In an all-hands memo, employees have been told to join top Detroit Free Press editor Paul Anger at one of two staff meetings tomorrow; the first is at 9:30 in the morning. "The purpose will be to discuss our strategic plans going forward,'' the note says.Separately, a Detroit representative is at Gannett's big customer service center in Tulsa, Okla., today, presumably preparing staff, according to one of my readers. I can only imagine the torrent of phone calls from confused customers when and if Gannett goes through with plans to end home delivery of the two Detroit newspapers most days of the week.
This will be the first glimpse of a ripple effect as the phones will be loaded with calls from Detroit slowing response for all papers supported by the COE which really isn't so E
ReplyDeleteGoodness knows, I am no expert on the future of newspapering, but this JUST SEEMS SO WRONG!
ReplyDeleteThis plan puts a thumb in the eye of the people who are willing to pay nearly any price to have their daily paper delivered every morning; the people who read it from Page One to the classifieds, not necessarily in that order; the people who have a real feeling of ownership for the local newspaper.
Bad Gannett! Bad, bad, BAD!
Bottom line: Gannett does not care about readers - only money.
ReplyDeleteGannett and MediaNews: Dumb and dumber. The Detroit newspapers are finished. It's over. They'll likely fold within five years because you can't turn back when this fails.
ReplyDeleteI think Gannet should buy some porn sites. I'm told they make lots of money.
ReplyDeleteThey're already whoring themselves out to advertisers, so credibility won't be a problem.
Of course if they do, their heavy-handed management (no pun intended) will probably find a way to make them lose money.
I find this a hell of a vote of confidence in the future of Detroit. GM is getting out, GCI is getting out...
ReplyDelete2:16 PM -- Brillant idea. We could use Mogulus for live feeds too!
ReplyDelete5:38 PM your idea, while brilliant, is bound to fail. The Mogulus video provides such poor quality, jerky, freeze and unfreeze action that people would be more disgusted by the software than by the content.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how closely Detroit looked in to working with USPS for same day mail delivery? It seems the combined approx. 500K daily circulation of both papers could foot the bill for USPS delivery.
ReplyDeleteHow reliable will a 3 day a week carrier force be? How lucrative can that job be? How do you learn your route 3 days a week?
Newspaper subscribers read by habit. Taking away the paper 4 days a week will end the habit.
The NAA and GANNETT and McClatchy and all the rest need to form a unified lobby in congress to repeal the National Do Not Call List for newspapers so we can win back some circulation and make the newspaepr a viable and growing advertising vehicle again. The Canadian newspaper industry is exempt from their recently enacted do not call list because "newspapers are essential to the public discourse on the state of the nation."
5:54 pm, Excellent idea! USAT uses same day mail delivery in many areas. Small market dailies have used same day mail for many years with a lot of success. (Then again, they are only dealing with one or two post offices.) Here in NJ, the non-Gannett Bergen Record used it for Mon-Sat papers in areas within the home market. They discontinued it because of the logistics and the fact that there were very few subscribers who signed on for it (mail delivery at no extra cost.)
ReplyDeleteRepeal DNC for newspapers? You must be kidding. Most papers in the U.S. don't print a graf that is "essential to the public discourse" on anything but Britney's latest faux pas.
ReplyDeleteAnnon 5:54
ReplyDeleteCarriers will still have the OTHER pubs they deliver. DN and FP are only two of many.
No doubt it will be an even more somber morning at that office when the folks get in. Us night siders have to wait to hear.
Anon 12:53--I would disagree that there are lots of other publications to deliver. Another local paper cut back its printed paper recently too, from 6 days a week to 4.
ReplyDeleteOther than the NYT or WSJ, neither of which has huge market penetration here (and I'd never subscribe to either), there is only one other daily I can think of that covers my area.
When my Freep subscription (prepaid, of course--who knew?) runs out, I will think seriously of dropping it. I am not a Luddite--I spend a lot of time on, and already get a lot of news from, the Internet. But I want a PAPER in the morning--it's a different experience than reading websites.
I don't know how to make this experience attractive to the younger people who have deserted newspapers in droves...they are too distracted by their Ipods and Blackberries to focus on the quiet moment that reading a newspaper represents.
Same day mail is a joke. Who wants a morning paper delivered at 2:00 in the afternoon? If you check USAT's numbers you won't find a great deal of mail copies as a percent of the total. It's just the die-hard readers who live way out and understand it's the only way to get it delivered. It is also pretty darn expensive to boot.
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