Wednesday, July 28, 2010
July 26-Aug. 1 | Your News & Comments: Part 1
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40 comments:
Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."
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I wonder what special news coverage and advertising the Register will have in print and online for the board of directors meeting today and tomorrow?
ReplyDeleteMaybe they can line up all the former employees
ReplyDeletethat were laid off at the DM Reg and all the other Iowa branches over the last 2 years just to show how newspapers can be run with no actual employees !!!
Or maybe these former employees will be given bicyles to ride in the very expensive to put on, RAGBRAI,the ride across Iowa event, just to boost their spirits about being unemployed.Seems like no expense spared to continue this expensive event,even as
the new Iowa layoffs lists are being completed.
Heartless bastards.
Glad to be out of there.....
What are Reno, Customer Fulfillment Center staff duties?
ReplyDeleteLove that healthy workplace bill New York apparently passed. Can you imagine what would happen to Gannett if something passed everywhere that would make it illegal to bully workers? I can just see my former EE on the stand, trying to defend herself from all the shrill yelling she directed my way.
ReplyDeleteSo true. Ditto for the former SE of the Journal News who was finally shown the door but only after years of one complaint after another to human resources.
ReplyDeleteA Q&A with Gannett’s Kate Marymont
ReplyDeletehttp://www.snd.org/2010/07/a-qa-with-gannetts-kate-marymont/
How is it that there hasn't been a major management shakeup at the Journal News by now? Someone please explain. Nude photos of Craig D.? What?
ReplyDeleteIf a Gannett Blog poster several days ago was correct, USA Today should be wrapped this morning -- July 27 -- inside another four-page Jeep preprint.
ReplyDelete10:02 -
ReplyDeleteWhat editorial management shakeups have there been at Gannett? Rememeber this is a reactive not proactive company. They really don't get too involved with incompetent management at any of their papers. Isn't that obvious by now?
Gannett has long been a company of hoop jumpers. Managers are rewarded on the basis of how well they can jump through the hoops and how quickly they respond to corporate's clicking fingers. Local control is nothing more now than two words.
ReplyDeleteIt's absolutely insane that an editor would summon up a special project just because the board was visiting. UNLESS, the board never bothers to look at the paper on a day-to-day basis. That would be a shame.
Then again. That would be Gannett, where the only required reading is the financials.
Speaking of today's Jeep wrap, I have a question for the production experts on this site. Rather than cover up USA Today's entire front page with an ad, couldn't they sell Spadea wraps? At least Editorial could work around that and salvage some single copy sales.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeletecouldn't they sell Spadea wraps?
ReplyDeleteHow about a 4 page double truck in the center of the section?
How about page 3&4 (renumbered) and the corresponding pgs in the rear as a pull-out?
Why bother with the news, and just publish USAT with nothing but ads, wraps, double-trucks and pullouts?
ReplyDeleteIn Tampa Bay, Gannett-owned WTSP-TV has dropped its "10 Connects" ID and has gone back to the future for a new handle in "10 News".
ReplyDelete(HT to TV Newscheck)
This is the article in the Hoosier State Press Association newsletter in Indiana citing the resignation of Executive Editor Julie Doll.
ReplyDelete"Julie Doll has resigned as executive editor of the Journal & Courier of Lafayette after being in that position since 2004. Doll’s last day at the newspaper was July 14. She joined the Journal & Courier as managing editor
in 2002 and later replaced Ted Haider as its top editor. Publisher Gary Suisman
says he accepted Doll’s resignation with regret.
He says Doll guided the newspaper through many
changes, including its 2006 conversion to the smaller, more compact Berliner newspaper format.
Suisman says a search for a replacement has
started. Doll says she decided to leave the Gannett-owned paper because she didn’t believe her management philosophy fit it any more.
She says she has no firm plans and is considering some personal writing projects."
This is an understatement "Doll says she decided to leave the Gannett-owned paper because she didn’t believe her management philosophy fit it any more." perfect example of why talented editors are jumping ship.
USAT is such a diluted newspaper, it doesn't matter what it's wrapped in anymore.
ReplyDeleteNot all USAT print sites may have the capabilities to print a spadea on the front. It can affect your color inside, too.
ReplyDeleteNaysayers have repeated it and said it for years, but Gannett endures. It's because in the bowels, good people know the fouls.
ReplyDeleteWe find pain in change and disgust in the pay range. Still, there is good work as good journalists lurk.
Tomorrow is uncertain. Who knows if they are right.
We won't drop the curtain because we remain to fight.
Hubs and bad decisions to consolidate are balanced by good calls to chase our digital fate.
We all know the day will come when it'll all be about the sum.
Add the potential against he loss and we'll see who is the next boss.
The reader is gone, replaced by a metric. Their thoughts and concerns matter in the aggregate.
Paper and pulp are needed no more.
The lone editor minds the store.
He knows less about the local lore.
Placing a headline has become simply a chore.
One day, he finds he is needed no more.
Can we have a count of all the editors that have left since Phil Currie left? That was the moment the house changed.
ReplyDeleteJulie Doll is a sharp, tough cookie. That was an unusually frank description of the reasons for leaving, though I'm sure many of us could translate it into even franker but less sanitary terms. Good luck to her.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Currie, I saw him in a DC pawn shop asking what he could get for his President's rings. He broke out a little pile of them, and I had to suppress my laughter when the clerk told him they were made of gold-plated lead.
ReplyDeleteShe is so refreshing when compared to other inept managers who have no principles and will do whatever they can to get by, while compromising their product at the expense of whatever remaining readers they have left. Case in point, the Journal News.
ReplyDelete10:35 -- Phil Currie was a drone. His predecessor, John Quinn, was the man. Unless you worked for Gannett during the Quinn era, you cannot begin to appreciate what it was like to have a true journalist with real power at corporate.
