[Updated at 4:34 p.m. ET on Oct. 15: These employees will be responsible for scheduling online advertising and working with sales people involved in the new partnership between Gannett and Web portal giant Yahoo. As such, they are new jobs, and so do not involve moving work from other newspaper locations, according to News-Press Vice President Ann Weinberg. She responded to my request yesterday for more information.]
My original post: Gannett is consolidating online advertising processing at a new center in Fort Myers, Fla. -- a move that is creating 35 full-time jobs, but likely will eliminate at least as many positions at other U.S. cities, according to a published report today. In return for the jobs, GCI is getting as much as $105,000 in taxpayer money from the Lee County Job Opportunity Program, a story in The News-Press says.
The story is vague about the type of online advertising work that will be performed, and the wages to be paid. The project, according to the News-Press, will centralize "the advertising fulfillment efforts for most of [Gannett's] local media properties to streamline processes, ensure high quality and adapt quickly to changing market needs. The new business unit will be the center of digital advertising campaigns for Gannett local media properties nationwide."
The new jobs will pay more than 109% of Lee County's average wage, although the story doesn't give the average. But they will have an "economic impact" of $2.1 million over two years, suggesting that each job is worth an average of $30,000 annually.
Although the center will create 35 jobs, the story does not say how many other Gannett jobs may be eliminated as that work is centralized at the Florida site.
I've contacted the Lee County Economic Development Office, and News-Press Publisher Mei-Mei Chan, asking for additional information.
The center is part of a broader GCI strategy to cut costs by consolidating finance work, print newspaper advertising production, printing, and newspaper page design and production. GCI has gotten tax breaks for adding jobs in at least two other communities: Chicago, for CareerBuilder, and Indianapolis, for finance-related jobs.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
4 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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The average salary in Lee County was $37,657 in 2009, according to City Data, so the center pay should average something like $41,000 and change.
ReplyDeleteAds are provided by clients, done by local sites (hey Cincy!), or GPC will create the ads in Des Moines, Indy, or India.
ReplyDeleteFort Myers will actually get that creative online, schedule them, and balance national programs to ensure everything sold has inventory to run on. Broadcast has a name for that role, traffic manager?
What role (if any) the Yahoo program will play with Ft. Myers, I do not know.
They did that at the Asbury Park Press years ago. Then when stars started bringing in revenue they were yanked out into Retail and Classified sales. Really stupid.
ReplyDeleteCan't say I didn't see it coming, though I'm surprised Gannett found it necessary to create a whole new "center" and it's in Fort Myers. After announcements about print ad consolidation, I figured it'd only be a matter of time before online followed. But why not just send it to the GPC? Or rather, 2AdPro, since that's where GPC sends most of it's ads anyway.
ReplyDelete