Monday, May 02, 2011

May 2-8 | Your News & Comments: Part 1

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47 comments:

  1. Whoof! The week's starting off with huge news: Bin Laden's been killed.

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  2. One would hope that all the Gannett papers out there that now print at a combined press facility and have to get out early Sunday night haven't already printed and gone to bed with NO story on this!

    It would be interesting to see tomorrow if any Gannett paper failed to get this story in.

    I would HOPE they all hold the presses for such a major breaking story with high single-copy sales potential.

    Hwever.... one nevers knows... we will see Monday morning...

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  3. I've now just checked the websites of more than a dozen Gannett newspapers -- from New York to California -- and found banner headlines and multi-paragraph stories on all.

    The News Press in Fort Myers, Fla., has one of the most complete accounts: nearly 30 graphs. It includes reaction from President Bush and Congressional leaders.

    USA Today, meanwhile, does not have a complete story up yet -- not even the Associated Press' widely used account. Instead, it still has only a series of updates on its Oval blog, but none of the reaction seen in the much, much smaller Fort Myers paper's site. Its last update shows 11:44 p.m.

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  4. Just checked The Journal News/LoHud.com... Nothing at all. Considering the print deadline is 9 pm now with printing outsourced to a New Jersey site 80 miles away, I guess we'll have to wait till Tuesday to see it in print... Maybe mid morning Monday online??? Amazing. Just amazing.

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  5. I see a seven-paragraph story on LoHud.com.

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  6. The story is in print in today's USA Today.

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  7. Bil Laden is Dead...Phoenix increases draw for paper. Starter is 2 hours late. And one of the 2 presses is being worked on by both electritions and machinists cause it won't start. Looks like Bergen will be working tonight again.

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  8. As one who works in Ft Myers... the newsr... er IC did good. Even though almost all of what they had was AP, they were less than 30 minutes late.

    Today's paper was at least less confusing than the broadcast networks who could not agree on when this action took place, when it was authorized and how long it had been in the planning stages.

    Good work on deadline!

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  9. Jim, thank your for correcting 12:40. As someone who works in Westchester I can assure you, and anyone reading this blog, that our deadline is NOT and never has been, 9pm.

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  10. Getting the story on our websites is easy - that isn't the issue.

    The question is how the Gannett papers did with their print editions on this historic, keepsake edition day. And did the newsrooms have the time and staff to do justice to such a major story?

    That is the real question. Updates online is a piece of cake.

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  11. I saw this comment yesterday about the correspondents dinner.



    It makes great points, but I think we all need to understand that mainstream journalism is just one big "corporate shill-fest." This dinner may be an obvious example of that, but I see even more egregious examples at my sight all the time. Editorial adjusting content to suit complaints from advertisers. Stories being targeted so that they appeal primarily to people advertisers want to reach. In depth journalism left undone so that fluff stories advertisers like can be tended to.

    The mainstream media now exists to serve the corporate power structure, and it has to be that way because the media is run by giant corporations.

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  12. Sorry ... the post I referred to was deleted for some reason. Here it is.

    The dinner should go away and is an embarrassment to journalism. Watching journalists kiss up to powerful politicos and dumb celebrities is a terrible example for non-journalists to see. We are not them and don't want to be them. It's become a corporate shill-fest, now that most journalism companies are broke - it is irresponsible for companies like Gannett to treat its (remaining)employees so poorly and blow thousands on this ugly spectacle.

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  13. 12:21 AM

    You should not be surprised --The Westchester site has become the biggest joke in the print business. They are only good at one thing-backstabbing.

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  14. The early editions (at least) of the Monday Cincinnati Inquirer has NOTHING on bin Laden....

    maybe later editions did....

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  15. My local Gannett-owned paper was very, very late with its first posting last night. And when it did finally post it cited CNN as its source. Gosh, that was helpful.
    It looks like Sunday nights are nights off for Gannett onliners around circuit.
    Right, everything within reach except the biggest story of the century.
    Shameful.

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  16. Sad to say...lots of Big G papers have been cut to the bone and have so little content they're not worth reading (or advertising in)...death spiral continues.

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  17. My question. With the future design hubs handling so many papers at once and having "templated pages" - what would have happened if the hubs had to produce all those papers last night?

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  18. I think the big dogs, the five hub site papers, will do their own design since they're on site, just as it's always been done. Think Des Moines. The feeder sites, including the ten papers in Wisconsin, won't be as lucky.

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  19. I hope the design centers will seek out the advice of Toni Humphreys. She has led the RTC to phenomenal success by handling thousands of photos for ALL the newspapers. As we all know that is one successful unit. And now they have a prez ring.

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  20. There's a world of difference between paginating pages and pushing autocorrect in Photoshop.

    Or am I missing the sarcasm, 4:42?

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  21. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  22. Awesome Jim! I love the banner ad for living social, and the tower ad for groupon! What no deal chicken,best buys, or daily deals from our lovely Gannett websites? Why? BECAUSE THEY SUCK!

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  23. 9:53 LOL. Did you catch any of my ads for "President Trump?"

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  24. Not yet! Thank you for this very valuable blog to allow us to vent re what a crappy company Gannett is. Is it my imagination or did the Morristown Daily Record not have a huge headline re Bin Laden today????

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  25. Wondering if anyone in NJ has asked this medical benefits to HR recently and, the response. I was recently terminated. In January, as always the cost for benefits increased. Upon termination, I took a closer look at the deductions as I prepared to obtain COBRA. I called our benefits department directly. The increase was based on commissionable earnings. I have never heard of such a thing.If monthly commission is not constant, how can a benefit rate be based upon it? Is this even legal?

