Sunday, February 21, 2010

Week Feb. 15-21 | Your News & Comments

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43 comments:

  1. I have a question I hope someone can answer concerning the consolidation of the ad production to DesMoines and Indy. Gannett says
    this is not officially outsourcing because the ads are not going out of the country, but someone told me it doesn't matter and that if your job is outsourced you will receive two years of unemployment compensation.

    All responses appreciated and would like to get actual facts if available.

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  2. Whoopee! First! A couple of interesting Gannett centric items from the Blogosphere this fine Monday morning.

    1) http://thebellwetherdaily.blogspot.com/2010/02/former-enquirer-publisher-bill-keating.html

    and

    2) http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=123&aid=177740

    Discuss!

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  3. @ 10:46 a.m. and
    http://thebellwetherdaily.blogspot.com/2010/02/former-enquirer-publisher-bill-keating.html:

    DUH! "Gannett performed poorly" ought to be in big red letters followed by the words because those at the top have NO IDEA what they are doing!

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  4. This small weekly is growing rapidly as The Journal News in Westchester spirals downwards

    http://www.theexaminernews.com/video/examinernews12clip.htm

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  5. I can tell you that in NJ it's called "Trade Act Assistance" if you need to collect unemployment compensation due to losing your job to another country. If consolidation is at play (as it is now) this is not the case. So, those designers that have already lost their jobs due to outsourcing to our friends in India are qualified; the rest of you are not. Sorry.

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  6. When will we find out more about Ihne, the Asheville case? Is that case going to get sweeped or anything?

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  7. I'm curious to know if other Gannett papers besides Fort Myers are having their staff work a night shift, then turn around and work the day shift the next day. It's a killer with little sleep. Newsroom staffers — besides reporters — are having to do this two to three times a week.

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  8. Anonymous @ 11:57am says:

    "...are having their staff work a night shift, then turn around and work the day shift the next day. It's a killer with little sleep."

    Gannett knows all the tricks, knows all the buttons to push. Increase the workload, increase stress, increase the difficulty of doing the job. If you attain their goals? All the better for Gannett. If you fail? You're an "Incompetent", "...in their sole judgement." Gannett gets what it wants either way. This has always been the way Gannett gets rid of people. This "policy" of theirs has been alive and well in production departments for years.

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  9. Let's hear it for the cracker-jack management of vp's and editors and directors at the Journal News. Circulation is losing everyday, in three weeks 170 plus people will lose their jobs when this poor excuse for a newspaper is printed at a non-gannett plant in New Jersey. These current chiefs of TJN have really done a fabulous job of driving this product into the ground and then stomping on it . Just magnificent !

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  10. As an ex-Gannett staffer, I can say that those who raised questions about failure to be compensated for overtime pay likely have a solid case.

    This is ESPECIALLY the case at those Wisconsin and Ohio acquisitions in 2000.

    I would urge the present and FORMER Gannett workers at aLL those papers to file a complaint with the state's Wage and Hour Divisions for back pay.

    I will tell you that NOTHING scares Gannett corp more than a Wage and Hour Division audit!!!!!!

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  11. Job Opening :¬)

    CIRCULATION MANAGER, GREENVILLE SC
    The Iwanna in Upstate, SC, a paid print product with racked distribution in over 1,000 locations, has an opening for an experienced Circulation Manager. The candidate must have single copy sales experience, including marketing at store level, and be a hands-on manager that is customer driven. Must be a strategic thinker to increase paper sales. If this ad describes you, we'd like to hear from you. Please send your resume with cover letter and salary requirements to rblack [at] iwanna.com

    Iwanna is the largest user-generated shopping network in the SC Upstate and Carolina mountains. It began publishing in Asheville, N.C., in April 1976 as a four-page flyer consisting of 56 free classified ads. Now it publishes thousands of user-generated listings every week in newspaper-size shopping guides that are distributed in Asheville, Greenville, Hickory, N.C., and Spartanburg, S.C. Iwanna.com makes the entire database of classifieds searchable online. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

