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Wednesday, February 02, 2011
66 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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For Part 1 of this comment thread, please go here.
ReplyDeleteIn Part 1, Jim and his drones were trying to defend his poor performance.
ReplyDeletePredictably they tried to claim that one recent report was somewhat accurate. So somehow that means Jim has always been right ... at least to them.
That thought process is exactly what we've come to expect from Gannett Blog and precisely what is wrong with Gannett Blog.
Jim makes only about $200 a week while he spreads misinformation.
You can always put someone under a magnifying glass & find something wrong with them, who are you,
ReplyDeleteif you truly don't like this misinformation system then stay off
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ReplyDeleteI agree with 6:22. Jim- We know you like to show all the ugliness as a reminder that it happens and this is an open forum.
ReplyDeleteBut this is getting ridiculous. I've made some comments in the past about how amateur Robin's people were in trying to disrupt the blog.
Evidently she was listening. They wratched up the psychological warfare tactics. I have to say... I'm actually impressed that corprate got it together enough to do so.
In fact this guy is really good. He's been active lately as the "Craig", but we knew him before as the "start your own company" guy.
Jim- You really should take more time to get to know this guy and filter him out. And the rest of should stop engaging him. We're playing right in to his hands.
I've read the transcript and Q&As from the financial report meeting. Jim, break it down into English for me - what does it all mean?
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ReplyDeleteWhy are the critics out in droves this week ........We understand ,we know your thought process.
ReplyDeleteTo try to change the focus...
Let's not talk about how terrible Gannett is.
Those people are here ...gauaranteed !
to keep Gannett out of the spotight . !
Let's not talk about the huge 5% drop in print revenue,let's not talk about having to cut more
expenses,let's not talk about loyal,good,hardworking people getting laid off
again to feed the profit pot of Gannett,let's talk about how terrible Jim and his evil blog is !
Yes ,we know these people very well.
Did someone at Gannett finally get smart or is this some sort of a joke? The NJ Group has re-branded itself!!! Go to http://www.njpressmediasolutions.com to see what I'm talking about. When you call any of the papers and get put into voicemail, it says "you have reached the heart of new jersey press media solutions" blah blah blah. Ain't that a hoot!
ReplyDeleteits been that way for a while. 9:12am
ReplyDeleter u in marketing at the PRess?
Well now that the report is out its time to sit back and watch the heads roll. We all know some thing ugly will come out of this. I can't wait to see how much money the big boys and girls make once again by drilling holes below the water line in this ship. I really hate going into work each day! You say well get another job. I say I will stay as long as the checks clear. I they can make this kind of money doing what they do I have no problem making the money I make but I will stay close to the life boats.
ReplyDeleteIt's not all that complicated. NJpressmediasolutions is simply New Jersey PMS
ReplyDeleteHere I thought everyone with PMS in NJ already had an outlet...
ReplyDeletegannettblog.blogspot.com
@9:55 & 10:02 - too funny! thanks for that!
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ReplyDelete8:06: To assert that 'start your own company' poster and "Craig' (the incredibly sophomoric and somewhat obsessive Jim basher) are one and the same is baseless and out of line.
ReplyDeleteYes, I realize there are those who think Craig and his enablers are behind the 'start your own engine' posts. They think the motivation is to clear out more employees and lower payroll, etc.
But that's not reality folks.
The 'start your own engine/business' people (there are more than one, btw) are simply trying to offer encouragement and an 'alternative gameplan' possibility for former colleagues who are still grinding away to feed Gannett greed.
It's not a gameplan for everyone, for sure. But it is a gameplan that can work for more than a few folks here.
Peace, people. Jim, Craig and his enablers (Robin) can line up an army of posters to attempt to discredit you. They can make horrible jokes about tongs and games and otherwise act like that bully in middle school who was inexplicably obsessed with beating you down. They can post these things all day long and, apparently as is their MO lately, into the wee hours of the morning (such energy/determination would be so much more positively put to use on coming up with a way to salvage the company).
But they can never discredit you in the eyes of the far, far greater numbers of people who come to this site for valuable information. Thank you Jim.
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ReplyDeletegibberish for the past two days...this must mean we're safe from layoffs since no one's talking about it???????
ReplyDeleteSo... snowstorm over DesMoines and Indianapolis. Just curious, How's the GPC functioning through this?
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ReplyDeleteSuch vitriole. I thought after President's State of the Union address, we were all going to get along.
