[Updated at 7:42 p.m. ET. Courtesy of a Gannett Blogger, here's a .pdf document showing newspaper-specific dates when many are
- Nashville: March 14
- Asbury Park, N.J.: March 28
- Louisville, Ky.: May 23
- Des Moines: June 13
- Phoenix: Aug. 2
Monday, January 17, 2011
Hubs | Here are launch dates for Design Studios
These are when the five page production and design hubs known as Design Studios go live, two readers tell me. The hubs won't start production for the nearly 80 U.S. newspapers all at once; instead, individual papers will move to their assigned studios on a staggered basis. I don't have those paper-specific dates, however.
[Updated at 7:42 p.m. ET. Courtesy of a Gannett Blogger, here's a .pdf document showing newspaper-specific dates when many arethey're scheduled to shift production.]
[Updated at 7:42 p.m. ET. Courtesy of a Gannett Blogger, here's a .pdf document showing newspaper-specific dates when many are
20 comments:
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Check your email, Jim. It has the breakdown of the individual papers
ReplyDeleteThe papers themselves didn't know they would be paying a big chunk of the hubs' bill until a few weeks ago.
ReplyDelete3:24 pm - Anyone at a paper who did not think they would be charged for this "service" is a idiot.
ReplyDeleteYou mean "an" idiot? ;-)
ReplyDeleteSo why isn't Wilmington listed in connection with the Asbury Park hub?
ReplyDeleteThis would seem to lend credence to the Wilmington-Camden-Philadelphia Inquirer rumors.
8:21, If you'll notice there are many. many papers missing from the list. Only phase 1 newspapers are listed - none of the phase 2 newspapers are individually listed.
ReplyDelete3 years ago we had about 90 employee currently have less than 35. At this rate Gannett will get us down to about 12. A couple of reporters who would add a couple of local stories, one sports reporters who would handle the high school beat, the rest would be standard copy and format from Gannett. Will only need 4 sales people or so since ad sales tanked when circulation dropped(like a rock)because the local paper is no longer local.
ReplyDeleteIn response to lowered circulation and tanking revenues, Gannett will overpay for another crappy website of dubious value, (Is there a website called "Dadslikeme.com").
There is no future for anyone in this company.
8:21; Read it again, buddy. Phase 2 starts in Jan. 2012, with the newspapers listed.
ReplyDeleteWhen will the other shoe drop? They can't possibly achieve any significant efficiencies by taking production work now done at many sites and centralizing it at their so called Design Studios. Has anybody heard a good argument about how this is going to save money?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThe way they will save money is by outsourcing most of the work these design centers are supposed to do. Initially, we will all think that the work is being done by people in this country, but eventually most of the work will likely be done by folks in India, China and the Philippines.
ReplyDeleteI just want to know where ALL of the money Gannett is saving by doing stuff like this is going!?!?!?! We know it's not going to investors.
It's going to decrease the number of paginators and copy editors.
ReplyDeleteFor example, and this isn't fact, just an idea: The Design Center chief could decide that the same wire stories are going to run in 20 papers. That eliminates the need for multiple copy editors at multiple sites to scroll the wire in search of stories and then to read them.
A couple of copy editors at the design center could handle that as well as cut the stories to the size needed at each individual paper.
Do I think this would be a great idea? No. People in different regions have different interests. Unfortunately, Gannett executives aren't paid to think that far ahead, so such a thing is possible.
By the way, lifestyles, features, whatever you call them, are likely candidates to be canned in a central location and plugged into multiple papers.
Again, not the best way to go since it cuts down on the local interests. But since when has Gannett thought about quality?
Just wait til you only are allowed to sell quarter half and full page ads, or stupid L shaped stuff like our USAT page has open now.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThe savings from creating theses hubs and then routing all of their work offshore appears tremendous. SO, where will all of that initial money that is being saved go?
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised that they haven't attempted to offshore all of that typing that editorial assistants do. All they'd have to do is fax the local logs or letters to a center in China and the savings would be tremendous. A property like the Lansing State Journal that still employs at least 6 editorial assistants (including two categorized as managers) would then only need one or two to answer the phones. Perhaps they could just turn the auto attendant on just have one assistant?
IF you think about Gannett's strategy, it's local newspapers are "only" going to need to have ad sales people, reporters, an editor and a couple supervisors in a few years to get the job done.
Where does the money go? "I just want to know where ALL of the money Gannett is saving by doing stuff like this is going!?!?!?! We know it's not going to investors."
ReplyDeleteIsn't interest on company debt in the hundreds of millions?
Does anyone have a guess as to how many copy editing and pagination jobs will be cut at Gannett papers once the hubs are up and running? 50 percent? 75 percent? ALL of them?
ReplyDelete7:26 p.m. A number of offices in our area do indeed use the auto attendant often to answer the phones when the lone editorial assistant isn't there or at lunch, etc. What you called what "will be 'local' in a few years" is exactly what our site will be once the pagination moves to the design hub.
ReplyDeleteThe amusing thing? In my travels about my city, whenever I overhear someone discussing our only paper (including some former advertising clients), it's uniformly negative. The difference is that the public opinion I've been exposed to was once a reasonable mixture of positive and negative, both, before Gannett began making the "local" paper into this understaffed, impersonal, outsourced cookie-cutter disaster. Street racks used to be empty by 10 a.m., requiring second stocking. Now, nope. The Web site, it is pretty much a joke in quality and content as well (with some noted exceptions, largely nothing but Metromix boobs, sports, scary mug shots and slap-dash stories that defy first-year journalistic standards). All their "efficiencies" sound great to the disconnected genii at Corporate but Gannett is one ship that has sailed and sunk, taking lots of committed careers with it -- except those of its own captains.
ReplyDelete7:57 knows more about anii than genii.
ReplyDelete