A wave of cost-cutting among Gannett's weeklies appears to be picking up steam.
The company plans to merge three weeklies near Green Bay, Wisc., into a single title. Also, two arts and entertainment guides will be combined into a single publication, and a free distribution "shopper'' will be shuttered, according to a story in the Green Bay Press-Gazette. The publications are in Door and Kewaunee counties.
“These steps are being taken to improve efficiency, streamline operations and ensure that local news coverage in both counties remains in place,” Press-Gazette Publisher Kevin Corrado told the newspaper. “We’ve devoted months of study and review to make sure these publications remain viable in today’s economy and continue to serve our readers and advertisers."
Ten employees will be laid off as a result. They will get so-called transitional benefits, and be eligible for future openings, the Press-Gazette story says. Gannett replaced traditional severance benefits with transitional pay, starting with the July 2009 layoffs. Transitional pay is combined with unemployment benefits to equal an employee's weekly wages.
These consolidations follow similar moves late last month: The weekly Clinton News will merge much of its news and advertising into the nearby Clarion-Ledger at Jackson, Miss., and three weeklies in Gannett's U.K. division will go web-only.
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
3 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."
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
These Wisconsin papers were the most lucrative properties in the GCI stable, according to that newspaper-by-newspaper listing Jim posted a couple of years ago. So why possibly would you screw with success? The last thing this company needs to do is to mess with properties that are cash cows. What this shows to me is this company is now following the HR script laid out in business schools these days of reducing the FTE's no matter what. This consolidation reduces the payroll by 10 FTE's so it has got to be a success regardless of the impact on revenues. Geez, what utter stupidity.
ReplyDeleteI just wonder when the Michigan properties will see this type of consolidation. Lansing has TWO entertainment tabs that contain nearly identical content. Considering lansing has TWO living editors, I suspect an argument could be made for combining the products and eliminating a position. I'm not sure where the cost savings is in these types of moves, though.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like more money could be realized by cutting away at the bloated upper levels of newsroom management in most instances.
The GB publications were duplicative - originally separate audiences, cross selling and cross-purposing content made them indistinguishable. In addition, some of the titles still remained from the 2004 purchase of Brown County Publications papers.
ReplyDeleteDidn't make sense to distribute the same content and ads to the same people twice. No doubt other factors.
I think we would love it if people remembered to leave geese alone when they're dropping golden eggs. And if that means we cover Brent Fahrve years after he leaves the state, well... it's a big front page.