits. Not only did they not have an answer but they failed to understand the importance of that issue. On one hand Ken was practically pleading for volunteers but on the other hand a question central to providing incentive for volunteering almost seemed like an annoyance. HR was particularly cold and lawyerly.
- Ken started the meeting by saying the meeting would go as long as it needed to be, but then promptly cut off the meeting while two other people had their hands up wanting to ask questions. Did anyone happen to notice how late he and the MEs stayed to answer questions after the meeting, as they said they would?
- We found out that the international edition loses $2 million a year, yet shutting it down was never considered as an option for saving a few jobs. What else wasn't considered. If every job is so valuable, as Ken stated, why wasn't more done to save those jobs?
- Ken said he/they went over everything during this process over the last few weeks. Asked lots of questions and looked at every angle in terms of trying to ease these layoffs or at least present what's going to happen in a thoughtful manner. Yet several times during the meeting he admitted to having not thought of something raised by one of the staffers. So there was a lot of "we thought of everything" followed by "we didn't think of that." The people at the top rarely have all the answers, but more importantly, they don't seem to have all the questions either.
- We learned that the people at the very top, above Ken, are about as cold as they come. According to Ken, this isn't about dollars so much as it is about number of positions/names. It's 20 positions/name, period. Doesn't matter what current positions are unfilled. The people at the top want names, regardless of how much money the cuts would save or what the salaries of those people are. You can speculate for yourself why that is.
- The meeting wasn't confrontational, yet did anyone else notice how many security people were stationed outside the auditorium?
- Ken made it clear that this was going to be an elimination of jobs that the managing editors felt they could do without. Yet I suspect that this is going to be a cutting of jobs of the least popular people. If there isn't any questioning or oversight from the top of who the MEs chop, some proven logic and reasoning, then they could make some decisions that lean more towards personal than professional. We could lose important jobs done by decent people just because they fell out of favor with their editor at some point. I hope that doesn't happen, but it could without oversight and without these editors having to explain to Ken or John why these folks were chosen for layoffs.
- Does anyone believe online isn't exempt? Ken claimed all jobs are in play, unlike last year when online was exempt.
In all, it was a fairly depressing day. It struck me odd that Ken said this was one of the most difficult things he's ever had to do, yet he seemed somewhat light during the meeting. Not like man carry a heavy burden or someone who was bruised and bloodied from fighting the good fight to defend us. Ditto on the managing editors. Nothing in their body language or words that seemed all that worried.
We'll know by the end of next week whose lives are going to be disrupted in a profound way because someone at the top felt USAT needed sacrifice bodies like the smaller papers have even though USAT still makes a ton of money. This is a perception thing more than a dollars thing. There is no longer any prestige or sense of accomplishment, let alone security, working at the flagship. I can recall a day when folks came from the smaller Gannett papers feeling proud to have made it to USAT. Those days are over.
Ken and others like to use the economy to lessen the sting. But there is a big difference between USA TODAY and Citigroup or GM. We are profitable. They aren't. That fact rarely seems to be mentioned in these gloom and doom meetings. This isn't just about the economy.
Hey 1:39, you call that meeting classy? Frigid HR responses, lack of understanding of the most basic fears and concerns, no proof that anything was done to save jobs or that the jobs that are cut would indeed be jobs we could lose and not just an excuse to get rid of people some ME has a bone to pick with. Do you really think salaries have nothing to do with this?
ReplyDeleteWhat the heck meeting were you at?
Don't expect too many comments about yesterday's meeting. People are scared to death right now. Frozen with fear.
ReplyDeleteI discussed some of what was said with my wife and our friends last night, and they were in stunned disbelief at how it was handled. Couldn't get beyond why a newspaper that makes a healthy profit would do this to people. It's one thing to have layoffs when a firm is losing money and needs to stay afloat, quite another when layoffs are mandated for less than honorable reasons and then rolled into the economic times blanket excuse. Those real reasons include:
Keeping up with the Jones (the other Gannett papers) and bringing USAT more in line with the rest of the company.
Clearing the way for more online hires. We'll be watching to see whether any online people are let go. If they aren't laid off, then we will have a better idea of what the true motivation was.
Greed.
Something stinks. I too am not buying the economic crisis reasoning for these cuts. While the national financial crisis is enormous and far reaching, USAT still sells, still makes a lot of money, still enjoys many perks. It doesn't take a PhD from Harvard to realize that something wasn't said in the meeting yesterday pertaining to the why 20 souls need to be let go. Let's hope there are enough people who were close to leaving anyway, and volunteer for layoffs, because if 20 have to leave unwillingly for no damn good reason, there is going to be a karmic residue leftover which will stain the newsroom for a long time. We can all accept layoffs are a business reality, but only when everything else has been exhausted and profitabilty is at stake. I heard nothing in that Paulson meeting to indicate to me that USAT is losing money and that specific other areas of operations were cut.
ReplyDeleteBottom line: It's all about the stock price. That's ALL it's ever been about at GCI. Pump up the stock price, and the stock-buying institutions are happy and executive stock options are worth more. At least that's the way it's supposed to work, in a bull market. Second on the priority list are advertisers, followed by subscribers. Employees are dead last.
ReplyDeleteI once aspired to work at USAT. Most of that desire is gone. In fact, Gannett has pretty well soured me on the newspaper biz altogether.
ReplyDeleteA lot of folks wanted to work for the paper. It was a shining star. Think of what you will about Al, but at least he made it feel like an honor to work at USAT and showed appreciation for many who helped build the brand. The smaller Gannett properties were good a farm system for developing talent, regardless of the controversies about how that talent was "stolen." People were motivated to get to the flagship. That's gone now. More and more folks, young and old, just want to get the heck out of this company and this industry. That's the loss and damaged done that can't be measured by yesterday's layoff news or stock prices.
