9:27 PM - A regional manager is going to have to handle more than one or two papers. How do you define a "region"? I am frankly surprised that Gannett hasn't done more with the group model they have in Ohio, except that they have never "gotten" the group concept, which seems like a much more efficient way to operate the back office functions. All of the financial reporting, however, seems to be geared towards stand-alone papers, not a group of papers. In Ohio, a general manager handles one or two papers, and the person overseeing all 10 dailies (and assorted weeklies) is called the group president. Then there's Cincinnati.
Gannett is run by self-serving princes who are sapping the life blood out of its papers to support the royal court. It outsourced benefits, payroll, customer service, page design and various other traditional corporate functions from individual newspapers and has consolidated leadership of production/HR/IT etc on a regional basis. Why stop there? Is the eventual game plan to ship reporting to India, since half the content of any one Gannett paper comes straight from a press release? Has Gannett made the call yet to assign more high school sports stories to computer programs? Is Gannett considering the replacement of full-time workers with contract labor, as many corporations do? More and more, Gannett seems to regard its newspapers as liabilities instead of assets. It seems to look at its papers as baggage dragging down the most important facet of the company -- the CEO and his ceremonial Crystal Palace court.
The net worth of Gannett is $5.5 billion. Google is offering between $5 billion or $6 billion for Groupon. Am I the only one who has never heard of this company Groupon. I think this shows us all what Wall Street thinks of the future of newspapers.
I read the Newsweek article, and still question why this company is worth $5 billion or $6 billion. I guess it is what a willing buyer is ready to pay. I also wonder why GCI hasn't already come up with a similar idea, since surely the brains in the advertising department realize the importance of coupons.
9:38 a.m. - Please don't use the Ohio group as any "model" for what Gannett "should" be doing.
In theory, the "model" is fine. Unfortunately, in the Ohio group, the group has always been in the hands of gross incompetents.
From little dictator publishers to know-nothing managing/executive editors to "time for another vacation" GMs, the Ohio group is a case-study in abysmal management.
The best there have always been fired or were driven away by incometents. Remember, this is the group that was a national embarrassment with the "bitch" hospital ad mistake and many many other major goofs and foul-ups.
Yet none of the incompetent managers were ever let go - they remain there still. And the centralized pagination system is hated by the readers and the staffs at the individual papers.
Only use Ohio as a model if you have a train wreck on the drawing board. Pathetic people at the top, who have weeded out those under them who have talent. Some of the latter remain, but they are looking.
@4:49PM He was knocked down a few pegs. He is no longer VP of Marketing. Not sure what his new title is, but I know he had to take a major cut in salary
So true, 10:09. It's about time he was shown the door. He obviously wanted his cushy job to last forever while the entire company collapsed around him and many underpaid reporters were worked to the bone, in many cases, only to get laid off.
Re: Groupon. All I can ask is did we bid? If not why not? We have a better idea? Oh, or are the bigwigs too focused on cutting for next quarter to impress the Wall Street folks who keep dumping the company stock? I guess going after Groupon would 1. require risk. 2. require GCI to actually pay and maintain employees. and 3. require out-of-the-box thinking. Since GCI has had to abandon its buy-and-bleed newspapers strategy, it has come up with NOTHING. Any board worth anything would have thoroughly purged management long ago.
10:55 is absolutely correct. There is no out-of-the-box thinking in this company, because they have been all bludgeoned into working in the same box. Where were/are the voices of dissent in management ranks over the recent layoffs made only to improve the profit margin? They hire someone really innovative like Saridakis, then watch in bewilderment as he walks out the door rather than fit in the management box. What creative idea does this company have for its future? None.
3:49 pm - I didn't say that Ohio had been handled well. I said that the model was sound. At every turn, however, Corporate forced conformity with single paper sites. Ohio's norms and practices (what worked) did not match Corporate's "vision" or understanding. So Ohio abandoned reasonable systems and excellent staff to meet Corporate demands. Of course Ohio is dogpaddling now. What has been forced on it makes little sense for its structure, but there is no choice. I can think of many examples (too specific to list here) where Corporate said "Do it this way" regardless of whether it made sense for a group operation or even factored in successful approaches at the local level.
First off, Mr. Lovern was not banished. He went to Ohio for family. Secondly, he might have been a bit of a Super Freak (in a good if odd way) at the Courier-Post, but he sure could kick butt, get things done, and take care of his peeps.
