The rollout of the five newspaper page production Design Studios was inevitably going to experience some hiccups, given the complexity of a software and staffing project as ambitious as this, and that's exactly what I'm hearing from readers.
They say the problem is centered at the hub at Nashville, Tenn., the first to go online. Any delays would jeopardize cost-savings built into the project -- and into Gannett's quarterly earnings forecasts.
The reported delays are at:
Some newsroom staffers at USA Today told me earlier that they, too, have had big problems with the CCI installation. Corporate spent as much as $15 million on the software, according to federal regulatory filings.
The original plan was for the hubs to be phased in over two years, starting last summer. Assuming the situation at Nashville is true for all the dozen papers that hub is to serve, a six-month delay would be a significant dent in the timetable. (Spreadsheet shows hubs and their assigned papers.)
Nearly all of GCI's 81 U.S. dailies are to shift page design and production to five hubs. With Nashville, the other four are at Asbury Park, N.J.; Des Moines; Louisville, Ky., and Phoenix.
The hubs are part of GCI's work consolidation drive meant to reduce costs. Corporate has never revealed expected savings -- one reason why I was especially interested to read about the reported 50% staffing reduction at Florida Today.
They say the problem is centered at the hub at Nashville, Tenn., the first to go online. Any delays would jeopardize cost-savings built into the project -- and into Gannett's quarterly earnings forecasts.
The reported delays are at:
- The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, a reader says in an e-mail: "We were scheduled to go online with the Nashville hub in March. It's now September. Word I'm getting is the CCI NewsGate system is not as promised."
- Florida Today, where another reader says: "Brevard's transition to the Design Studio in Nashville has been delayed until after Labor Day. We were supposed to start with the studio in mid-June." About half of the 20 staffers on the copy desk eventually will lose their jobs, the reader says.
The original plan was for the hubs to be phased in over two years, starting last summer. Assuming the situation at Nashville is true for all the dozen papers that hub is to serve, a six-month delay would be a significant dent in the timetable. (Spreadsheet shows hubs and their assigned papers.)
Nearly all of GCI's 81 U.S. dailies are to shift page design and production to five hubs. With Nashville, the other four are at Asbury Park, N.J.; Des Moines; Louisville, Ky., and Phoenix.
The hubs are part of GCI's work consolidation drive meant to reduce costs. Corporate has never revealed expected savings -- one reason why I was especially interested to read about the reported 50% staffing reduction at Florida Today.
Virtually none of the corporate initiatives achieve the anticipated results. Many actually increase costs. The problem is that none of the people who come up with the schemes have anything to do with making them work so nothing gets reported as a failure. The level of frustration with corporate is at record levels. We have to live the realities of the business while the folks making all the decisions are out of touch and their decisions just make it harder for us to be successful. We are heading for the iceberg and no one knows how to steer the ship.
ReplyDeleteWe've been discussing Newsgate for the last couple of weeks, and i still can't figure out what it does, except perhaps give management detailed reports on productivity. We had already worked out viable ways of doing this without all this shuckin' and jivin'. If you did a time-motion study, I am sure you would see the additional and unnecessary labor involved for a system that was supposed to simplify things. And as far as productivity reports go, what difference can it possibly make to know one manager spent 15 minutes on a story, and another 1 hour. Some stories just need a lot more work than others.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jim, for giving prominence to what's happening with the hubs.The situation was suspiciously silent. I hope that editors involved offer some other details, like how deadlines have been affected and what happens with breaking news.
ReplyDeleteIf you've been in on any of the meetings about how the system is supposed to work, you realize that this transition is doomed to be a disaster. The local editors trying to get pages out using this system will spend more time in production than either before, meaning they have less time to actually plan and execute content. And, since the design hubs, don't do anything but slap pages together, the papers will once again take a huge hit in quality. Assuming, of course, they ever get this idiocy off the ground.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to the hell that is CCI.
ReplyDeleteWhat are the other hub go live dates?
ReplyDeleteI think the 10 Wisconsin papers are scheduled to go to Des Moines early next year.
ReplyDeleteI never figured out why corporate put hubs in non-CCI sites -- Asbury, Des Moines and Nashville -- and not Rochester where the News and IT staff has experience with a CCI installation and of operating/supporting a CCI system. And not to mention dealing with the Danes and their quirky installation ideas. It was a while ago, but it was a special experience to say the least. I knew those folks in Nashville, Asbury and Des Moines would have their hands full.
ReplyDeleteGone now, but never forgetting that install.
I remember when the hubs were first announced, and many McClatchy workers wrote on this blog how godawful and cumbersome the CCI system was.
ReplyDeleteThis was a trainwreck of an idea from the start, and even the people at corporate can't keep their stories straight.
ReplyDeleteMarymount makes promises about wanting the papers to each keep its individual look, then it comes out that all papers will use the same fonts and the layouts will be taken from chain-wide templates.
Then it comes out that each paper will pay a share of the costs for each hub, which in the end will make the money savings non-existent for many sites. That also was a surprise sprung by corporate well into the process.
The current snafu is that corporate promised each site would get an analysis of its local staffing needs by the end of April. That was supposed to provide numbers of how many people get to keep their jobs at each site, for planning/training purposes and to give employees some peace of mind in knowing something about the future.