ReplyDeleteI still think the cuts have everything to do with pension projections and expenses. Isn't a bunch of that pension money in Gannett stock? If so and if Gannett left it there, is that prudent?
ReplyDeleteI wasn't disappointed by Monday's meeting because I didn't expect much. We got some recycled comments from last year, combined with a few obvious facts, and not much else. 65 loses in one year from the newsroom, yet we're suppose to believe that the integrity of the paper still matters?
ReplyDeleteIT'S ONLINE HIRES! That's what it was mainly about last year. And that's what it's about this year. Clearing spots for more web hires. Obviously they can't say that because we'd be at each others' throats during this transition that will probably last a few more years. But that's a big part in this. Need proof? Watch where the layoffs come from. I doubt there will be a single online person let go. Need more proof? Who was exempt last year from taking the buyouts? Further proof? Look at most of the hires in 2008 at USAT. It's right there in front of us. I don't hold it against the online people, and find most of them decent to work with, but I do think there were better ways of handling things. Laying off 20 print print people at holidays wasn't one of them. Yes, these will be print people even though I am fairly sure that online has some dead wood.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe it's almost 2009 and a company is still pinning labels like "print" and "online" on journalists.
ReplyDeleteCan anyone post jobs descriptions-- one for print and one for online--- so I can see firsthand that there is a company so truly behind the times?
Why can't some print people be trained to do online work?
ReplyDeleteA fair number of print people are being trained to do online work. I work at USAT and have my feet in both mediums all day long.
ReplyDelete11:34 am: Indeed, they CAN be trained to do online work. Just look at me.
ReplyDeleteTrue. But some people can't or aren't being given a chance, yet are still a great value to the paper (the thing that still pays our salaries). However, those same people are most at risk in this round of layoffs. Seems highly unfair to say the least and makes the assumption that all online staff are stellar performers.
ReplyDeleteI am happy for those who have found salvation by making the leap from print to online, or who are doing both. Count your blessings. But it's the print staff that still carries the load and are rewarded by being target practice for those who see jobs as numbers and not names.
There is a great hunger for bringing in new and cheaper hires, so not all print people are going to converge regardless of their talents or desires. I would love to make the leap. I have many tech skills that I engage in as hobby. Yet, I can't break through because I guess I am seen as too valuable right now to the print side of things. That's not going to last forever, though, and I am afraid by the time my job is eliminated, there will be no more opportunities to transition to the web site.
Clarifying:
ReplyDelete- "Online" people weren't specifically exempt from last year's buyouts, but you were exempt if you had five years online experience. And you didn't qualify if you had less than 15 years total experience. That didn't leave many "online" people.
- The print/online divide is narrowing. We have former "print" folks who spend a lot of their time blogging. We have "online" folks who get a lot of bylines. Some copy desks have embraced multiplatform publishing; some haven't. (And yes, it seems possible that those who haven't embraced multiplatform publishing might regret it come Dec. 3.)
- A lot of AEs have picked up considerable Web skills, far beyond simple blogging.
- Several departments have "rewrite" desks that straddle the print and online platforms.
The people who comment on this blog about the "online people" being exempt from everything and working bankers' hours are a noisy, ignorant minority who will not be missed. The vast majority of people who worked on one platform or the other a couple of years ago are pushing forward with convergence and learning a lot in the process.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The online folks I knew at USAT worked like dogs. I never saw any slackers.
ReplyDeletei agree. in asheville the online people too work like dogs. they don't have the time or the numbers to do less.
ReplyDeleteForgive me for being blunt, but all of you who differentiate between "print" and "online" need to get it: Journalism is journalism, and you better learn to do it in print and online -- both. Just do good journalism !
ReplyDeleteFOR THE LAST TIME, not everyone is being given a chance to get involved with the USAT web site. It's not that they don't want to, or aren't capable of being journalists on both platforms. It's that their enormous and specific responsibilities to the newspaper consume all of their time. And it's only gotten worse since all of the print staff reductions in the past year. At best, some can dabble with digital, suggest a story, lend a hand now and then, but their core responsibilities are overwhelming weighted towards specific print duties. And without those people, many of the almost exclusively online folks would be doing a lot more print work. So be grateful that there still is a core group of journalists holding up the newspaper and stop assuming that every one of the 400-plus newsroom jobs can easily jump back and forth betwen digital and print. That shows ignorance as to what it takes to put out the paper every day. There are just as many online folks who NEVER contribute to the newspaper as there are print people who don't cross over to online often. Let's not pretend this is a problem of print people being stubborn or behind the times, when in fact many print people are very tech savvy and would welcome to chance to do more online. Would you onliners like to do more for print? That's what I thought.
ReplyDeleteI think many people who work for dot com at USAT would welcome the opportunity to do more original reporting and pitch in with print work. Many of them, even the younger ones, got their first experience in journalism at print publications and see nothing wrong with print as a medium. The real issue here seems to be newsroom structure - Like several comments have noted, it's not easy for the strictly print folks to take on more digital responsibility, but likewise, it's not easy for Web people to report or contribute to the print edition either. There should be less division between the two sides all around. There's a better way to break down the many responsibilities we face as a group, and there's a better way to prioritize the tasks we complete as a group. But unfortunately, many managers either don't recognize this divide as a problem or don't want to make the effort to bring about the substantial changes that are necessary.
ReplyDelete