ReplyDeleteI had never heard of Julie Doll until now, but she sounds like someone worth knowing. It would have been so easy for her to say she was leaving to write a book, or for personal reasons, or to tend to her sick mother.
ReplyDeleteIt's refreshing that she exhibited a degree of candor with her professional peers.
11:12 a.m.: I appreciate your frustration. Yet, ironically, you are now complaining about . . . the complaining.
ReplyDeleteBut 11:12 a.m. is exactly right.
ReplyDeleteBut 11:;12 a.m. is here on the blog posting anonymously, too!
ReplyDeleteHow would you know what's going on here day after day unless you are visiting Jim's blog day after day yourself?
So, on that note - let me be the first one here on the blog to welcome you to the club as one of the most recent participating and pathetic bunch of losers!!!!!
And so, 11:12 a.m., who are you?
ReplyDeleteThe most pathetic losers in Gannett are the people who don't think they have anything to complain about. They are either the ones responsible for the environment most people complain about. Or they are deluded into believing that complaints channelled internally will result in solutions and/or change. They probably aspire to win a President's ring.
ReplyDeleteJim, can you tell me how many Gannett papers now have paywalls? What do advertisers think of paywalls?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, thanks. You do a service to all of us who once worshipped at the Al-Head.
Three GCI papers have them. I don't think we know yet about advertiser response, however.
ReplyDeleteHey Jim
ReplyDeleteI know that you had a topic in March about what your health care cost was. I saw just 6 comments.
As far as I know it was retirees who were on Gannets retirement medical who really got slammed. Our premiums went up a little more then double from 2009. Maybe a topic on how much retirees medical went up would be a good topic.
Yes they did hit retirees hard. I went from almost $200.00 a month to just about $500.00 for single coverage. No dental or vision when you are on retirement medical. That is a huge increase for anyone but really sucks when you are on a fixed income. I guess we are helping to pay executives bonuses.
ReplyDeleteI would like to know what percentage if any Gannet now pays for retirees.
3:39... So true. Case in point, a certain President's Ring "winner" at the Journal News.
ReplyDelete11:12 Keep towing the line. Stick up for management. Proudly accept those furloughs. Love it when they freeze your pay. Thank them when they lay off your peers. Admire them for destroying shareholder wealth. Then help them carry their bonus cash to their home. Using figures I found on the net, I believe his bonus (if given in one dollar bills) would weigh 6 metric tons! So, he could use your help. Just think, that’s the bonus he got for almost bankrupting Gannett. What would he have received if he had actually done a good job?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I digress. Poster 11:20, I am trying to think of a good way to describe a person such as you. You get shit on by your company after all your hard work, and then you attack us and not the people that shit on you. Very strange. It reminds me of a battered spouse that will never leave her man. I wonder how many sorry souls such as 11:20 are still wondering the halls of Gannett? I kind of like to think that maybe there is an army of these soul-less bastards that still think that they will somehow be rewarded because they have blind loyalty. They are like the soldiers that kept fighting for Germany while the allies were on the outskirts of the Berlin. Gannett is a lost cause. I admire your loyalty 11:20, it’s just too bad it’s so sorely misplaced. I can assure you that your loyalty is a one way street. As soon as some worthless middle management Gannett bastard thinks you are no longer valuable you are gone. And the more loyal you are now the more stupid you will feel then.
Is there even an 11:20 post in this thread?
ReplyDeleteIs this person referring to 11:12? Is he really so clueless as to forget the time he's citing from one paragraph to the next? And if so, does this person still work for a newspaper? And if so, how?
To the 9:12 comments about the very misplaced
ReplyDeleteloyalty to Gannett >
He is right on target !!!
At the former Gannett paper that I worked for the remaining 12 of 50 employees still think Gannnet is the greatest and only employer ever!!!
Do they ever remember that the 30 some people that were laid off were their friends and most are still not employed ? !
They have known that their jobs are in jepardy
and still do not find other employment.They wait until it's their time to be pushed off the Gannett cliff and into the the unemployment pool.They wait for Gannett to decide their fate
and continue working their butts off to earn money for their precious Gannett and the wonderful leaders of Gannett to line the pockets
with cash off the sweat of their hard work.
They will drive themselves to an early death
with the constant and ever increasing stress
that is known to have serious effects on health.
Why , why , why , there are other jobs here in this area.Some of these people are comfortably set money wise,with either working spouses that
are well paid or otherwise.
So why remain loyal to this monster of corporate
power? Do they feel that they must they go down with the ship?
Do they not realize that the mother ship and top dogs are not going to sink?
Only the "your services are no longer needed"
stressed out ,loyal worker bees ,are the ones who will be flushed down the toliet like some
unwanted trash .
And the Firing Manager will say to them all.....
This is the sadest day of my life...
I wish I didn't have to do this..
I have no choice the decision comes from the top ....
Today is terrible for me....
But tommorrow she will remain employed and the
fired employee will get up have a cup of coffee
and stare into the news on TV and scream out loud...HOW COULD THEY DO THIS TO ME !!!!
I WORKED MY ASS OFF FOR THEM !!!!
When they come to that day,and are filing for unemployment,will they still BELIEVE ! that
Gannett was only firing them in their best interest of the company !
It is unbelievable to me that intelligent people
will just follow this machine to the very end.
Gannett the company won't be going away. It's only going to be drastically changed. A decade from now, no one will even remember the newspapers, except to cite the "challenging episode" of the 2000s that the company overcame with a "hardline" toward savings.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, the suits will keep living high off the sweat of the coolies, just as they have since the beginning of time.
Julie Doll was the best editor I have ever had, hands-down.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone know how to get in touch with her? I'd like to say hello.