Sunday, December 28, 2008
Sunday | Dec. 28 | Your News & Comments
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34 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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I haven't been blogging much because I've assigned myself a special project. I can't talk about it yet, however. (And, no: It has nothing to do with more layoffs. Or less layoffs. Or any -- )
ReplyDeleteI hope your special assignment isn't creating corporate straw effigies to burn, James.
ReplyDeleteCalifornia has pretty strict air pollution laws.
Will Green Bay or Detroit have the better "Thank God It's Over" headline after today's game of the (5-10) Packers vs. the (0-15) Lions?
ReplyDeleteIn GB, people will still actually get the paper to read the stories after watching the pre-game, game, and post-game coverage.
Does your special project have to do with Gannett?
ReplyDeleteLet's start this Sunday with more goodness from the New Jersey group.
ReplyDeleteC-N sports section prints a handout about a sportswriters' banquet to be held the week before the Super Bowl. One of the people being honored is Joe Theismann, whom the handout ID's as "currently ... a football analyst for ESPN." Theismann was fired from ESPN nearly 2 years ago -- a fact that the copy desk in East Brunswick has yet to grasp.
Today's also a big NFL day: 11 of the 16 games this week have a bearing on the playoffs, yet the C-N has no room for a league-wide NFL preview. The C-N did have room for a canned feature about an NFL game played 50 years ago.
From Tim Chavez, www.politicalsalsa.com:
ReplyDeleteJim, I hope you had a good holiday. I am writing a series on the rise and fall of The Tennessean. The first part is on my blog today.
Thanks.
Tim
Any news on N.J. Group papers.
ReplyDeletermichem: Yes, my project is very much related to Gannett.
ReplyDeleteWith all the rotten things going on this holiday season,
ReplyDeleteIs there any good that has come out of gannett or any of it's properties this season?
"Theismann was fired from ESPN nearly 2 years ago -- a fact that the copy desk in East Brunswick has yet to grasp."
ReplyDeleteNot to absolve the copy desk of responsibility, but wouldn't the sportswriter who put out this copy and the sports editor who did a first read also have yet to grasp this fact?
Tim,
ReplyDeleteYour address for your blog is incorrect. It is:
http://politicalsalsa.blogspot.com
Jim,
ReplyDeleteWhen will we be able to read about your special project?
Anxiously waiting in Pensacola.
Changes in Elmira:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.stargazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081228/NEWS01/812280322&s=d&page=3#pluckcomments
Just wanted to post this that I came across on Craigs List. Don't know if it is legit or not.
ReplyDeleteWe are pointednews.com, a start-up company in news media. We review and select daily news from multiple news media for our readers. We also publish weekly news summary and daily featured news. To increase and improve our analysis on news that our readers can rely on for their conclusions, we need writers who have a strong background in journalism, argumentative communication, and social awareness.
See our Web site to see the kind of selected and reviewed news we need.
Qualified applicants should send us a resume (in .doc or .pdf file) to:
Adam Finhan
Human Resources Department
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Jim:
ReplyDeleteRegarding the posts from yesterday regarding GF monies being used for purposes outside of the stated mission of the orgainization, there is also room to look at who is employed by those organizations.
I know it's more difficult, but looking at employees of the organizations that GMC "recommendations" through the foundation will also reveal some interesting links.
I printed out the Guidestar reports for 2006 and 2007, and will be looking for cases where relatives of Gannett senior management are employed by the organizations that are getting these funds. It's difficult to trace names when they are not the same as the GMC member, but I'm convinced that this is going on.
Based on the fact that you started looking at this early in 2008, I will be interested to see how the payments for this year have changed.
I wondered outloud if your special project could be looking at the three companies that manage the foundation money? I noticed that the GF pays a management fee to one, but not the other two.
ReplyDeleteLike most non-profits, I think we will see the 2008 total amount under management reduced due to the downturn in the stock market.
And now for some exciting news in Cincinnati....
ReplyDelete(AP) — The publisher of The Cincinnati Enquirer says the newspaper will drop its classified ads section on Mondays and Tuesdays, part of a cost-cutting response to falling revenue and a decline in spending by advertisers.
In a front page letter to readers on Sunday, Margaret Buchanan says the newspaper will begin using a narrower page size beginning in March, allowing a reduction in newsprint and ink usage, the Enquirer's second biggest expense.
Other changes include folding the “Our Life” section into the back of the paper's “Local” section from Monday through Thursday and reducing television listings to just the evening programming of major broadcasters.
The Enquirer, owned by Gannett Co., has a weekday circulation of about 200,000, and more than 300,000 Sundays.
Jim, I hope your new special project will reveal something earth shattering that will scare the pants off Craig and Gracia!
ReplyDeleteMake no mistake about it: the changes in Elmira, Cincy and at dozens of other Gannett papers are tied directly to the recent round of layoffs. In some cases, they prevented further layoffs. In others, they are the result of a smaller staff that simply can't do as much. I suspect the former in most cases.