Has anyone from any of the weeklies checked in? I am curious as to how they are weathering the storm.I haven't seen a single post from anyone about their situation.Have they all been protected or are they just to cowardly to post here.Or maybe their layoffs are still coming now that the dailies are supposedly finished chopping. I would be surprised if there weren't or won't be cuts made there as well,we just don't know or hear about them as their numbers are small at individual sites but are significant when totalled as a whole.These wouldn't be counted then, in the total layoff numbers.
Weeklies haven't been protected, unfilled positions and much smaller news holes the norm here. However, salaries aren't as large here and there's less fat to trim.
"Have they all been protected or are they just to cowardly to post here."
Believe it or not, not all of the 25,000 Gannett employees know about Jim's blog, read it on a regular basis or care to write a comment. And yes, some are still afraid that corporate will find out who they are.
1:44 is correct, although I should clarify. I now have around 15,000 monthly readers, but many are former employees or people who have never worked for Gannett.
Also, GCI has 35,000 workers, according to the latest official count.
to 1:44 That is why I don't believe that Jim's number of layoffs is even close to accurate. You are right, not everyone knows of this site or would care to give out information regarding the happenings at their particular site. I ,on the other hand, would give any info that I have ,especially if it were negative towards Gannett.I believe it is a corporation that cares nothing of the communities it serves,outside of bleeding every dollar possible. I have first hand knowledge as a former manager, and was ordered to basically, don't give a damn about what is best for advertisers as long as it was good for Gannett.Find ways to make them spend regardless if it helped their sales or not.As a long time advertising person ,I was taught by another nationwide publishing company,if your customers get sales from your advertising they will become your friends very quickly and not just customers.Gannett does not want friends in advertising customers,only their money. I am now in business for myself and I have many, many friends.....who also are my customers. As for the great folks that I worked with at the Gannett site. They were hard working, honorable,loyal to the end to the workplace. Nothing came before work. Now many have been laid off ,without a bit of remorse or caring. The rest live in uncertainty every day, every week,knowing full well that the company they have loyally worked for,gave all they could give to ,for many years cares absolutely nothing about them .Except that they are an EXPENSE.
Jim let's use the correct term here. You are saying you have 15,000 Unique Visitors? 15,000 distinct, singular, non redundant visitors a month. Or are you saying you have 15,000 hits a month?
2:47 pm: According to Google Analytics, last month (November), Gannett Blog had 28,295 unique visitors and 351,786 pageviews. (Download a copy of the report.)
November was an unusually busy month, however, because of the layoffs.
I don't know of any accurate way to count redundant readers, i.e., those readers who visit from different computers or who clear their cookies regularly. That's why I always discount the number of unique visitors by at least one third.
Most publishers, including I believe Gannett, do not discount their uniques, reporting the gross figure instead. That, at least, makes an apples-to-apples comparison more easy across different publishers.
Here's another "opportunity" in which Gannett merged news and advertising: Ready, Set, Shop!
Gannett's internal e-newsletter highlighted it today: Putting the 'Spotlight' on Gannett and JCPenney's nationwide holiday campaign Gannett and JCPenney launched a unique nationwide campaign to reach and engage Black Friday shoppers through quality, customized content focused on shopping and deals, delivered on multiple platforms. Details in the Spotlight on the Intranet.
Couldn't log onto the Intranet at home, but based on what I read while at work, the "customized content" was produced by "Gannett journalists." Here's a link to one of the properties that still has the microsite logo on its homepage: http://topics.gannett.com/deals/?template=delawareonline
Google may pay $5 billion-plus for Groupon. But it's not going to buy Gannett. Trying to be provocative, a CNBC writer, Jon Fortt, floated that idea on Tuesday, writing:
"If Google is that desperate to get into the local advertising market, it should buy the largest newspaper company in the U.S.: Gannett. It’s trading at a $3.1 billion market cap, has 83 U.S. daily newspapers including USA Today, and tons of local assets including hundreds of local weeklies in the U.K. You know what else? Gannett has $5.5 billion in revenue (yes, nearly twice its market cap) and nearly 20% operating margins. Yes, it also has old-media stigma, labor unions, and a lot of legacy issues that make it an unattractive acquisition target. But, Google: Do you want to own local advertising or not?"
Here's the sad reality:
1. Google doesn't buy content producers. Even YouTube, which it bought for $1.6 billion, doesn't produce its own content; it simply provides a platform for videos produced by others.
2. Fortt's reference to "a lot of legacy issues" at Gannett is the understatement of the century. Those legacy issues include an expensive, aging workforce of 35,000 people; overvalued real estate and factories; outdated hardware and software; TV stations whose value, like newspapers, is in decline, and a digital strategy that's in disarray.
