My domestic partner and I leave today on a vacation until about mid-February. Sparky and I are visiting friends in Brazil for Carnival. I'm bringing a laptop, so I can try to keep up on comments, e-mail and Friday's fourth-quarter earnings report. But telecommunications in Brazil aren't always a safe bet. And it is supposed to be a beach vacation. . . .
Among the most sacred cows in Gannett are the various diversity-in-news-and-hiring programs that Corporate has been pushing on journalists as long as I can remember -- something I referenced in this post, now drawing lots of comments.
I got an internship -- and then the company pulled the rug out from under me! Let's hope that doesn't happen this summer, anyway. Phxsoul, a Phoenix-based blog for African-Americans, is promoting Gannett's 2008 Talent Development Program. Those are the internships where, against all odds, many of the positions are magically filled by minority applicants -- even though, of course, reserving spots for minorities would be illegal if it were official policy. (OMG: I've said something bad again about GCI's sacred diversity policy!)
With little fanfare, Gannett is moving advertising production work to the land of rock-bottom wages, India -- raising red flags for a Gannett Blog reader at the Pensacola News Journal. GCI has contracted with 2AdPro in Los Angeles to produce ads for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Press & Sun-Bulletin (left) in Binghamton, N.Y., and other papers. "We are not doing a wall-to-wall replacement like some other newspapers," Austin Ryan, vice president of production, told the trade publication Newspapers & Technology. "But we do believe we can gain some economies and we will be rolling this out at other properties that make sense."
At USA Today, we used to say that three examples makes a trend. We've now got two at The Arizona Republic; I'm looking for a third, as Gannett's second-biggest paper after USA Today continues to hemorrhage top executives. The Republic said yesterday that its No. 1 advertising executive, Linda Greiwe (left), is leaving to become president of a group of 10 Gannett newspapers in central Ohio, including the Newark Advocate, where she'll be publisher. Greiwe's departure follows last week's surprise news that top Editor Ward Bushee is fleeing GCI after 21 years for the top newsroom job at the money-losing San Francisco Chronicle. Coincidence? Probably. But suppose you started thinking Gannett was no longer committed to the Republic. Would you stick around?
More than ever, the new plan emphasizes local news in a bid to recover readers frustrated by newspapers that have lost their relevance. "The news is delivered where they want it, how they want it, when they want it," Gannett says.
Update on Jan. 29: The ads have been taken down -- but only after I called the Olsens' company, Dualstar Entertainment, to ask why they were still up.
I think Gannett employs around 5,000 journalists at its 85 dailies and 23 TV stations. But I'm not sure -- and company spokeswoman Tara Connell just told me the company won't disclose that figure.
Things on my mind as we near Friday morning's release of fourth-quarter earnings, an occasion ripe for Gannett to make news:[Photo: Earth Times]
What stories could private security firms in your community tell about dealing with the rich, famous and powerful? Consider The New York Times's fascinating peek at how Mary-Kate Olsen (left) and other swells use security firms such as infamous Blackwater Worldwide when they get in a jam. "They’re operating with their own set of rules,'' says Lou Palumbo, who owns an agency providing security to celebrities and heads of state. "They're under the impression that concessions are made for them every day. They want us to do damage control." And that's just one more reason why I hate interviewing celebrities.
This is today's Great Falls Tribune in Montana; click on the image for a bigger view. Projects Editor Eric Newhouse (right), who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for his series about alcohol abuse, writes today about a former Army Ranger in West Virginia who helped rescue Pfc. Jessica Lynch from Iraqi insurgents.[Images: front page, Newseum; Newhouse, Tribune]
You can add your comment on the post, here. I allow anonymous commenting. But to maintain some degree of civility, I approve each one before they're published.
This is today's Greenville News in South Carolina; click on the image for a bigger view. All eyes are on the state's Democratic primary today, where Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are in a tight race.I asked Gannett Blog readers if they feel pressure to work without getting paid. The poll isn't scientific, of course. But it does give a snapshot of what some employees are thinking. Based on 66 responses this week, the breakdown:
Note: Figures don't total 100 because of rounding.
