Given the volume of news yesterday regarding the unexpectedly early layoff of newsroom employees at The Tennessean in Nashville, I've created this post just for your continuing comments. For earlier comments, please see this thread.
Earlier: Cutting 20 newsroom jobs will help "deepen the paper's legacy of public service journalism."
Related: this read-only spreadsheet tracks site-by-site second-quarter layoffs across Gannett.
[Image: yesterday's paper, Newseum]
Related: this read-only spreadsheet tracks site-by-site second-quarter layoffs across Gannett.
[Image: yesterday's paper, Newseum]
What's the role of the Corporate-driven "passion topics" in Nashville's suddenly shrunken newsroom?
ReplyDeleteNobody really knows, Jim. We had a meeting about it, and it was like a guessing game with management. Some employees gave some really thoughtful, intelligent answers. It was as if the managers already knew what answers they wanted and we had to guess them.
ReplyDeleteThe prevailing wisdom in the newsroom is that the "passion topics" mantra will go away in six months just like every other flavor-of-the-week initiative that comes up. In 2010, we couldn't get through a day without an editor asking us about Watchdog stories. This year, that phrase was not uttered by editors until these layoffs. We all busted our butts to learn the ContentOne Dasboard, and now nobody touches the thing since CCI has come along - what a disaster that has been.
Even more interesting has been to watch the design studio come together with its cache if sparkling new computers, the employee lounge with chaise chairs, wall art and funky lighting and the design studio people hounding us for meaningless info boxes with every story. People are sitting on their asses over there with nothing to do while the layoffs paraded past them yesterday out the back door. So far, the managers in the design studios main jobs seem to be to buy furniture - including about 100 Ikea-looking lamps - and badgering us reporters for bullshit.
I overheard one of the editors saying Silverman might have gotten himself in trouble complaining to corporate about the miserable CCI launch. And now passion topics? How inane does that sound. I know some people don't like Mark in the Gannett-wide world, but we like him. He is tough but fair. I think he would like to fight back, but he is as screwed as everyone else in this economy.
Was the front page Jim displayed done by the design hub? It's one of the blandest fronts I've seen in awhile. Yawn.
ReplyDeleteNot just the newsroom was hit; a transportation super and a part time driver were cut.
ReplyDeleteRe: flavor of the day -- I'm old enough to remember the News 2000 pyramid! For awhile, that was within reach.
ReplyDeleteYes, and Reinan revised the pyramid so it had just two blocks, instead of 10:
ReplyDelete1. Get the paper out
2. Make money
10:45, I think the other post implied the design studio wasn't doing anything yet. So the answer to your weak question probably would be no, unless someone decided to divert some work over there.
ReplyDeleteWow. That front page is made up entirely of intern and wire copy.
ReplyDelete9:05 . . . You need to remember the design folks didn't ask for this. Their newsroom jobs were eliminated. They were made to re-apply and are making less money. In some cases, much less money. What the hubs did accomplish was to drive a wedge between the studio and the newroom . . . I mean 'client'. 1100 Broadway will never be or feel the same.
ReplyDeleteIve got to say: watching my colleagues, many of whom I still have the utmost respect for, walk out that door yesterday was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my career. I couldn't help but wonder why not me? Why them? There is a measure of guilt involved in the entire process - to be sure. I can tell you this: The Tennessean will miss those they axed yesterday. The night reporter, CE, was an award winner for his series on Gangs. I thought it was one of the best pieces of journalism I've read, ever. JB, the higher ed reporter, was also an award winner. Who could forget her story on Friday the 13th, where everything added up to 13 - 13 graphs, 13 words in each sentence, that was AWESOME. Not to mention, sports columnist JB, who my parents - longtime subscribers, BTW - adore. When I told my mother about JB's cut, she couldn't speak. Then there's JM, the night editor, who I think I had the most respect for because he always gave it to me straight. EM and LO were particularly hard losses too, for me. I will miss them both dearly and I will miss all the others I've named and the others I haven't. We lost 13 good people yesterday, each a superstar in his or her own right. If you count DW and MS who left on their own - Silverman did - that number is up to 15. PC could also count as a .5 since going to part time. Going forward folks, I don't have any answers. I'm not sure what the future holds, but days like yesterday are ones I hope I never have to witness again. I've been through it before, granted, but yesterday was tougher than the others. I will miss you all comrades, but I know you have a bright future ahead of you. How can you not, especially when each and everyone one of you ROCKED!!!