ReplyDelete11:40's question is valid. You centralize a process--what do you do if that site goes down? What is the backup plan? That's always been the problem with Gannett: shortsighted vision.
ReplyDeleteThe larger question 11:40 AM isn’t how GPC’s are doing in weather like this, it’s how’s centralized printing doing in delivering papers?
ReplyDelete11:40 is just an asshole.
ReplyDeleteOn a more positive note, I like what you did with the labels to the side, Jim. Before it was just a mess. It's still a mess now, but it has some order to it.
2:39 Here's my challenge: From the start, I've labeled ("tagged") my posts by geography and subject. The main geographic designations are the approximately 100 U.S. worksites: newspapers and TV stations. The subjects are wide: from 2AdPro to my version of miscellaneous: Widows and Orphans.
ReplyDeleteThese labels help readers sort through more than 4,700 posts I've written and published to the blog so far. (There's no way to tag the approximately 70,000 comments mostly posted by readers.)
Labels help occasional readers click on, for example, Palm Springs, to see if there've been any new posts related to that worksite.
As the number of my posts has grown, so, too, has the number of label categories, and so the list of labels. That list got so long that, today, I shortened it by displaying the labels as a tag cloud.
You say the list was a mess before, and that it is still a mess. Were there too many categories? Can you be more specific? Feedback from you and others always helps me tweak this blog.
Why not organize it into something resembling an index? You could group the cities and the radio/TV stations.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you have a category of "The Industry." Not very specific.
3:21 That's an interesting idea, and one I had not thought of before. I could, for example, create a single tag for Ohio, another one for New York, etc., and that would certainly trim the length of the list.
ReplyDeleteOne solution is unavailable to me: a drop-down menu. The Blogger software I use doesn't offer that option for labels. (Blogger is free, which is good for obvious reasons. But it also means I can't ask it to customize their templates.)
In any changes, I must proceed cautiously; once I remove a category of tags (Cincinnati, for example), there's no easy way to reapply them. For some posts, that could mean they are effectively lost forever.
For example, I have a label for Saratoga Springs, for a paper that is no longer owned by Gannett. If I remove that label, it would be nearly impossible to find the post. That is because the two search boxes on the blog -- one in the far upper-left corner, the other in the green sidebar -- don't work consistently.
So, who cares about Saratoga Springs? I do, because I'm especially concerned about the company's smallest worksites. They are the most isolated and I think most vulnerable. They have few employees, and so don't have the ability to easily organize. Keeping them in the spotlight is important.
I don't know of any other archive of information about Gannett as extensive as the one compiled here. If I don't keep track of all these sites -- places like Staunton, Va.; Visalia, Calif.; WATL, and WZZM TV stations, where would anyone learn about them?
I don't really bother with categories much. If I know what I'm looking for, using the search box usually does the job.
ReplyDeleteBut I think a glossary might be helpful. There are so many abbreviations in Gannettland: GCI, USCP, RTC, COE, GPC to name just a few. There are also other terms that pop up a lot, Pointroll, ContentOne, Ripple6, and now Ongo. Of course, most of us know what these stand for but the occasional reader may not know. I try to figure out what some of them are based on the context and I Google others, but it's helpful to have a handy "cheat sheet" to refer to isn't in corporate speak.
On that note, does anyone know of a source that explains TPP? There's nothing on the intranet except some vague instructions for HR. It's been discussed somewhat here, but I was looking for a more "official" source.
Here is something to chew on to the idiots that think consolidations are great. Our paper is printed several hours away and trucked back in here. If that site goes down, we have repeatedly asked who is going to print us. No one knows. Not in HR or anyone else that I'm aware of. No training on the possible scenario, no instructions of what to do, we would be dead in the water. Real smart there, corporate.
ReplyDeleteI said you should group them. Why would you remove tags?
ReplyDeleteCan you give an example of what you mean by grouping?
ReplyDelete5:24 PM are you in Cincinnati? If so, it’s a good question considering your weeklies are printed 180 miles away in Lafayette, Indiana. Finding someone capable of printing 26 papers, exceeding more than 200,000 plus copies in the Berliner format in a timely manner could be interesting.
ReplyDelete6:57 Cincy has 26 weeklies -- all Berliner formats? Or am I misunderstanding?
ReplyDeleteYou've never read an index?