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  26. Wondering if anyone in NJ has asked this medical benefits to HR recently and, the response. I was recently terminated. In January, as always the cost for benefits increased. Upon termination, I took a closer look at the deductions as I prepared to obtain COBRA. I called our benefits department directly. The increase was based on commissionable earnings. I have never heard of such a thing.If monthly commission is not constant, how can a benefit rate be based upon it? Is this even legal?
    5/02/2011 10:12 PM

    I think you must be some kind of idiot, health insurance went up because it is a new year and like most things the cost of the Cobra went up....it's not a fixed thing, it has NOTHING to do with how much you earned or are earning. If you made $100K a year it is the same as if you made $10K a year, just like when you actually worked at the paper everyone gets the same health insurance options. What HR was talking about is your weekly supplemental pay it is base pay + any commission or extra pay you earned in the 12 months up to your layoff and then divided by 52 weeks. That is what they were explaining to you but you obviously can't express yourself clearly in what you are asking about. Listen I hate Gannett too, but for real you cannot blame them for this, I've noticed almost without exception on here that when it comes to benefits, payouts or anything financial people are freakin....... clueless!!!!

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  27. Why do most people on this blog get gratification in name calling? BTW, I can and do express myself clearly. Thats why I no longer work for Gannett, the company famous for typos.

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  29. USAToday front page got a lot of play on CNN today. People in the crowds were holding it up at Ground Zero. Seems like USAToday actually did a great job on the front page of the printed edition. How many copies were sold?

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  31. 10:47:

    At my site, and I assume corporate wide (since health insurance is purchased at the corporate level), the more one makes, the more one pays for the same coverage. The minimum wage janitor pays less for the same family health coverage than does the $150K Publisher.

    Notice that I didn't use the word earned.

    Apparently, it you who is clueless.

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  32. Those USAT obituaries are made years in advance, during any free time the artists have. The front page was terrific and that six-foot-four bastard's gone.

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  33. Did u see these job openings? http://www.journalismjobs.com/Job_Listing.cfm?JobID=1252149

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  34. 10:47- I think you must be some kinda douche. I sincerely hope you're not journalist with our company. You're fact checking skills are elementary at best.

    10:12 is absolutetly correct about their benefits going because of an increase in annualized salary. I'm not sure if this is policy for he golden children at corporate, but for the serfs in the uscp it is a reality.

    If you earn more than $60K with salary PLUS bonus your piece of the benfit pie is automatically increased by by about 20%

    It's just one more way this toilet bowl of a company penalizes it's sales staff for suceeding.

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  35. Florida Today beat it's nearest rival which did not have the story. Even our USA had it in time. FT nearly doubled our draws and they, of course, sold well. USA however didn't add anything and the carriers virtually sold out. Somebody asleep at the switch?

    Once again my arguement for the print edition is backed up. Put real news in./on the paper, people will buy it, regardless of how much paper companies want them to die.

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  36. 6:50aM, "Once again my arguement for the print edition is backed up. Put real news in./on the paper, people will buy it, regardless of how much paper companies want them to die."

    Been saying that for years, to deaf ears.

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  37. At my site, and I assume corporate wide (since health insurance is purchased at the corporate level), the more one makes, the more one pays for the same coverage. The minimum wage janitor pays less for the same family health coverage than does the $150K Publisher.

    Notice that I didn't use the word earned.

    Apparently, it you who is clueless.
    5/03/2011 3:32 AM

    Well again, it must be site specific with benefits, because at the Arizona Republic, you just pick the health insurance package that you want, the rates are the same for absolutely everyone and also when you say "health insurance is purchased at the corporate level" there is no actual purchasing of insurance, Gannett like all major corporations are self insured they don't actually pay premiums. They use the insurance companies to administer the benefits. For example; you go to the doctor and the bill is $100, it is processed through whatever insurance provider you picked with your plan, the appropriate deductibles, copay, etc. is assessed and a bill is sent to Gannett for the payment. Gannett is NOT paying premiums to Aetna, United Healthcare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, etc. They do pay a fee for the administrative services rendered but that is it. I do have my facts straight.... and I stand by my previous statement that when it comes to benefits and anything of a financial facts MOST but not ALL people on this site are completely clueless.

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  38. Today is the launch of the A and B sections of the four central jersey papers. They're treating it like the launch of the space shuttle Challenger. With the same expected results.

    It's kind of odd how smoothly things went in Nashville, in comparison. Could it be that the Bible-thumping tech guru here has a bad case of cranial-anal transposition?

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  39. USA Today's Bin Laden front looked like a movie newspaper with the "IS" just hanging there at the end of the first deck of the headline.

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  40. Blazed across the top of my site's Web site: Continuing coverage: The death of Osama bin Laden, last updated 9:34 p.m.

    Yawn. The Web's still our saviour?

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  42. On the bin Laden breaking news story: USA Today failed miserably online... Talk about getting beat. Was there any website that didn't have the news before usatoday.com. My suspicion is that on a Sunday night, the people most responsible for the website were home in bed. This is a paper that has been shifting more and more to Monday-Friday daytime shifts for a number of years. It started with what was previously considered the dot.com'ers who were under some of the most lax leadership imaginable and didn't see a need to be in the newsroom much past 5 p.m. Often wondered why these folks were even in journalism if they didn't want to work nights, weekends and holidays like the rest of the newsroom.

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  43. Hillkirk needs to call his close buddy Obama and get the full story. Any reporter would do that.

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  44. I thought it was all cleared up that Osama Bin Laden was born in Hawaii so why was he in Pakistan?

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  45. Lansing, MI was all over the Bin Laden news Sunday night with huge headlines on Monday morning, followed by extensive web coverage with local reaction, reaction from a local 9/11 survivor, and local Muslims.

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  47. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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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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