ReplyDeleteSorry, I meant DL - don't know why I put DW - and I also don't know how I ended up with everyone plus an extra one there either - see I told you I would miss JM - he'd have caught that!!
ReplyDelete12:36, what a beautiful tribute. Nothing makes sense anymore.
ReplyDeleteI am at another site where some central work is being done. Why are these folks getting first rate equipment and environment while those doing the work that feeds their jobs are shit on?
ReplyDeleteThere is an absolute wedge between the Design Center and Newsroom. It's really sad actually. I think the leadership is to blame but the wanna be "google" environment with the fancy schmancy couches, flat screens, lamps, and snack machines-that I'm sure non-design center staff not go near- has caused some of the nice people there to get a bit snooty! And some of the new hires showed up that way:(
ReplyDelete12:36, if you thought that 13 gimmick was great, then your pink slip is overdue.
ReplyDeleteLet's just sum it all up.
ReplyDeleteTennessean editors had to make some hard choices, and the tried to do it based on the necessity of the jobs people had at the time of the layoffs - not on the merit of the people. They were all fine people. Night and weekend staffers caught the brunt of it, but so did journalists whose jobs could be freelanced out, specifically the entertainment staff. There was an exacting measure of logic to the cuts, as insane as cutting weekend staff at a daily paper sounds. It just means already overworked people will now be sharing weekend shifts, but the cuts won't cost us A1 stories.
Nobody at the site itself wanted to do this. There were a couple of people on the list who everyone in the newsroom knows - rightly or wrongly - were in perpetual hot water. Still, their presence and contributions will be missed as will their personalities.
Folks, whether you work in Nashville or do not, hear this: Gannett is a morally bankrupt company at the top. MORALLY BANKRUPT.
For all the good people at the individual properties try to do through their journalism and public service, the people at the top - CD, BD, GM, et al - are simply milking this company and the communities it purports to serve for every last drop of cash. That's not cash for Wall Street, investors or even for the company to reinvest. Look at the numbers, and, frankly, Gannett's long-suffering investors are getting repeatedly hosed. The board of this company is freakishly stupid for allowing it. I have this mental picture of them: Two dozen gimps sitting around a table drooling and picking their string warts as CD flicks paper footballs at them from his wheeled perch.
No, they are milking this company for personal gain - obscene salaries and bonuses. Greed is good, pure and simple, when it comes to the corporate officers of Gannett. They are willingly running the ship into the rocks. They are sitting by as Rome burns. Whistling past the graveyard, if you will.
In short, they are killing community journalism in this country on purpose.
What can stop it? Nothing, really. This is America, and if investors and the Gannett board are stupid enough to sit by and watch it happen, then that nullifies the only real authority the crippled robber-baron at the top of this train wreck of a company would bow to.
Perhaps what makes it all so galling is that "the company" doesn't seem to really care. In fact, in some weird way, the Gannett hive mind appears to delight in rubbing things like this layoff in the faces of the employees through bloodless corporate speak like BD's letters and the largess Nashville has seen in the design studio.
I mean, do they really expect employees to rally around and say, "Whew! We are so happy, HAPPY this transformation is taking place. We are rooting for our company. Go, Gannett! Go, Craig! Cut another hundred, baby!"
Do they expect that kind of enthusiasm? Surely the ubiquitous Gannett "they" are not so detached from reality that they think employees - even high level managers like Silverman and Hudler - are cheering this crap on. The corporate speak seems almost an Orwellian form of intentional cruelty. It's like someone asking you to chuckle heartily while getting buggered.
But, I digress.
It would take a journalist from somewhere significant with the right gravitas - the Wall Street Journal, probably - to do the story right, but the story is there: The Raping of Community Journalism.
You only need two words here, folks, to understand our woes; Morally bankrupt.
It's sad how a few negative opinions from a few self-righteous Tennessean reporters (CS and the like) and the Tennessean's gossipy, self-entitled and arrogant online staff (DY, RT, KLR, MW, KS) can poison the relationship between the newsroom and studio (which is mostly made up of former Tennessean design and copy staff. The studio staff is using their old Tennessean computers. And what about the new paint, carpet, chairs and flat screens in the Tennessean newsroom? Oh, I guess they forgot to mention that. I will concede that the studio looks better. They have a nicer paint scheme.
