From a new Dow Jones story about Gannett Blog Editor Jim Hopkins, which just crossed the wire:A current Gannett employee, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, said the company is 'very conscious' of what Hopkins publishes and is concerned that internal communication will get leaked to the blog. "I've been in meetings where upper management will say we can't say this publicly because it'll end up on the Gannett Blog," the employee said.
Tara Connell, vice president of corporate communications at Gannett, said employees leaking documents or information is out of the company's control.
Gannett isn't the only company with an outside blog monitoring its every move. There are other company-specific watchdogs in the blogosphere, including the Starbucks Gossip blog, BlueOvalNews.com, which tracks Ford Motor Co., and McClatchy Watch, a blog that focuses on developments at the Sacramento Bee as well as its parent, McClatchy Inc. Other general blogs tracking company and industry rumors include DealBreaker for the financial sector and Valleywag, a Silicon Valley news and gossip Web site.
But Gannett Blog is unique in the traffic and attention a former employee has generated in a relatively short amount of time. Hopkins said his blog recently attracted its one millionth visitor and generates more than 100,000 monthly page views, according to Google Analytics. Gannett Blog also ranks in the top 8% of all blogs among traffic, according to blog researcher Technorati Media's State of the Blogosphere 2008 report.Please 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.
and to think they could have avoided all this if they were upfront, honest and had an ounce of integrity. instead of back door deals and playing favorites. screw 'em, they're going down and fast. too late to save face.
ReplyDeleteWhat a chance for Gannett to shine. Instead of getting all defensive, they could have talked about what the company has learned about growing blog audiences from you, a former employee. They could have talked about what human resources is learning by hearing from employes who post to this site. Nope, not Gannett. They just got all defensive and silly sounding.
ReplyDeleteYou missed my favorite quote:
ReplyDelete"We believe he has his own agenda that really has very little to do with Gannett or Gannett's employees," she said. "We work very hard to try and get our opinions across when we can. Since that's a frustrating process with him, we try to keep it to a minimum."
Er ... so what's your real agenda, Jim? C'mon, spill the beans!
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I recall you, Jim, asking Connell more for facts and verification than opinions.
ReplyDeleteI read this blogs for the facts.
Oh. And Connell's OPINION about why you write this blog is neither here nor there with me. Just keep giving me the facts.
Congratulations, Jim. Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteJim, you are our hero.
ReplyDeleteWord is everyone in my newsroom has either gotten or is getting a negative evaluation. Doesn't mean the management is bad?
Give them hell Jim, As an ex-gannetter, I love it when their behinds tighten. They are a bunch of lying fools.
ReplyDelete1:45 pm says my agenda is as follows: "Tear down Gannett, and harm its employees, too."
ReplyDeleteThis accusation is false.
Also, 1:45 fails to explain why I -- or anyone -- would attempt such an audacious task. Anyone?
Ha ha ha ha ha! Jim is late to the game! Ha ha ha ha ha!
ReplyDeleteWho beat whom in creating the Gannett Blog?
Ha ha ha ha ha!
if your company can be 'torn down' from a couple comments on a public forum, you need some serious help...oh wait, you do need help, and lots of it. keep it up Jim, their desperate lashing out is funnier than anyything!
ReplyDeleteAn eagle was sitting on a tree resting, doing nothing.
ReplyDeleteA small rabbit saw the eagle and asked him, 'Can I also sit like you and do nothing?'
The eagle answered: 'Sure, why not.'
So, the rabbit sat on the ground below the eagle and rested. All of a sudden, a fox appeared, jumped on the rabbit and ate it.
Moral of the story:
To be sitting and doing nothing, you must be sitting very, very high up.
Also, 12:48, in this quote, "We believe he has his own agenda that really has very little to do with Gannett or Gannett's employees," she said. "We work very hard to try and get our opinions across when we can. Since that's a frustrating process with him, we try to keep it to a minimum."
ReplyDeleteWho the hell cares about Gannett's opinions?! We just want the facts, damnit!
2:32 PM
ReplyDeleteExactly. Her job is to give the facts. You'd think a news professional would know that much.
If Jim is making them mad, he's doing his job. Keep stirring up the hornet's nest. Otherwise, they'll grow complacent in their morale-crushing ways. And as for the comment by 1:45, I think you're reflecting your own goals onto Jim.....
ReplyDeleteWuh? "We believe he has his own agenda that really has very little to do with Gannett or Gannett's employees"
ReplyDeleteJim sure spends a lot of time focused on Gannett and Gannett's employees. When does he have time for that other agenda? Geesh, they really think people will give credibility to that? And that's the best argument their PR office can come up with? No wonder they're in such trouble.
"...Since that's a frustrating process with him, we try to keep it to a minimum."
ReplyDeleteThis is my favorite quote.
How petty, I'm a nobody, nowhere and I hope I'd never say something so immature to a reporter. I can't imagine a trained PR gal for one of the largest media companies saying that!
IMHO Connell screwed up royally and made the company look petty and foolish.
ReplyDeleteLet there be no doubt. Jim's agenda is personal and based on bitterness.
ReplyDeleteFlame away, losers.
Jim,
ReplyDeleteCorporate is running scared - congratulations! We learn more here than we do from the inner-trappings of GCI.
4:31: I love each and every one of my readers, including you, but I gotta ask: Why do you keep coming back here? Are you a masochist or something?