Jim, how do you come to the conclusion that Gannett has an "expensive, aging workforce" when this blog has repeatedly complained the layoffs and furloughs have hit hardest at grayhairs. So I would gamble that GCI's diminished workforce is not aging, but is actually younger than it was four years ago.
On the Groupon issue, why didn't Gannett do something similar with Metromix? Anyone know if anything like this was ever considered with the social digital programs, and what happened. Strikes me we really dropped the ball on this one. I see that Yahoo is responding to Google by funnel funding to LivingSocial, another coupons site. Where the hell are we in this fight?
7:55 is right. If they played Metromix right, they could have it on the market for $6 billion today, and being fought over by Google, just like Groupon. But they didn't play it right and instead milked it dry without putting any resources or thought into what they were doing. It all sounds so drearily familiar.
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.
For Part 1 of this comment thread, please go here.
ReplyDelete9:27 PM - A regional manager is going to have to handle more than one or two papers. How do you define a "region"?
ReplyDeleteI am frankly surprised that Gannett hasn't done more with the group model they have in Ohio, except that they have never "gotten" the group concept, which seems like a much more efficient way to operate the back office functions. All of the financial reporting, however, seems to be geared towards stand-alone papers, not a group of papers.
In Ohio, a general manager handles one or two papers, and the person overseeing all 10 dailies (and assorted weeklies) is called the group president. Then there's Cincinnati.
Gannett is run by self-serving princes who are sapping the life blood out of its papers to support the royal court. It outsourced benefits, payroll, customer service, page design and various other traditional corporate functions from individual newspapers and has consolidated leadership of production/HR/IT etc on a regional basis. Why stop there? Is the eventual game plan to ship reporting to India, since half the content of any one Gannett paper comes straight from a press release? Has Gannett made the call yet to assign more high school sports stories to computer programs? Is Gannett considering the replacement of full-time workers with contract labor, as many corporations do? More and more, Gannett seems to regard its newspapers as liabilities instead of assets. It seems to look at its papers as baggage dragging down the most important facet of the company -- the CEO and his ceremonial Crystal Palace court.
ReplyDeleteThe net worth of Gannett is $5.5 billion. Google is offering between $5 billion or $6 billion for Groupon. Am I the only one who has never heard of this company Groupon. I think this shows us all what Wall Street thinks of the future of newspapers.
ReplyDeleteActually, a good article on Groupon in the lastest Newsweek. Explains why Groupon has succeeded where other internet advertising has failed.
ReplyDeleteWhoops...latest Newsweek.
ReplyDeleteI read the Newsweek article, and still question why this company is worth $5 billion or $6 billion. I guess it is what a willing buyer is ready to pay.
ReplyDeleteI also wonder why GCI hasn't already come up with a similar idea, since surely the brains in the advertising department realize the importance of coupons.
This just in....The EE aka "The Eyebrow" is retiring in January from the Journal News!!!!!
ReplyDeleteHooray, 129 p.m., hooray!
ReplyDeleteWho says there's no Santa Claus?
9:38 a.m. - Please don't use the Ohio group as any "model" for what Gannett "should" be doing.
ReplyDeleteIn theory, the "model" is fine. Unfortunately, in the Ohio group, the group has always been in the hands of gross incompetents.
From little dictator publishers to know-nothing managing/executive editors to "time for another vacation" GMs, the Ohio group is a case-study in abysmal management.
The best there have always been fired or were driven away by incometents. Remember, this is the group that was a national embarrassment with the "bitch" hospital ad mistake and many many other major goofs and foul-ups.
Yet none of the incompetent managers were ever let go - they remain there still. And the centralized pagination system is hated by the readers and the staffs at the individual papers.
A complete disaster.
Please don't use Ohio for a model.
3:49 Ohio has the readers paginate?
ReplyDeleteOnly use Ohio as a model if you have a train wreck on the drawing board. Pathetic people
ReplyDeleteat the top, who have weeded out those under
them who have talent. Some of the latter remain, but they are looking.
Speaking of Ohio, does anyone know what became of Carl lovern who was rightfully banished from the courier post in new jersey to Ohio some years ago?
ReplyDelete@4:49PM He was knocked down a few pegs. He is no longer VP of Marketing. Not sure what his new title is, but I know he had to take a major cut in salary
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete1:29 - long overdue. Does he get a golden watch for leading the paper into irrelevance and bankruptcy?