ReplyDeletepointnews.com raises the new ethical/legal questions of how much copy/paste or rewrite violates U.S. copyright law. It looks like it is primarily a repackage of worldwide MSM content, but I suspect it may not pay all those sources for reprint rights, while pointnews.com makes profit from ads.
ReplyDeleteDomain name: POINTNEWS.COM
Registrant Contact:
EUROMASTER di Roberto Cirianni
Roberto Cirianni ()
Fax:
Via Agostino Valiero 12
Roma, 00165
IT
Administrative Contact:
EUROMASTER di Roberto Cirianni
Roberto Cirianni (webmaster@euromaster.net)
+39.0639388693
Fax: +39.0639386360
Via Agostino Valiero 12
Roma, 00165
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Jim, I hope you're going to track all the shrinking papers. My impression is that everything will start tomorrow, in time for Gannett's first quarter of 2009.
ReplyDeleteCan't you give us a hint about what you are working on?
ReplyDeleteI don't get it... how does removing the classified ads on Mondays and Tuesdays save dollars? I understand the reduction in paper and ink but, isn't it also removing an opportunity for an ad sale? Or was there no reduction in ad costs for a multi-day run that simply now doesn't include those two days?
ReplyDeletewell it looks like another cookie cutter approach for Gannett sites. And here I foolishly thought that my bosses had decided what to cut from the paper based on their knowledge and "expertise" of their area. God knows they tout it enough. But no, looks like they are simply sheep following every other Gannett paper cutting features sections and forcing out other key things to make more room for lists and other crap they claim is "information." After promises that we would stick by the decisions to cut stuff and not look back after the recent layoffs, my paper is already going back on that promise. The light lasted about a week before they decided to pull the plug on some changes they promised. So we are now down several key people we need to get things done AND we still have the workload to do as if they were here. Happy damn New Year!
ReplyDeleteindy star is slicing, dicing and julienning what's left of its features sections -- you know, the ones nobody reads . . . except women, the people who still make most of the spending decisions for themselves and their families.
ReplyDeletefor a full rundown, see ruthholladay.com.
Gannett is destroying the newspaper industry.
ReplyDeleteBinghamton formally announced that its killing its classifieds on Mondays and Tuesdays and shrinking from four sections to two. It's moves like these that'll have people dropping their subscriptions even faster never to return.
ReplyDeleteGreat strategic plan Craig. Guess its smarter to keeping paying out that dividend than to support the products that actually create it.
In years to come, "innovators" like you will be listed in wikipedia for killing this industry.
To echo another poster, what's the point in dropping classifieds on Mondays and Tuesdays? You're giving up revenue. Fold them into another section, like sports, instead.
ReplyDeleteGannett is outdated.........them thinking that they can keep doing away with employees and the quality of the newspaper and still keep the subscribers is ludicrous! I am sorry to say that the years of living in egypt where the money from the common workers and their stolen wages are supposed to flow up like a pyramid while there is no accountability for management is coming to an end just like the third riech in nazi germany. You end up giving your soul to gannett and like lose yourself being while working for the most immoralized place I ever worked for. And in the end who benefits but the upper management. They have stripped the integrity and wholesomeness out of "ma and Pa" newspapers and turned it to trash!
ReplyDeleteGannett can suck my male expenditure!
ReplyDeleteStill curious.. what happened to the bad karma people??? Has it made things better?
ReplyDeletePrevious post:
I am curious. How did the "bad karma" purge on September 9, play out? I am sure that there were good people involved but the one I worked for was rotten to the core--the typical Gannett exec that lead by fear and intimidation.
Asking the question on two fronts:
1. Do things work more efficiently now?
2. Has the "fear and intimidation" thing worked in finding another job for those affected?
In terms of shutting down classified for 2 days a week, it's pretty simple.
ReplyDeleteYou sell one week packages. Your package just went from 7 days to 5 but the price is the same. You save on newsprint and ink with no apparent sacrifice to revenue.
It's a huge mistake, but it's certainly logical when you're trying to put the newsprint manufacturers out of business. Newspapers might also be trying to determine the effect on web traffic in Classified on those days.
The price of ink goes up January 1. If ABH goes out of business or shuts another million tons of domestic capacity in the coming year, the price of newsprint will go up 20% in 2009.
It's just going to get worse. We'll see more front page notes from publishers talking about making the paper easier to handle by cutting the webs down or more environmentally friendly by getting rid of sections that customers don't want.
It's all BS. They know it when they write it, and we know it when we read it.
Is anyone really talking about cutting classifieds? Or just moving them into the back of another section, like Sports, and cutting the stand-alone section?
ReplyDelete9:12 PM & others - There will be no revenue loss due to running 5 -vs- 7 days. Just because Gannett is cutting back the number of days an ad runs, don't expect a cut in the cost of the ad.
ReplyDelete