"Announcements are delayed because numbers are worse than expected. More layoffs than anticipated two months ago. Department heads are trying to figure out how to make the cuts and still put out a product every day plus meet new demands."
It's the reference to worse-than-expected numbers that caught my eye, since I heard Period 8's results showed glimmers of hope. But maybe advertising revenue went off a cliff, again, in September?
Not allowed to say where I work but in the media market I'm in radio revenue is going up, up, up because of a) political ads, b) affordability of ads and c) consumer response to the ads resulting in increased revenue for the business doing the advertising.
ReplyDeleteTV had a good period, too. Same reasons as radio above.
ReplyDeleteConfirmed that a big round of layoffs to hit USAT. USAToday is poised to have a record year of losses. A lot of fighting between Mr. Hunke and Mr. Jacobson based on what the real revenue number should be for USAT Digital for the 2011 budget.
ReplyDeleteMs. Martore is questioning Mr. Hunke's ability to lead USAT.
My Boss is dead on correct here. It seems like all of the business units are trying to jam us in Digital for all of their revenue misses. Hunke and Dickey and to a lesser extent Lougee are trying to have Digital do their dirty work. Andy Jacobson has already expressed his distaste for senior management here.
ReplyDeleteWe also heard that with all the senior level Yahoo departures, the Gannett-Yahoo partnership is now in disarray. So much for Dickey hitting his "incremental" $55 million in NEW local digital sales in 2011.
Btw, my boss is in Poland on some boondoggle at a lame conference. Nice waste of money Gannett!!!
I'm at a mid-sized paper. Our numbers for period 8 weren't impressive, but not horrible. Period 9 looks like a winner though. I wonder how many other sites are holding there own? I think we can surmise that that USAT and the Crystal palace are sucking the rest of the company dry. They should both be shut down.
ReplyDeleteIf "Ms. Martore is questioning Mr. Hunke's ability to lead USAT" it is because he hasnt done any leading. Seriously, what has this guy done? You rarely see him in the building. You rarely hear about him visiting anyone outside the building. He had a team of 8 so called strategy people develop the layoff/restructuring plan. He hired an ad vp who hasnt had an idea in 6 months. He holds meetings and says that he wants too retain talent, then follows up with talk that demonstrates that he doesnt care about retaniing anything but his 7 figure paycheck. Including getting rid of the head of hr.
ReplyDeleteSay what you want about Moon. He wasnt perfect and a cold fish. But at least he made the rounds once in a while to talk to people, get their ideas, see how they were doing. Hunke is just a plain old turd with a tanned blonde secretary.
Looks like we are poised to go back to the days when the community papers subsidized USA Today. The difficulty this time around is the community papers are not in such great shape that they can afford to cough up to keep USAT going. The idea that money from my paper will be siphoned off to support the overpaid, underworked, and imperious staff at USAT really gets my goat.
ReplyDeleteIf "Ms. Martore is questioning Mr. Hunke's ability to lead USAT" -- finally -- at this late stage in the game -- then she doesn't belong in a position of leadership, either.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of defections, the reporter the AZ Republic and USAT shared in Mexico City has left the Big G to work for AP. Very good decision on his part, huge loss for USAT and the Republic.
ReplyDeleteWe were led to believe that USA Today had a decent qauarter and that the ad situation was looking better for the 4th quarter. This was as of last week. Could that be a lie? Probably. The economy is actually slowly improving. Business travel is up. Consumer spending is up. Why can't our advertising staff sell the product?
ReplyDeleteAs far as editorial,what about an actual transformation plan? There isn't one, at least in practical terms. Just a lot of buzzwords and, unfortunately, promotions of people who have no business being promoted or kept on staff. The entire summer, and now all of September and October, appears to be back-room wheeling and dealing about how to come up with 130 job cuts. Money editor Jim Henderson is strutting around the newsroom with a smile on his face. But he's lost three key reporters in the past two weeks and several others are job hunting. I guess when you know you're job is safe, it really doesn't matter.
More than 100 staffers will be cut - at least that's what we were told several weeks ago. So of course, the entire building is on edge. What are they waiting for? How to make this all look acceptable at the end of the day by a Human Resources department worried about potential litigation? Just get it over with already.
Unfortunately, tone deaf management, led by bullshitters like Hunke and shovelers like Henderson and Hilkirk, are not what this newspaper needs. We need fresh leadership. Shifting section leaders around is not a plan. Promoting unproven, untested hires to vice presidential positions isn't a plan,
Will someone get their act together here before all the good people bail? Or is that actually THE plan?
The gullibility of this blog is amazing.
ReplyDeleteHow would anyone know that Gracia Martore "is questioning Mr. Hunke's ability to lead USA TODAY."
Does anyone think a top executive is walking around saying, "You know, I've lost confidence in Dave Hunke"??
Who would she say that to, and certainly to no one who would then post it on a blog.
Additonally, just to calm people down, many if not most of the 130 layoffs have already happened by attrition or recent actions, and there is no larger number to be announced. In fact, no number at all will be announced.
But to spin wildly off some anonymous post by someone who clearly doesn't know is just ridiculous. Times are bad enough; no need to make them worse through crazy rumors.
Geez, it is hardly a crazy rumor that Martore and Hunke don't get along. They are from different backgrounds and have different outlooks on life. She's a reserved and severe Wellsley graduate, and Hunke is an outgoing and jovial grad of Kansas State. It doesn't surprise me in the least that she is trying to light a fire under his ass because USAT is not doing well financially or editorially. The poster said Martore is questioning Hunke's ability to run USAT. That doesn't look to me as a direct quote, but an observation. You don't have to believe it is true, but I do because I have heard quite similar reports in the last few weeks.
ReplyDeleteAnon 6:29p...Nice try Robin.
