Saturday, July 10, 2010

Hubs | Pubs, editors briefing said called for Tues.

Regarding reports that Gannett is on the verge of opening five large editorial production hubs, where pages will be built for many if not most of the 81 U.S. community newspapers, a reader who appears to be in the know wrote me late this evening:

U.S. newspaper division President Bob Dickey and News Department Vice President Kate Marymont will hold a web call Tuesday morning for all editors and publishers about the common front-end system to be installed at all U.S. Community Publishing newspaper sites, plus USA Today and ContentOne. Broadcast sites will have access to the system, too.

A follow-up note sent today from Marymont says the call will include details about five regional centers that will handle design and pagination. That information, the note says, will help editors and publishers counter and correct what staff members are reading on the blogs.

Call should be over by noon.

Can anyone confirm -- or add details? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

18 comments:

  1. This is a big initiative for USCP. These five centers will handle all of the newspapers. There is a significant amount of cost savings Gannett will realize with this regional editorial production hubs. Bob Dickey believes this will result in over 500 layoffs across USCP. According to Dickey, this will save us over $35 million in salaries, benefits and overhead.

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  2. I guess the Q2 results were not impressive. Do I sense some panic in the Crystal Towers?

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  3. This is a communications company, and the eds and pubs have been kept in the dark about the official launch date until now? I love the idea that the blogs are beating Gannett to their own story.

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  4. Hunke already said there will be significant layoffs at USA Today. Combined with these in USCP, we will see more than 1,000 people out of work by the time it's done. The savings should be great enough for another round of multi-million-dollar bonuses for the top brass, don't you think?

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  5. The impact of this is going to be clear soon: earlier deadlines. These regional centers are going to want to put the papers to bed much earlier because of the workoad. This is going to lead to dog-eat-dog at the centers and moves to prioritize the work, with the smaller and least significant papers having the earliest deadlines, while the more significant publications having later.

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  6. At last, proof that Kate Marymont still is around.

    Too bad she isn't be making announcements about hiring new reporters, photographers and editors, and about how to improve local news coverage.

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  7. Got a great idea---why don't they just give everyone in the local market a USA Today instead of their local page...they could insert on local page in USA Today and probably get by with only a couple of editorial people per market.

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  8. This will complicate any sale of any single newspaper unless contracts to maintain consolidated efforts.
    Consider that it may devalue the newspaper properties for future sale. If you were to buy one of Gannett's newspaper, what are you getting. In some cases.. No press, no production expertise in the newsroom, no customer service practice, no finance in some cases, and sales practices build on a corporate strategy..
    It would seem Gannett's only growth strategy with consolidation has to be taking over additional newspapers and markets -- to assimilate.
    Online growth numbers have flattened. So, this is the only thing that makes sense: consolidate in ways no other company can and purchases their properties with aggressive pricing and slash their staffs.
    A corporation without an immediate growth strategy is a company in bunker mode. The digital strategy is not paying big enough dividends and newspaper properties are contracting. What to do?

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  9. 10:29 That idea is in the works, trust me.

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  10. Good points, 11:30 am. At some point all some of these papers will own of value will be their names, known in the community. But how much is that worth, really?

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  11. Are they going to have to Skype it? Or are they too important and pressed for time to mess with Skype.

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  12. Dropping USAT-produced pages into local papers, yes.

    But that USAT-local merger idea has been around for decades, and hasn't gone anywhere. Now that USAT is in trouble, I think it's even less likely. What if USAT starts dropping entire editions as part of its pending reorganization? That would makes it all the more impossible.

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  13. Corporate is not in this to sell the newspapers. They could have done that five years ago, and would have made a lot of money. What they are in it for now is to maximize profits solely to justify the executive salaries and juice the stock for the stock bonuses. In other words, they are riding this newspaper chain into decline. Singleton, Gatehouse and others are doing the same thing, so we are not alone. If you want to know what these regional centers will look like and how they will operate, look at Singleton's BANG, which is a unified desk for Bay area papers.

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  14. 11:56 is correct, I'm afraid.

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  15. This is just Gannett's response to the long-term circulation declines that have been predicted. Do you really think a paper that presently distributes 45,000 copies daily will really need as many staffers for that same paper in five years, at which time the circ numbers for that particular property will likely be hovering near 25,000.

    And don't just think that it's designers who will be impacted. Once this goes through, corporate will start looking at other areas of the newsroom that can be consolidated or automated.

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  16. Why haven't they sold Detroit? Why is Detroit always excused from everything?

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  17. 11:56 hit the nail on the head. That is what it is all about for any publicly traded company. Short term trading profits are all that matters. Anything that makes sense but might not be immediately profitable, screw it. Anyone who thinks we live in a democracy, think again. This country is a corporatocracy. Gannett is a corporation, not a news agency.

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