We're in June now and that analysis is nowhere to be found. Corporate just says "It's not ready yet", with no explanation why the delay or when it might be ready.
And these are the people who are responsible for saving the future of this company?
More from gone now...
ReplyDeleteIt would be worthwhile hearing from our friends in Louisville and Phoenix. They are veteran CCI sites and probably have a decent assessment of the NewsGate system. The basic CCI publishing system can pop out pages very quickly. The design end can be very flexible if your set-up person(s) know what they're doing. But when you add the complexity of NewsGate, which joins some editior/reporter tools such as budgets to what amounts to production reporting tools things get tricky.
Gone but never forgetting
What few are paying attention to is the impact this is having on current staffing.
ReplyDeleteThey've announced that most of the positions will be going away at the local levels, so the people who are looking ahead are jumping ship for any other opportunity before they get pushed.
Those people either aren't getting replaced, or there are no quality candidates interested in having a job that won't be there in 9 months or 12 months. Add in furloughs and vacations, and staffing levels have to be at an all-time low. Managers sure as heck aren't offering to man the desk and help out at night.
If the implementation of these hubs is getting pushed back at all, that will just give the local people more time to execute their escape plan and there may be no one left working the desk at the local levels by the time they finally go online.
My editorial brothers and sisters, you will now know the pain that we in advertising have been putting up with for the last 18 months. You have your design hubs, we have the GPC. We are now equals in misery.
ReplyDeleteIf CCI is crappy software, it makes you wonder who's getting kick backs.
ReplyDelete8:29 No, I think someone got sold on the capabilies of new whiz-bang sofware that could point to cost-savings by simply monitoring and reporting on what people are doing. If you could just even out the time managers spend on stories, think of the cost-savings by consolidating editing functions in one place. There's always a reason for new software purchases because they are so expensive.
ReplyDeleteIn the U.S. Army, when this happens, they throw out the software and tell the procurement officer he's not going to be promoted and so might as well prepare for retirement. At Gannett, they make the employees live with the mistakes, even if it increases the workload and doesn't work as promised.
ReplyDeleteGod, the disinformation by Jim and a lot of the commenters is astounding.
ReplyDelete"Hey, I don't know anything about this, but I'm going to comment on how stupid Gannett is for putting in this crappy software"
First you complain that Gannett is stuck in the dark ages and isn't spending any money, and then when they try to do something that will actually help this company, you suggest someone is getting kickbacks. Maybe Jim should do another big post and try to win another fictitious award.
9:50 OK, just name two things that CCI helps us do better than the old system. Then prepare for incoming.
ReplyDeleteI think we're going to have a long wait. If 9:50 actually worked in NewsGate, he'd be fuming like the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteI don't know the details about the software, I just know the timelines we were given and they are now being pushed way back, which says we were ill-prepared, under-funded and ill-advised all along on this project. Like most. Meanwhile, the local sites are getting killed because designers are leaving and aren't being replaced. Where are the fill-ins we were promised? What about those retention bonuses?what about that master plan we would get in April? WTF is going on? Can anyone answer that?
ReplyDeleteScrew your retention bonuses. If we had to run overtime and train temp monkeys while we were waiting to get fired at the alter of GPC, so can you.
ReplyDeleteOvertime and temps. Really? Overtime has been a no go for years now, except for the most dire of circumstances. Like when multiple are on vacation and somebody calls in sick.
ReplyDeleteAll the page designer positions are posted on careerbuilder so I would assume things are in motion.
ReplyDeleteHey, we're still waiting. So if you can take a break from calling people lemming trolls on the other threads, how about telling us two thing that NewsGate does better than the previous system?
ReplyDeleteThe Design Center rollout in Phoenix is also delayed. Reno, the first paper to be designed in Phoenix won't go live until Jan 2012. After that it's staggered with a new paper every couple of months. The last paper goes live in Jan 2013.
ReplyDeleteI can't help but wonder what this means for the ads in CareerBuilder. Can they go ahead with hiring people when they don't know when they're actually to start working or how much they'll have to do.
10:45, people like you need to go away. I doubt you have offered a specific detail in the 30 months you have been out of Gannett and whining here. So don't demand them from others and then throw a fit if you don't get them.
ReplyDeleteBefore you start claiming "corporate shill," I'll say this transition was destined to go poorly. Gannett has long put far more responsibility on the shoulders of the designers than they could handle. There has never been a sensible transition plan for this move. All along, it's been the usual newspaper strategy: Ride with what we have (even if it takes a long time), and then someday we'll flip the switch on this new idea, and there will be no bugs, so it will work immediately.
This approach has failed repeatedly, but that has not stopped the company from implementing this idea. Also, the people who are to "lead" these design hubs are going to be exposed quickly as being in over their heads. It's a whole different world between what they have been doing and managing the production of multiple newspapers, all at the same time. This will be a colossal train wreck -- mark my words.
@2:41 a.m.: 10:45 p.m. here. My comment was directed at 9:50 from the previous evening (picking up on the two comments below him) and not you. I'm guessing you are also 9:56 a.m., which is why you took offense. No offense was meant. I think we agree that things are going off the rails.
ReplyDeleteSadly no, I haven't been gone from Gannett for the past 30 months. I've been at USA Today every day for the past too many weeks, spending twice as long as I need to in order to get my job done because of NewsGate.