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  12. At our site we have to work back to back night and day shift. Yes, it is a killer. But with a skeleton staff, what are we supposed to do? Is that illegal? It sure feels like it when you are trying to get up in the morning to go work. We are only hanging on until something better comes our way. Then on our way out the door we'll flip 'em the ole bird. And unpaid overtime? If you are a manager in Gannett, they'll work you like a dog, expect you to work 60+ hours a week with no extra compensation. I see it EVERY DAY. People on salary are screwed over, and if they don't like it they are told they will find someone else who will work it.

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  13. I am finding there is nothing of interest to the employees of Gannett either on Gannett Blog or Gannettoid. Neither one has posted anything of interest to the employees in weeks.

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  14. Having worked quite a few years for Knight Ridder, Tribune and Cox newspapers, I can tell you Gannett treats all but its most favored employees like dogs. Minus a labor union, we work at management's every whim: the back-to-back night and day shifts, weekend duty, unpaid furloughs, unpaid overtime, frozen pension contributions and a regimented workplace hierarchy that makes the military look like a commune. Managers regard you as insubordinate if you question their decisions, and if you press disagreements too far, you're put on performance improvement plans. Yet we've got some real dead-weight losers who were put on PIPs, never improved, yet are still there. Any manager who has been with a Gannett operation for more than 10 years is there because he/she was never good enough to work for a company that recognizes talent. Every day they take their misery out on whoever makes their day difficult. You can spot these managers easily. They spend half their day in meetings, half coming across as if they're on top of things. And every minute of every day, they are silently counting the minutes and hours to the day they intend to retire. As long as they excel in mediocrity and embrace new initiatives enthusiastically, they know they are secure and might even win a President's ring or two.

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  15. A friend told me that Reno recently lost one of its longtime copy editors. The employee apparently got frustrated and quit without another job to go to.

    As I understand it, this is the third or fourth person to leave without another job lined up. That really says something about management.

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  16. BRAVO 11:11pm: your first sentence sums up what's been going on at Crystal Palace for the last couple of years. The corporate dead weight losers (management and staff) are indeed still there.

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  17. @11:57: Shreveport, La. newsroom employees have been working back-to-back night/day shifts for a long time. It was common with the cops reporters, who have had, variously, a two-night/three day split or a one-night/four-day split for people assigned to fill in on cops when the regular reporters are off. Editors are pulling night-day splits, too, particularly those working weekends. We also work split shifts for GA coverage (i.e., covering something in the morning, leaving for a while, then coming back to do night cops or more GA assignments.) It's getting worse as we get more short-handed.

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  18. Editors in Wilmington have been taking the brunt of the back-to-back shifts lately. They used to have one person designated as the night editor, working five nights a week, and rotating the other two nights. Now almost everyone pulls a turn on nights - the entertainment editor, business editor, "social networking editor" and the two regular news ACEs who are left. After working until midnight or later, they have to turn around the next morning and come in for work bright & early, making sure their regular work doesn't suffer despite having one less day to do it.

    And whenever one of the ACEs calls in "sick" at the start of his workweek, which he does with regularity, the other editors have to scramble to fill in the slack, because there is no safety net, especially with the furloughs. Often there are just one or two editors handling all the news and business copy.

    I'm not an editor, but some of these men and women have really ended up with the short end of the stick.

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  19. The Oracle of Omaha sold 1 million shares of Gannett stock in Q409: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/buffett-shuffles-portfolio/article1470976/
    What does he know that this PR obfuscation doesn't tell us?
    http://www.emailwire.com/release/34292-Newspaper-and-Magazine-Stocks-GCI-MNI-LEE-NYT.html

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  20. Gannett, the laughing stock of the media industry. Here you have 5 Newspapers in the New York Vicinity, and The Journal News/Lo Hud---or whatever they are calling it this week --is at lower than 55,000 Circulation per day. There are more people in three subway cars than 55,000. I know you all have a pasion for your individual areas , but please remember New York is where everything happens, and 55,000/day for an area with millions of people tells me that someone in the corporate arena of Gannett has either fallen asleep, or has favors with the staff at the Journal News. I also know thay are trying to sell their building at One Gannett Drive---Is this not ridiculous or what?