ReplyDeleteSo true, 10:09. It's about time he was shown the door. He obviously wanted his cushy job to last forever while the entire company collapsed around him and many underpaid reporters were worked to the bone, in many cases, only to get laid off.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteRe: Groupon. All I can ask is did we bid? If not why not? We have a better idea? Oh, or are the bigwigs too focused on cutting for next quarter to impress the Wall Street folks who keep dumping the company stock? I guess going after Groupon would 1. require risk. 2. require GCI to actually pay and maintain employees. and 3. require out-of-the-box thinking.
ReplyDeleteSince GCI has had to abandon its buy-and-bleed newspapers strategy, it has come up with NOTHING. Any board worth anything would have thoroughly purged management long ago.
Comments by readers in the self-serving article on Freeman's "retirement" are priceless:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lohud.com/comments/article/20101201/NEWS01/12010373/Henry-Freeman-Journal-News-editor-to-retire-Senior-Managing-Editor-CynDee-Royle-named-editor?GID=DBGExR6XhEJHE+f0VKG0/ZZgkZCO0pZ8cO3rrpCeivQ%3D
Here's the headline on Poughkeepsie's website
ReplyDelete"Police: 16-year-old sold at Hyde Park High School"
(in fact no kids were sold, just some pills)
reader comments are pretty amusing on that one as well.
10:55 is absolutely correct. There is no out-of-the-box thinking in this company, because they have been all bludgeoned into working in the same box. Where were/are the voices of dissent in management ranks over the recent layoffs made only to improve the profit margin? They hire someone really innovative like Saridakis, then watch in bewilderment as he walks out the door rather than fit in the management box.
ReplyDeleteWhat creative idea does this company have for its future? None.
3:49 pm - I didn't say that Ohio had been handled well. I said that the model was sound.
ReplyDeleteAt every turn, however, Corporate forced conformity with single paper sites. Ohio's norms and practices (what worked) did not match Corporate's "vision" or understanding. So Ohio abandoned reasonable systems and excellent staff to meet Corporate demands. Of course Ohio is dogpaddling now. What has been forced on it makes little sense for its structure, but there is no choice.
I can think of many examples (too specific to list here) where Corporate said "Do it this way" regardless of whether it made sense for a group operation or even factored in successful approaches at the local level.
The Journal News removed the reader comment on the Freeman retiring story.
ReplyDeleteGuess the truth hurts!
Re: 12/01/2010 4:49 PM, Anonymous
ReplyDeleteFirst off, Mr. Lovern was not banished. He went to Ohio for family. Secondly, he might have been a bit of a Super Freak (in a good if odd way) at the Courier-Post, but he sure could kick butt, get things done, and take care of his peeps.
9:44 - What was the comment that was removed and what did it say?
ReplyDeleteHas anyone from any of the weeklies checked in?
ReplyDeleteI am curious as to how they are weathering the storm.I haven't seen a single post from anyone
about their situation.Have they all been protected or are they just to cowardly to post
here.Or maybe their layoffs are still coming now that the dailies are supposedly finished chopping. I would be surprised if there weren't
or won't be cuts made there as well,we just don't know or hear about them as their numbers are small at individual sites but are significant when totalled as a whole.These wouldn't be counted then, in the total layoff numbers.
Weeklies haven't been protected, unfilled positions and much smaller news holes the norm here. However, salaries aren't as large here and there's less fat to trim.
ReplyDeleteAt the rate Cincinnati’s going in running its weeklies it wouldn’t be surprising to see some of them shut down.
ReplyDelete"Have they all been protected or are they just to cowardly to post
ReplyDeletehere."
Believe it or not, not all of the 25,000 Gannett employees know about Jim's blog, read it on a regular basis or care to write a comment. And yes, some are still afraid that corporate will find out who they are.
1:44 is correct, although I should clarify. I now have around 15,000 monthly readers, but many are former employees or people who have never worked for Gannett.
ReplyDeleteAlso, GCI has 35,000 workers, according to the latest official count.
to 1:44
ReplyDeleteThat is why I don't believe that Jim's number of layoffs is even close to accurate.
You are right, not everyone knows of this site
or would care to give out information regarding
the happenings at their particular site.
I ,on the other hand, would give any info that I have ,especially if it were negative towards Gannett.I believe it is a corporation that cares nothing of the communities it serves,outside of bleeding every dollar possible.
I have first hand knowledge as a former manager,
and was ordered to basically, don't give a damn
about what is best for advertisers as long as it was good for Gannett.Find ways to make
them spend regardless if it helped their sales
or not.As a long time advertising person ,I
was taught by another nationwide publishing company,if your customers get sales from your
advertising they will become your friends very
quickly and not just customers.Gannett does not
want friends in advertising customers,only their money.
I am now in business for myself and I have many,
many friends.....who also are my customers.
