Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Gannett's News Design Studios now on Facebook

[Updated at 5:20 p.m. ET April 6 with new link.] Here's a fan page for the five production hubs that will design and build pages for nearly 81 U.S. newspapers. The page I linked to earlier is a recruitment page for the News Design Studios, including information for interested job applicants. (And, ironically, the recruiting page is using the old Gannett logo, despite that 100-page set of guidelines.)

14 comments:

  1. A nice whipped cream pie to the first editor who 'likes' 'em.

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  2. 5:41AM, "nice whipped cream pie", I'm thinking a nice doggy doo pie would be more fitting.

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  3. The editor at my paper "likes" it, what a weasel, people are going to lose jobs and she is drinking the kool-aid heavily.

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  4. Love the line about how the wire editors will be editing for "client newspapers."

    This is going to cost a lot of jobs. I guess that's the point. And I know some people who are late in their careers who will find it pretty tough to move to one of these "design centers."

    But isn't the idea to cut the so-called "big" earners and replace them with cheaper help?

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  5. The logos alone should tell you what kind of "cutting-edge" design these places are going to be doing. A cow for Des Moines? An homage to Bruce Springsteen's guitar for New Jersey? The logo looks like it represents Guitar World, only the logo for Guitar World actually is more tasteful.

    As for any design, these places are more rightly called production hubs. The hub heads have been busy narrowing the type palettes, and reworking all the headline, cutline and layouts to be the same at all papers under their "leadership." It's anti-design, pure and simple.

    The Facebook page is instructive. Ugly, empty of promise, with the main photo being that of left-over cake.

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  6. OK, who wrote this? Certainly not a competent editor and/or copy editor.

    Gannett Co., Inc. is accepting applications for Design Team Leaders. The Team Leader uses cutting-edge design and technology to create visually effective and appealing print products that adhere to legal, ethical and quality standards. The team leader manages the workflow of a group of newspaper page designers assigned to a specific cluster of newspapers.

    "Team leader" is both uppercase and lowercase in the same paragraph! And the same graf mentions "quality standards?!" Ha ha ha.

    I do love the use of the word "cluster."

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  7. Here's another nugget: Gannett Co., Inc. is searching for Wire Copy Editors to work in the newly formed newspaper Design Studio's.

    Studio's. Seriously?

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  8. The possessive apostrophe in Studio's is correct, it's just that they left off the word "dungeon" to follow it.

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  9. 11:50 a.m., thanks for the laugh-out-loud!

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  10. Regarding "studio's": As Dave Barry once wrote, the apostrophe is used to warn the reader that an "s" is coming.

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  11. Wrong link, Jim? The link in this article took me to a Gannett recruiting fan page. This is the maintained Design Center page: http://www.facebook.com/#!/designstudiosgannett

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  12. 4:06 I think your right!

    I'm on my iPhone, so I'll have to post the correct link later.

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  13. I "liked" it because I want to be able to see the progress - and how quickly my job will be eliminated locally. It's an information gathering tool, but the info I'm gathering isn't likely to be the info they want people looking for. And, yes, I am well aware that they are only posting what they want to share -- I'm not naive.

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  14. I'm looking at the design center page and spotted this, so I checked out the link.

    The Green Bay Press-Gazette was highlighted by Sharon Shahid's "Today's Top Ten Front Pages" section on Newseum. Check it out here: http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/topten.asp. (Green Bay will be part of the Design Studio in Des Moines.)

    Um, it's not to Green Bay; it's the Wausau Daily Herald.

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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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