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  21. At an East Coast Gannett paper we were told not to waste time reading local and state headlines -- including those in our own paper. As if the lack of resources to do genuine reporting wasn't hardship enough -- we are prohibited from knowing what is going on in our own coverage area outside of our beats.

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  22. When I reject a comment -- as I did earlier today -- my blogging software doesn't allow me to send the poster a private note, explaining my rationale. Sometimes, though, it makes sense to offer an explanation here, so other readers won't post something similar, only to find it doesn't get published. With that in mind:

    Newsroom folks are very active posters on this blog, but there are plenty of other Gannett workers here, too. We aren't all wordsmiths, which means we may not alway use correct spelling and punctuation. So, let's be forgiving when that happens. This blog is made better when everyone feels welcome.

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  23. Reports of more layoffs in Cincy today. http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/blog-1190-enquirer-prepares-for-more-layoffs.html

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  24. If you feel that your rights as a worker are being violated by conditions such as back-to-back day and night shifts, contact your appropriate state agency and ask questions. How difficult is that?

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  25. 55,000 at Journal News? That is not right.

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  26. The demise of the Westchester Rockland newspapers (now The Journal News) started with Gary Sherlock. His reign of terror and incompetence will someday be chronicled in a Harvard Business study of how a few destroyed the many.

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  27. @Anon 11:11 p.m. - Right on. I've watched the process of attrition, layoffs and buy-outs unfold at the NJ Gannett papers, and it's still baffling to me when I see who's left in upper management and editor slots.

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  28. I'm hearing news of ad department folks having to re-apply for their jobs ... they were just informed on Thursday. What's up with this?

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  29. 4:37 pm: Which worksite do you work at?

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  30. Anonymous said...
    I'm hearing news of ad department folks having to re-apply for their jobs ... they were just informed on Thursday. What's up with this?
    2/19/2010 4:37 PM

    I heard the same thing - at the NJ Group

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  31. How about having the 'management' in the ad departments in NJ Group reapply for their jobs as well? Problems with that are that most of them were hired and have continued to be enabled for incompetent suits either at Gannett or in the Group itself. People should be retained or removed based upon documented performance not who is a friend based on favors, etc. There are still way too many people who've survived who are useless non-performers.

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  32. @4:37 p.m. - This is what happened at the Journal News last summer with ad and editorial departments. I was laid off, and it was for the best. Best of luck to whoever is affected.

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  33. I hear next week may be a week full of news in Gannettland. More on that, starting early Monday morning.

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  34. Oooohh! Tres exciting! Do tell!!

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  35. Joornal News cir is in the 80's for daily around 110 for Sunday.

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  36. who was the copy editor that left Reno? Top management in Reno is bad.. starting with the publisher, who's a moron.. Let good staff go and rehire his wife.. by the way whats her title.

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  37. Anybody catch wind of major changes in compensation plans for sales reps? Our director has been spending lots of time in H.R. - and they hate each other.

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  38. 1:57 pm: Where's your worksite?

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  39. Whatabout a hint, Jim?
    Q2 Furcations announcement?
    Press shutterings?

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  40. 2:19 pm: No on those. It's about a regularly scheduled meeting of the board of directors, plus some regulatory filings I expect and other stuff.

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  41. I hear there is a group of Gannett employees that will be attending a very special dinner with the executives and the Board of Directors this week.

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  42. I've heard the same thing. The gathering includes as many as 100 employees, according to one of my readers.

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  43. @12:56 -- I dont' feel comfortably naming the copy editor, but she was a long-time employee who was quite talented.

    P.S. -- I think most everyone in the newsroom would agree with you about the management.

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