ReplyDeleteGracia is a joke. Clearly she is disturbed by Hunkes performance. She is so far up his ass during this budgeting season, she is coming out of his mouth. Myron and Susan are walking around say "Gracia wants this and Gracia wants that...Gracia is basically driving everyone crazy"
6:29. Of course, you are right - hyping up purported rumors (wishful thinking?) about Martore's opionings. Who would be close enough to her who would be crazy enough to relay that information to Jimbo?
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, stuff like this festers because primarily absent of any information, morale continues to plummet. Reporters are left to speculate how management will further muck up their lives. They go over worst-case scenarios in their heads, then play them off of other people who are waiting for the hammer drop to compare notes. Every day management drags its feet, people only feel worse about working here.
They should just shutter USAT if it's going to have losses. It's already the No. 3 national paper in the country and it's only going to get worse if they fire staff and let other key players walk. Why not cut the losses instead of letting it slowly die, dragging down the community papers in the process?
ReplyDeleteMust say I agree with 6:29 that most of this thread is hot air.
ReplyDeleteIt has already been shown that "My Boss Said" has been wrong repeatedly.
Also, there was never going to be an announcement about layoffs last Thursday. A total falsehood, propogated by this blog.
Why this blog accepts everything at face value, and then wonders why Thursday came and went without layoffs being announced, reminds me of those prophets in the 1800s who had people gather for the rapture on certain dates. When it didn't happen they'd just set a new date.
The Hopkins version is to accept a blog post without checking it, and then when it doesn't happen, begin theorizing on why the event was postponed.
There is no way Jim can check everything, and certain things do have to be taken on faith. But a bit more skepticism on Jim's part would be a good thing.
Because this "Thursday announcement" thing was never real. Never.
@6:29: "My Boss" has been correct in the past. So while your desire to calm the deckhands as water swirls around our feet is understandable, you're either not clued in, or you are and you're defending Hunke.
ReplyDeleteThe newsrooms have already heard that the managers went to Hunke with a layoff list, and he sent them back with orders to make more cuts. This could be rumor, but what other logical reason could there be for the hold-up? Gross incompetence? Unmitigated sadism? As much as we may believe that in our heart of hearts, let's get real here. This delay, as cruel as it is, has to have a logistical explanation, which you failed to give in your post.
Also, you may be overestimating how much attrition is going to save jobs: Word is that Money will be hiring to fill the positions vacated by Wiseman and Lynch.
You are correct in that when highly placed executives question someone's ability to lead, they don't chat about it at the water cooler. Instead, they signal it. Anyone who has worked in a corporate situation has seen this happen.
Responding to 2:26 a.m.:
ReplyDelete1. Gannett has never formally announce layoffs. Rather, it notifies employees who are losing their jobs. On a few occasions, GCI has confirmed that layoffs have taken place, but only after being questioned by news media after the layoffs were reported here first. To the best of my knowledge, however, GCI has never disclosed an actual number of layoffs.
2. A reader who appears to be in a position to know tells me that USAT's layoff notifications have been delayed. The reader did not give a timetable. The reader also said the number of jobs to be cut would exceed the original estimate of about 130. The reader did not give a specific, higher number, however.
3. Conversations that taking place high up in management are often leaked to this blog via reader comments, and in e-mail sent directly to me. That is how we knew in advance of multiple layoffs and furloughs, for example, and defections of senior managers.
4. There is reason to believe that USAT is now losing money. I'm confident in saying USAT is on track this year to have lost as much as $150 million in annual advertising revenue from what it took in three years ago. (That would be a loss of nearly 50% of its revenue base, in line with GCI's overall publishing advertising revenue decline during the same period.)
Certainly, it's possible USAT has cut up to $150 million in costs during the same period, which would mean that -- all other things being equal -- it's still profitable. But that seems like a stretch. Bottom line: There's reason to believe My Boss' contention that USAT could be facing a record loss in 2010.
Personally, I wish that Gannett would get rid of USAT top management, sell the brand off and let us fend for ourselves. I don't know whether we'd flourish or perish. But it would be nice to give it our last, best shot, unencumbered by the gross incompetence that we've seen for the last year.
ReplyDeleteI'd rather go down in flames than by a thousand cuts.
This is taking on the feeling of a panic. What happened in the last month to justify suddenly increasing the 130 layoff figure to a number that we yet don't know?
ReplyDeleteI work at USA TODAY, and I've certainly heard all the rumors that have been posted here. However, I wonder how bad the revenue picture is going to be in the third quarter. I base that on something pretty subjective -- the number of ads in the paper. We've had some big sections (well, bigger) over the past month or so, and some sections (Life) have seen the return of "pre-prints" (early press runs to accomodate lots of color ads and/or more pages).
ReplyDeleteShifting gears, I'm not sure if this has been posted here, but the number of layoffs was never going to be 130. It was going to be 108, because there are 22 positions that are currently "dark."
12:01 p.m.: That may, indeed, be the case. But USA Today itself published an Associated Press story on Aug. 27 that says:
ReplyDelete"The makeover outlined Thursday will result in about 130 layoffs this fall, USA TODAY Publisher Dave Hunke told The Associated Press. That translates into a 9% reduction in USA Today's work force of 1,500 employees. Hunke didn't specify which departments would be hardest hit."
As I post this comment, that story is still on USAT's site.
I can't speak for USA Today's ad misfortunes. On the editorial side,the only way USAT is going to get out of this mess is unload a layer of middle management that work for incompetent senior managers. If USA Today really wants to adapt and change with the marketplace, the focus should be on content, not copy pushers and deputy order givers. They could slice 30 to 50 w/o missing a beat. Doesn't that go to the heart of the Hunke plan? Or is it more about protecting friends in high places?
ReplyDelete