ReplyDeleteYou could have a cities header and put all the locations in alphabetical order under that. Or you could group them by hubs. You could even cross-reference.
You're correct Jim. 26 weekly newspapers (http://cincinnati.com/mediaguide/products/communitypress.html) all of which were converted to the Berliner format when Cincy shut down its weekly printing operation and moved it to Lafayette in May of 2007.
ReplyDelete6:57 PM
Did I miss the post-mortem on the NJ editorial staff crunch that ended last week?
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ReplyDelete5:24 -- I am not pro consolidation by any means but you aren't looking at the decision-making process the way a business person is.
ReplyDeleteYou were probably trained as a journalist or press person to believe that there is nothing more devastating than not getting a paper out. Business people don't look at it that way.
They have likely crunched the numbers and decided that the savings they achieve through consolidation will outweigh the negatives ... including the possibility that a paper just doesn't print on a given day or week. Yes, there would be costs associated with a failure to print, but if those are made up by the cost-savings of a consolidation it's a win overall.
Also, the likelihood of a catastrophic failure occurring frequently is not good, so they're hedging their bets.
Like I said, I don't like it. But to understand these things ... and to make intelligent decisions about the future of your career ... you have to try to view them from the perspective of the bean counters.
Doing that gives you some insight into what is likely to happen next.
Corporate is not in the business of delivering great newspapers. It is in the business of making money off of advertising sales. Because of that, it views any decision that maximizes profits as positive.
Good points 12:20, like you said it is a business and any decision that maximizes profit is positive-- but this is only good for short term gain.. It's been overstated here on the blogs but I am still left dumbfounded by gannett's inability to make decisions that improve the product. Like you, I'm not opposed to consolidation however, it has yet proved to yield a better paper or website. I'm completely in favor of creating a smoother, more streamlined and efficient infrastucture in which all gannett sites can thrive but unfortunately most of gannetts decisions have only diluted the franchise, weakened our credibility and positioned us as an industry on life support. The content is simply not there. Our readers have become less and less engaged as we deliver less and less substance. Perhaps this is what frustrates me most; gannett in a mad flurry to become a multimedia company has lost confidence in it's own core competency. We have gone nuts on investing in everything but the newspaper. Unlike most out there, I still believe the newspaper can be a very viable product. We will never have the margins and profitability that we did in the golden age of the paper but that shouldn't make the newspaper obsolete. The newspaper is an entirely different platform than Internet. While users may get up-to-the minute news and info online; the Internet will never replace the newspaper experience. Call me crazy but now more than ever gannett should throw everything they have into the newspaper. We need to go out and get the best writers, designers and news people and re-do all of it.I'm not talking about doing a few generic redesigns and slapping a new masthead on the product, but really blowing up the guts of the paper and making it a show piece filled to the brim with brilliant story telling, beefy news and ridiculously oversized photos. Take advantage of the wide format and posterize the shit out of everything. I'm talking about double truck spreads of compelling info graphics and top notch typography and design. Basically, make every page so irresistible
ReplyDeletethat readers can't wait to turn to the one. Not enough in a day you say? How bout condensing it to one or two big kick ass papers a week? I might be nuts but I think if we build a must-have paper, they will come... If we are able to fix our papers first, it will make the rest of our efforts far easier on all of our other platforms
NJ Editorial staff cuts information is still under wraps. Most still don't know what the outcome is. Remember, they have until the end of this week, so we won't know a lot until Friday or next Monday.
ReplyDelete2:41 is right. Instead of trying to mimic the Internet or cable news, Gannett and print journalism in general should emphasize - even exaggerate the difference - by going all out on quality.
ReplyDeleteOur newspaper has been around for over a hundred years and we have copies of our paper going back that far. Does anything think that a story published only on the web will be around 100 years from now? Newspapers preserve our history in a way that the internet never will. I hope they will always exist in some form.
ReplyDeleteAnything = "anyone*
ReplyDeletetulsaworld.com - Wednesday's paper not printed because of record snow, the first time in their 106 year history they did not produce a printed edition.
ReplyDeleteOnly 14 inches? Pikers...
NJ newroom employees get laid off on Friday, 2-4. When will the victims be notified, that morning?
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ReplyDelete8:46 am - That's what the furloughs are for. Oh wait. The furloughs are funding those obscene bonuses.
ReplyDeleteNJ folks get notified of layoffs today.