As for the great folks that I worked with at the Gannett site. They were hard working, honorable,loyal to the end to the workplace.
Nothing came before work. Now many have been laid off ,without a bit of remorse or caring.
The rest live in uncertainty every day, every week,knowing full well that the company they have loyally worked for,gave all they could give
to ,for many years cares absolutely nothing about them .Except that they are an EXPENSE.
Anyone who brought McClatchy @ .41 would be reaping a windfall today @ $3.35.
ReplyDeleteJim, are you upset or are you flattered the Wikileaks stole you idea?
ReplyDeleteJim let's use the correct term here. You are saying you have 15,000 Unique Visitors? 15,000 distinct, singular, non redundant visitors a month. Or are you saying you have 15,000 hits a month?
ReplyDelete2:47 pm: According to Google Analytics, last month (November), Gannett Blog had 28,295 unique visitors and 351,786 pageviews. (Download a copy of the report.)
ReplyDeleteNovember was an unusually busy month, however, because of the layoffs.
I don't know of any accurate way to count redundant readers, i.e., those readers who visit from different computers or who clear their cookies regularly. That's why I always discount the number of unique visitors by at least one third.
Most publishers, including I believe Gannett, do not discount their uniques, reporting the gross figure instead. That, at least, makes an apples-to-apples comparison more easy across different publishers.
Here's another "opportunity" in which Gannett merged news and advertising: Ready, Set, Shop!
ReplyDeleteGannett's internal e-newsletter highlighted it today:
Putting the 'Spotlight' on Gannett and JCPenney's nationwide holiday campaign
Gannett and JCPenney launched a unique nationwide campaign to reach and engage Black Friday shoppers through quality, customized content focused on shopping and deals, delivered on multiple platforms. Details in the Spotlight on the Intranet.
Couldn't log onto the Intranet at home, but based on what I read while at work, the "customized content" was produced by "Gannett journalists." Here's a link to one of the properties that still has the microsite logo on its homepage: http://topics.gannett.com/deals/?template=delawareonline
Seems other advertisers have replaced JC Penney.
Soon we'll all be one big advertorial.
Stock going up, up, up!
ReplyDeletestock's up because there's rumors about Google buying Gannett.
ReplyDeleteGoogle may pay $5 billion-plus for Groupon. But it's not going to buy Gannett. Trying to be provocative, a CNBC writer, Jon Fortt, floated that idea on Tuesday, writing:
ReplyDelete"If Google is that desperate to get into the local advertising market, it should buy the largest newspaper company in the U.S.: Gannett. It’s trading at a $3.1 billion market cap, has 83 U.S. daily newspapers including USA Today, and tons of local assets including hundreds of local weeklies in the U.K. You know what else? Gannett has $5.5 billion in revenue (yes, nearly twice its market cap) and nearly 20% operating margins. Yes, it also has old-media stigma, labor unions, and a lot of legacy issues that make it an unattractive acquisition target. But, Google: Do you want to own local advertising or not?"
Here's the sad reality:
1. Google doesn't buy content producers. Even YouTube, which it bought for $1.6 billion, doesn't produce its own content; it simply provides a platform for videos produced by others.
2. Fortt's reference to "a lot of legacy issues" at Gannett is the understatement of the century. Those legacy issues include an expensive, aging workforce of 35,000 people; overvalued real estate and factories; outdated hardware and software; TV stations whose value, like newspapers, is in decline, and a digital strategy that's in disarray.
Jim, how do you come to the conclusion that Gannett has an "expensive, aging workforce" when this blog has repeatedly complained the layoffs and furloughs have hit hardest at grayhairs. So I would gamble that GCI's diminished workforce is not aging, but is actually younger than it was four years ago.
ReplyDeleteOn the Groupon issue, why didn't Gannett do something similar with Metromix? Anyone know if anything like this was ever considered with the social digital programs, and what happened.
ReplyDeleteStrikes me we really dropped the ball on this one. I see that Yahoo is responding to Google by funnel funding to LivingSocial, another coupons site. Where the hell are we in this fight?
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteWhat other high priced executives are getting the ax?
ReplyDelete7:51 -- Gannett's workforce may be younger than it was three years ago, but that doesn't make it young. In any case, we're all us aging, every day.
ReplyDelete7:55 is right. If they played Metromix right, they could have it on the market for $6 billion today, and being fought over by Google, just like Groupon. But they didn't play it right and instead milked it dry without putting any resources or thought into what they were doing. It all sounds so drearily familiar.
ReplyDeleteFor Part 3 of this comment thread, please go here.
ReplyDelete