The survey has ended, but you may use this link to e-mail feedback and tips. See Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the sidebar, upper right. Or leave a note in the comments section, below.
Newly appointed top Arizona Republic Editor Randy Lovely (left), replacing Ward Bushee, says he doesn't think his being gay will be an issue in conservative Arizona. "Arizona is a pretty libertarian environment,'' he told Editor & Publisher. "People support individual rights."
It likely means the money-losing San Francisco newspaper is going to be around for at least a while longer. Why? Publisher and long-time Gannett executive Frank Vega would not ask Ward Bushee to abandon his secure, 21-year corporate home to be the San Francisco Chronicle's top editor unless Vega was confident owner Hearst is committed to the city for the near term. And Bushee is too smart to leave his comfy Gannett berth without that assurance.
The money-losing San Francisco Chronicle just announced that Arizona Republic Editor Ward Bushee (left) will be its new top editor. "Ward brings a wealth of news experience and journalistic vision to the Chronicle team," Chronicle Publisher Frank Vega, a former long-time Gannett executive, said in a statement. "He has long been recognized as an editor who instills strong journalistic values, integrity and sense of community at the newspapers he leads."
Separately, the Republic announced that Executive Editor Randy Lovely, 43, (left) will replace Bushee. The Republic is Gannett's biggest-circulation paper after USA Today.
The proposed new tax rebate of up to $600 per person is meant to jump-start the economy through a burst of consumer spending. The Arizona Republic's Page One presentation this morning is appropriately consumer-friendly, with a graphic (click on the image above for a bigger view) making it easy to weigh advantages and disadvantages of spending the money in five different ways.
Rogue French bank trader Jerome Kerviel, who cost Societe Generale $7 billion, and rogue messianic actor Tom Cruise, who cost us much lost work time watching this creepy Scientology video.
Like rubbernecking past a car wreck, I can't resist octogenarian retired CEO Al Neuharth's weekly column every Friday in USA Today.
The Detroit Free Press' unfolding investigation into controversial Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's extracurricular activities with his chief of staff is fascinating on several levels:
[Star-crossed: Heath Ledger and Mary-Kate Olsen]
[Google-iscious: Marissa Mayer and her Mysterious Stud, left]
The Pensacola News Journal is a microcosm of the forces bearing down on Gannett and its 85 mostly midsized dailies and 23 TV stations. That was the gist of a radio show interview I gave today to Rick Outzen, a Gannett Blog reader, blogger, publisher of a local alternative weekly and host on NewsRadio 1620 AM.
Just a few years ago, The New York Times would not have published more than a one-graph Page One refer to a deep-inside story about a quasi-A-list celebrity's death; the Old Gray Lady left the now-lucrative entertainment news business to more down-market USA Today. But times have changed. The NYT this morning played the death of Brokeback Mountain star Heath Ledger, 28, in a full story at the bottom of Page One. (The paper is now reporting on its City Room blog that autopsy results on Ledger are "inconclusive.'') Of course, the NYT isn't the only paper eyeing USA Today' s bread-and-butter celebrity news. New Wall Street Journal owner Rupert Murdoch has made noise about a similar expansion.
[Fort Collins, Colo.: Students fight GCI's interest in campus paper]Gannett is moving deeper into education-related markets: The Coloradoan in Fort Collins talked to Colorado State University on Tuesday about a "strategic partnership" to run the campus newspaper, The Rocky Mountain Collegian. "The Coloradoan had contacted us late last year . . . to talk about potential partnerships," spokesman Brad Bohlander told The Associated Press. "The university had not sought to sell the Collegian. . . . Today was in response to that, to set up the first meeting to see what they had to say."
Students protested, and the Collegian expressed alarm about the talks in a story today headlined: "Gannett eyes Collegian takeover."