ReplyDeleteGood luck NJ people
ReplyDeleteYes, my thoughts are with the folks in NJ. Please keep us updated on how many reporters are being cut at each of the 3 papers.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking so much about my NJ coworkers who will lose their job this week. I was also wondering how those remaining will keep the ship afloat. If it takes, say, 40 staffers this week (and for the past decade or so) to cover our area, how will HALF that many do it NEXT week? I can only imagine that the paper will now be at least 2/3 wire copy. And we know that local advertising is way down. I can't figure out why anyone would pay for the print product -- and we know that's still the breadwinner for the franchise. All I can foresee is a downward slide, more layoffs or fewer printing days, and the inevitable... turn out the lights. Good luck to all of those leaving at the end of this week, and REAL good luck to those remaining.
ReplyDelete2:41, well said. I, too, see newspapers as having a place in society -- high-quality newspapers, that is. Whether the content is in print or online, the emphasis must be on content, and content is the least of Gannett's priorities. I read the New York Times print edition every day, and it is an amazing newspaper. If Gannett papers were only one-fifth as good, they might be worth buying once in a while.
ReplyDelete2:41 does indeed make a good case for a certain kind of approach to fixing what's broken. What I don't understand is this: Why does Gannett management seem not to understand that the 80-plus newspapers they run provide an ideal laboratory for experimentation?
ReplyDeleteWhy not selectively try different things -- even some radical things such as 2:41 suggests -- at different sites to see what might work? That is, make the papers a laboratory in much the same way that the 50 states are sometimes said to be laboratories for public policies that, if successful, could eventually roll up to the national level. Gannett seems to make almost a fetish about standardization. It may once have served a purpose (though I wouldn't make that case). But these days it's clearly not serving their purposes. And still they do it. Didn't understand it when I worked for 'em, don't understand it today.
Take a look at The Daily at noon on your iPad.
ReplyDeleteIf it delivers news and rich media like Newscorp promised in its launch then USAToday (and Gannett's other publications) will slide down yet another notch in readership and revenues.
What's amazing is that a company of Gannett's scale and resources misses yet another great opportunity to lead. USAT's iPad app proves it.
According to Newscorp, they tasked people to develop The Daily six months ago, testing began six weeks ago and today its live and free for two weeks. Yet, Gannett still stumbles with a paywall strategy all while giving away unique content for free.
It's time Gannett's board held Dubow, Matore, et al accountable for failed decisions and lack of execution.
Look at the Q4 figures. We don't need to change anything. We are making a mint, and we are profitable so there will be jobs in the future. The nattering nabobs of negitavism want to portray this as a dying company, but if you analyze the figures, you see it is very healthy.
ReplyDelete2:41 should switch to decaf. Now that's good bloviating!
ReplyDeleteAnalyze this 11:42 AM…
ReplyDeleteTOTAL REVENUE:
2006 | $7.85 Billion
2010 | $5.44 Billion
Publishing Revenue
2006 | $5.28 Billion
2010 | $2.71 Billion
NET INCOME AFTER TAXES:
2006 | $1.14 Billion
2010 | $0.60 Billion
EPS:
2006 | $4.81
2010 | $2.35
Now consider declining circulation, the likelihood real estate and employment revenues won’t return to pre-recessionary levels (as evidenced by other downturns), rising fuel and newsprint prices, etc., etc. and it’s hard to see this company ever getting its “health” back.
Sadly, more furloughs and layoffs this quarter easily suggest the same.
12:02: I see those figures, but you might note they reflect the impact of what looks like to me has been a very big economic recession. If you look at the unemployment figures, I don't think it is yet over. One of the errors people make is extending a trend downwards. It may not happen that way.
ReplyDeleteJim, back to your post tags: I can categorize those for you, but I need some compensation for the time.
ReplyDelete12:02p Strip out acquisitions, like Careerbuilder, PointRoll, ShopLocal and the revenues looks worse and the Net Income After Taxes is even worse.
ReplyDeleteThis company is going down fast.
12:29 I've reviewed Blogger's options, but can't find a way to build the list as you suggest.
ReplyDeleteI hope that the folks who are at sites that experience layoffs continue to post here.
ReplyDeleteI would guess that there will be many "quiet"
and under the radar layoffs,as well as the ones that are more public.There probably has been
a plan in place for a while,since the crystal tower people realized that financials would not be trending upwards.We may need another list to follow the newest layoffs.