"Treat all comments with caution;
they have not been verified as true."
they have not been verified as true."
Meanwhile, responding to Anonymous@4:26 p.m.'s question, I'm not counting on a single, big "announcement" -- a companywide job reduction memo from Corporate, like we've seen in the past. Instead, I expect a series of memos from individual sites this week and next.
Gannett has been laying off employees, mostly in the newspaper division, since at least late last week. I believe these layoffs will continue this week, and possibly into next. By "these layoffs," I'm referring to a specific round, driven by the start of the second quarter.
Finally, I apologize for the frustration many of us feel in dealing with these frequent, unsourced claims of layoffs. But at this moment, I have no easy way to separate the wheat from the chaff. As always, I am open to your ideas.
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 rail, upper right.
I would rather hear the possibility of bad news than hear no news at all. The way this blog operates, there is no way to weed out bum information from good information, so I have come to an uncomfortable middle ground believing anything I read here. Wish it were otherwise, but that's not how this system works and I don't see anyway you can devise that would head off the misinformation. So let the liars spew, and we will figure out which are the true reports, and which are the lies. It's better than nothing.
ReplyDeleteI take all info with a grain of salt, whether it is in the lunch room or on this blog. (or ha, if it is in the newspaper!)
ReplyDeleteI'll take it, warts and all.
ReplyDeleteAs annoying as the scaremongers may be, I don't know how to eliminate their sky-is-falling falacies from the OMG-here-we-go-again truthiness.
ReplyDeleteSo let's hear it all.
We'll thank the accurate posters and damn the liars.
Please note the following related comment string, now running in today's edition of Real Time Comments, at the top of this page.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
"You just printed that story to sell newspapers.''
"You just broadcast that story to raise ratings."
"You just posted that story to boost page views."
-----------------------
Irony accepted.
But nonetheless, ALL THREE are the wrong thing to do if it is just rumor or a hoax without anything to back it up.
4/06/2009 5:56 PM
Jim Hopkins said...
5:56 pm: This is very helpful. You wrote: "But nonetheless, ALL THREE are the wrong thing to do if it is just rumor or a hoax without anything to back it up."
At a minimum, what would you require in terms of back-up?
4/06/2009 6:41 PM
What standards would you use if you were reporting this for USA Today, Jim?
ReplyDeleteUSA Today and every other Gannett newspaper publish thousands of unfounded rumors daily in their free-for-all reader comment strings, on virtually every story.
ReplyDeleteIs that the standard you mean?
Jim:
ReplyDeleteNo wonder you're out of journalism. You have no thinking skills and no ability to separate fact from rumor.
7:25 pm: I was being facetious.
ReplyDeleteUSA Today would not publish in print much of any of the comments seen in the posts on this blog.
I cannot and do not vouch for the comments my readers post on this blog.
My standards for what I personally post are not very different from those at USA Today and most every other U.S. newspaper and media outlet. I rely on sources I have cultivated. I try to smoke out any agendas they may have. And I also consult the usual suspects -- publishers, Gannett's official P.R. department -- whenever feasible.
Yeah, but this isn't USA Today's website where anything goes in the comments threads, Jim. It's your website. YOU are the publisher here. It's your call, just like you (smartly) decided to screen the comments first.
ReplyDeleteI don't claim there's an easy answer ... just raising the question for discussion.
6:55
"Gannett has been laying off employees, mostly in the newspaper division, since at least late last week."
ReplyDeleteHelooe! Earth to Mars? Since late last week? For a reporter you sure don't know much. Must be because the USAT editorial department didn't have any staffing reductions until you decided to take a buy out. Meanwhile, layoffs have been going on for quite some time. In fact, I saw my first USAT layoff happen in 1983.
Hey 5:20 The sky is falling.
ReplyDeleteIn other news, layoffs will happen Tuesday, April 7 at 10:00 am, 12:30 pm and 2:15 pm. That's 1:45 in Newfoundland.
You must be into S&M.
What the hell do you do with all the news until you sort it out? Wouldn't it be better to just get the real news in the end and not have to worry about what is real and what isn't? It's called rolling with the punches, letting the future happen, serve no wine until its time. You probably read your horoscope every day!
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteLooks to me that someone is trying to destroy this blog by seeding disinformation. The blog is self-correcting when it comes to specifics -- layoffs at specific papers, for example -- because there are other readers there to correct it. Someone noted the Binghamton memo didn't sound right before the editor shot it down. This is all part of the process. How many times are reporters given bum leads for stories that don't pan out?
ReplyDelete11:11 p.m., or how many times do we quote officials/politicians/business owners/etc. who give us bad or wrong quotes and we run with it because it's what they said? Get real people, you have to sift and winnow through crap at every point of the day, either here or at work. Even the freakin' press releases we get could be suspicious, but some newspapers print them verbatim, ad nauseum.
ReplyDelete