Gannett has been expanding into the college and high school markets in recent years. Just this morning, USA Today announced a partnership with CSTV, an interactive collegiate sports media service that's part of CBS Sports. The newspaper will carry on its website several CSTV offerings, including CSTV XXL and GameTracker.
GCI's last digital deal was in October, when it bought a controlling stake for an undisclosed sum in the company that runs HighSchoolSports.net; it also sells scheduling software to high school athletics directors. Also last year, Gannett bought the student-run newspaper at the University of Central Florida, and the student paper at Florida State in 2006, the AP says.
Use this link to e-mail feedback, tips, snarky letters, etc. See Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the sidebar, upper right. Or leave a note in the comments section, below.
[Image: Ian Bezeck, staff columnist for The Rocky Mountain Collegian, holds one of many signs that appeared in the lobby of the Administration Building opposing the potential sale of Colorado State University's student newspaper to Gannett, the Collegian says. Photo by Aaron Montoya. Hat tip, Romenesko]
At Florida Today, residents are feeling rattled. "I think a little bit of anxiety is probably healthy, if it keeps you on your toes and helps you focus a little bit," University of Central Florida economist Sean Snaith told the paper. "I don't think it's time to do anything drastic." 
At The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., business reporter Alex Davis used video with a story about home construction woes to ask people at a local shopping mall how they would spend an $800 tax rebate if they were to get one from the government.
And at the Home News Tribune in East Brunswick, N.J, investors were urged to stay calm. "As long as it's not the milk money and you're well diversified you will weather this storm," said Andre Bakhos, the president of Princeton Financial Group of North Brunswick.
[Images: Newseum]
In my post about Cincinnati Enquirer business reporter Jim McNair getting his controversial termination turned into a buyout, I mentioned the paper's Chiquita Brands scandal nearly 10 years ago. But I failed to note a couple more things that have been bugging me about that embarrassing episode:Use this link to e-mail feedback, tips, snarky letters, etc. See Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the sidebar, upper right. Or leave a note in the comments section, below.
[Image: Wikipedia]
A reader who helps run a Gannett newspaper website writes about his job: approving requests from readers for permission to comment on stories on the paper's site. "I was told to deny permission to anyone whose e-mail address or user name looked questionable, and to give a hard look at anyone using Web-based e-mail,'' he writes. "Then we keep track of people thrown off the forums (mostly for using profanity or making offensive posts) and refer to these blacklists in case they try to get back on with similar e-mail addresses. Bull. I just approve everyone."
[Google Guys: Clockwise, from top: Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin; CEO Eric Schmidt, Google director John Doerr]
The nightmare on Elm Street continues, bloggers are reporting, as fired Cincinnati Enquirer business reporter Jim McNair (left) says he prevailed in getting the paper to convert his controversial termination to a buyout. "This is what I can say,'' McNair, 54, told The Daily Bellwether blog. "My termination of last August has been converted to the voluntary acceptance of a buyout. That's all I'm legally able to say about the subject."
I used free software on an OfficeMax website last month to turn CEO Craig Dubow into a dancing Scrooge (left) -- and retired CEO Al Neuharth, retiring Newspaper Division President Sue Clark-Johnson, retired CEO Doug McCorkindale and Dubow (whew!) into dancing elves. Now we know just how many people fooled around on the now-shuttered site. Ad Age says "some 26.4 million people -- nearly one in 10 Americans -- this season visited the office-products company's holiday site that allows users to paste images of their faces onto dancing elves. That's up more than tenfold from last year."
[Aerial view of buildings housing USA Today and Gannett Corporate]
In a comment about employees pressured to work off the clock, a Gannett Blog reader recalls life as a non-exempt copy editor at a 55,000-circulation paper. There were "stern, formally worded notices once or twice a year saying Gannett does NOT authorize comp time or unpaid overtime, and that all overtime will be paid, and that all overtime should be approved before being worked,'' the reader says. "Of course, there was no way in hell the paper would get out unless we worked 45-50 hours apiece. Everybody knew it. Just another one of the ways Gannett fools itself."