ReplyDeleteAlso, let's for one weird moment say you are correct -- bitterness fuels my blogging -- you still haven't disputed my accuracy.
Kick @$$, Jim! Way to go!
ReplyDelete"We work very hard to try and get our opinions across when we can."
ReplyDeleteSeriously?
If you don't read this blog, you don't know what's going on in the company. And that's because they don't TELL us anything. If they'd just communicate with us regularly, honestly, completely, then we wouldn't rely as heavily on this site. Sometimes we KNOW something is happening or has happened, but they never even acknowledge it officially. They just let company news filter through the grapevine, which is a piss-poor way to run a business.
I honestly believe that Jim's goal is to get Gannett to communicate with its employees on a regular and open basis so that he won't have a reason to keep up this blog.
5:04 pm gets it!
ReplyDeleteLetting information filter through the grapevine rather than clearly communicating keeps people off balance and fearful. I think that's Gannett's style. It doesn't work, but I doubt if things will change.
ReplyDeleteMr. Icahn knows what he's talking about. This refers to financial cos., but is very applicable to any company with directors who tow the company line and ignore who they're really supposed to represent; shareholders.
ReplyDeleteBy Carl C. Icahn
Monday, February 16, 2009; Page A15
The entirely preventable financial catastrophe we have watched unfold over the past 18 months has many culprits: reckless executives who gambled with their company's futures, feckless regulators and somnambulant boards of directors.
This Story
Corporate Boards That Do Their Job
Our Lost Decade?
But while executives and regulators have justifiably taken heat for this multifaceted debacle, board members have largely been let off the hook. Why?
It is a board's responsibility to oversee management and to ensure a company's long-term survival. Its job, in short, is to represent the owners -- the shareholders.
With the tumbling and collapse of dozens of major financial and other institutions, can we draw any conclusion other than that those directors utterly failed in this regard?
Yet, increasingly, we are hearing apologists rise to the defense of boards, evidence that the process of obfuscation of the boards' guilt has begun. This is dangerous.
Evidence of this trend includes a recent Business Week article, "How Much Blame Do Boards Deserve?" by Jack Welch, the former chairman and CEO of General Electric, and his wife. Now, I have a great deal of respect for Jack Welch. But this defense of boards was wrong.
Non-executive directors at our battered and bankrupt financial institutions could not have been expected to understand the risks of complex, highly leveraged derivatives that brought about our financial crisis, the Welches wrote. That is nonsense. A board member should be able to understand when a company is leveraged up to 40 times the value of its assets, as some were. In my view, many were just not doing their jobs.
Jack Welch believes that some boards' members should have pressed managements more on their risk strategies. Chances are that some directors did take this approach. But did they demand any change of course? Or did they just accept the management line that certain risks are necessary to generate returns?
I think we have a right to expect more from directors. The system of checks and balances between boards and executive teams has, in too many cases, disintegrated. In this global meltdown we are seeing that many board members were demonstrably unqualified, abjectly remiss or simply too cozy with management.
Clearly, we must strengthen boards at public companies. Some measures must include splitting the role of chairman and chief executive; eliminating "staggered" boards, which allow for only a minority of members to be elected in any one year; and giving shareholders the right to propose board members and resolutions on company proxy statements.
Non-executive board members are fiduciaries to shareholders who choose and oversee managements, and the chairman is the main shareholder representative. How can the chairman oversee the CEO if the job is one and the same, as it is at a majority of Fortune 500 companies? Splitting these roles would eliminate this inherent conflict.
Similarly, how can shareholders exercise greater power if managements are allowed to thwart them from being nominated to company boards? In many states, provisions such as staggered boards, which are meant to prevent a full board takeover in any one year, and "poison pills," which effectively block takeovers by new managements, are perfectly legal.
The dictum of the new White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," applies to our financial and economic situation. Inept -- and often very well-paid -- managements and boards got us into this mess. Let's respond by making lasting changes to make them more accountable to stakeholders, which includes everyone in this country.
Corporate law is largely the province of states, which to varying degrees protect flawed governance models. What is needed is a superceding federal law that gives shareholders the right to vote by simple majority to move their company's legal incorporation to states that uphold greater shareholder rights.
North Dakota, for example, is recognized as having the most shareholder-friendly corporate laws in the nation, thanks to recent legislative action. By incorporating in the state and adopting its provisions, a public company would in one easy step improve rights for its shareholders and eliminate the often too-cozy relations between managements and boards.
I want to be clear: Jack Welch did a masterful job as the chairman and chief executive of GE for two decades, until 2001. But with GE Capital soaking up $139 billion in government loan guarantees, it's fair to ask whether the board demanded answers from its current CEO and chairman, Jeffrey Immelt, about the risks embedded in that critical division. Alarm bells should have gone off in the boardroom long before this blue-chip company sought taxpayer help.
Our disastrous market meltdown makes clear that it is high time for shareholders to demand and receive more accountability from the boards and managements of their companies. I have created the United Shareholders of America campaign to focus on just these issues. Only by concerted action can we make changes to how our companies are managed.
The writer is a New York financier and chairman of Icahn Enterprises, a publicly traded diversified holding company. He blogs at www.icahnreport.com.
This is Awesome Jim Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteDo you know that the world's oldest columnist writes for a Gannett newspaper?
ReplyDeleteThe South Korean citizen reporters' journal OhmyNewsInternational has just posted a story I wrote about her: http://tinyurl.com/ak2re3