Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Burlington | Rochester's Fogler now Free Press pub
Corporate said this afternoon that it has promoted James Fogler to president and publisher of Vermont's Burlington Free Press. Fogler has been the vice president of marketing and communications for New York's Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. He succeeds Brad Robertson, who was named president of Gannett Local in May.
4 comments:
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The big question: Why?
ReplyDeleteNot why is it James Fogler, but why even fill the position? In the last few years of Jim Carey's Reign of Terror and continuing into WonderBoy Robertson's time, the Freeps (like most other Gannett papers) contracted to beyond an acceptable level.
So Fogler comes in at, say, $150,000/year to manage a small paper that's woefully understaffed, that outsources once integral jobs, that's lost much of its gravitas, that could, and probably, should have a publisher from afar who oversees a group of similar papers.
Gannett long ago dropped the pretense of being a hometown paper in Burlington. I doubt anybody cares if the publisher lives in the community, attends all the chamber mixers or sits down and chats with the local school leaders. Why not save money and have a group publisher attend to a collection of little outposts?
If Fogler's salary could be split among three or four papers like the Freeps, the papers might be able to hire an additional body or two. In theory.
Filling a high-paid position to act as a pass-through from corporate doesn't make a lot of sense.
But again, this is Gannett.
They have not eliminated the budget line item titled "PUBLISHER" not to far out though!
ReplyDeleteI ask the same thing about Poughkeepsie and Westchester. What is corporate's justification for two publishers other than protecting their own?
ReplyDeleteBoth Westchester and Poughkeepsie have closed their print plants and are having it done at a NJ location. Poughkeepsie has cut its copy desk and shifted the work to Westchester. And pretty soon, both are going to be laid out in Asbury Park.
Poughkeepsie has sold its building and Westchester is now working out of a mostly vacant, tomb-like space.
What's going on?
Do you think he'd really take a salary that low?
ReplyDelete