Recently launched science fiction blog io9 features USA Today in its roundup of futuristic newspapers featured in sci-fi flicks. That's the paper (above), in Minority Report, the 2002 thriller starring Tom Cruise. "It's a paper-thin video screen, thin enough to fold up and put under your arm,'' Washington Post media reporter Frank Ahrens said in a 2005 online chat about the future of newspapers. "Instead of static photos and text, it's constantly changing text, video and perhaps sound. Think of it as a combination paper, television and Internet, presumably wirelessly connected to a futuristic Wi-Fi, perhaps the next generation of the new Wi-Max super hotspots that are rolling out and cover several square miles instead of several square feet."
I nearly went crazy working absurdly long hours at The Idaho Statesman when I was business editor with a three-person staff in the early 1990s. There was too much work for too few people. But I was in management, so it was easy for the publisher to pile work on; after all, he didn't have to pay me overtime.
The company announced last week in a press release that PointRoll CEO Chris Saridakis (left) had been promoted to the influential new job of chief digital officer over all of Gannett. A day later, GCI disclosed how much stock it awarded Saridakis, 39, as part of the deal, in a harder-to-decipher government filing that I've now had a chance to examine with help from experts.To put 150,000 shares in perspective, retiring Newspaper Division President Sue Clark-Johnson owned 400,033 shares, as of last March. And that was after 40 years' employment. Sardarkis has been with the company only since 2005.
Saridakis will get a paycheck, too, of course. We'll learn details about that only if his compensation is high enough under SEC rules to require its public disclosure in the annual proxy report to shareholders, likely out this spring.
Note: See this disclosure on how much Gannett paid me.
I'm responding to a question in this post about the terms of USA Today's buyouts extended to newsroom staffers last month. The paper offered two weeks' pay for each year of Gannett employment to folks with 15 or more years' service. The offer also included health insurance. There were a couple of exceptions: Staffers with five or more years experience online weren't eligible. Copy editors were exempt, too, as were a handful of other jobs.
We don't talk out loud about how much Gannett pays us. But if I'm going to razz executives about their seven-figure pay packages, I ought to come clean, too. When I left USA Today, I was earning a generous $105,000 a year as a business news reporter and editor. Gannett kicked in another I think $10,000 each year for my retirement plan and my 401(k) account. That's a lot of money.
Right on schedule, I'm now self-employed -- for the next year or so, anyway, while I learn the video production and other multimedia skills that a 21st-century journalist needs. I'm on schedule because workers are more likely to pursue self-employment after entering their 50s (I'll be 51 in three weeks). The number of older entrepreneurs is expected to rise further as baby boomers seek more job security, Americans get older and cheaper technology drives down start-up costs -- a trend I noted three years ago in one of my most popular USA Today stories.
Matt Abrell celebrates a basket in the second half of a game pitting Central and Southside high schools Friday night in Muncie, Ind. Central dominated most of the game and won 58-52, The Star Press says today. Photo by Chris Bergin, Star Press via the Newseum.
Al Neuharth and I go back to Little Rock in 1987, when I was a 30-year-old reporter at The Arkansas Gazette. Gannett's colorful CEO visited at least once: I recall seeing a catering truck pull up to the loading dock to unload great quantities of silver service pieces for some sort of dinner he was to host.
Blame the boss: USA Today founder Al Neuharth blames Jack Kelley's "new bosses" with global ambitions far from the paper's initial "down-home" intentions for the shamed reporter's misdeeds. "Real or self-imposed pressure grew to grab new readers and prizes. Kelley's deceptions from faraway places followed, spanning 10 years," he writes. (USA Today) "Oh, the irony!" USA Today reporter Jim Hopkins writes in a letter to Romenesko. "In 1987 -- just five years after the paper was founded -- Neuharth himself announced the launch of Jetcapade, billed as 'a seven-month assignment that will take Al Neuharth and a small news team to six continents and more than 30 countries.' Bonus irony points: Accompanying Al on that trip to record every scintillating moment was, of course, Kelley himself."