ReplyDeleteAnd if it's not already obvious, I too work in Nashville. And in my opinion the studio staff has bent over backwards to accommodate the demands and jaded attitudes coming from their former colleagues.
Whoa, 1:08! I wrote that 13 story. (Not the 12:36 post, which was incredibly sweet.)
ReplyDeleteSo glad my layoff pleases you, 1:08.
Meh. Daily stories can't all be Pulitzer material. Although some of mine have been, thank you very much. And that dumb 13 story that I dashed off in an hour because I thought it would be funny *did* win me yet another Gannett writing award.
Dude. Seriously? You're trolling a layoff board? You don't think I feel sad enough right now?
Anyhoo, what I came here to say was this:
I love you guys. I loved working with you. I loved writing for this paper. Nashville is a fun, fun news town and I know you're going to keep covering the hell out of it.
The 6:51 post nailed why I got fired. But as others have said, I don't hate Silverman. I don't hate any of them. Thanks to the Tennessean, I got to cover cockfighting and tent cities, flood and famine. Civil War reenactors had me on speed dial. If I'd never come to the Tennessean, I never would have gotten to utter the phrase, "So...which Oak Ridge Boy are you, again?" I had fun, I have few regrets, and I'll be fine. And so will you.
Although, in retrospect, I do regret not stealing one of those design center lamps on my way out the door. Those things are hilarious.
6:51: That was so beautifully put. Jim, if there is any way to send that blurb to the
ReplyDeleteWSJ, I think we've got our 1st page story, folks.
Well, I never had a problem with the design center. Other than the fact that their pumpkin-colored accent walls clash hideously with their royal blue accent walls. Seriously, what the hell?
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, the fact that making room for the design center meant cramming four news departments -- news, features, business and sports -- into a space that used to hold just two (with all the photographers, copy editors and the entire online staff wedged in there for good measure.)
So you can imagine how delighted the editorial side was to see the cavernous design center come together. Your lounge? Used to be the sports department. The entire sports department. Now it's a couple of funky couches, some vending machines, some hipster wall art and a flatscreen TV the size of a ping-pong table. The sports guys are now wedged into a narrow aisle between features and online, packed in so tightly they have to be careful not to elbow each other upside the head as they type.
Meanwhile, the dozen or so design center employees rattle around like the last few peas in the bottom of a tin, practicing their calligraphy on their chalkboard wall. (Chalkboard wall! We can't even put up a map of metro Nashville in the newsroom and they have a chalkboard wall. They hide the chalk from the reporters, though, which is probably wise.)
And then there's CCI, the greatest scourge to come out of Denmark since the Vikings. Sweet baby Jesus, that system is ass. The entire thing is set up to make life easy for the designers. The thing can barely spellcheck, for crying out loud. The reporters and editors have to contend with bored designers poking into stories while they're still being written (stop doing that! It's maddening!) and occasionally doing things that just cause stories to vanish into the ether.
The lamps are the latest. A zillion desk lamps, lighted around the clock and glowing softly over the acres of empty desks in the design center. You're not fooling anyone, Design Center! Lamps are not people!
But a newsroom v. design center feud isn't particularly productive. Not the least because the newsroom will lose. None of this is the designers' fault. The design center guru is a really great guy (possibly colorblind, but otherwise righteous.) It's fine to rail against the situation, but there's no reason to attack individuals. No name-calling, 9:32! Or initial-calling!
Channel your rage onto the one who truly deserves it: Deal Chicken.
@10:25, I thought the idea of your "13" story was clever! Not the usual boring rehash of a typical Friday the 13th story.
ReplyDeleteI'm also sorry you got laid off. Obviously the newspaper lost a good person who gave her all. But you sound like the sort of person who will land on her feet soon enough, and another employer will be lucky to land you.
Best of luck to you, from another former Gannettoid.
10:25, if you cannot read any better than that, then you should have been fired long ago. Also, how were you ever hired? That's a question that should be asked about many people here.
ReplyDeleteYou might miss newspapers, but they won't miss you. Please, stay away. Do not ever again go into anything that requires reading and writing.
What's the matter, 12:35, never won an award and you're bitter? Or are you just the same old troll trying to spin the story for the non Gannett employees reading this blog who may be surprised by the number of award winning, hard working 25 year employees who lost their jobs so that the Corporate Execs can keep their bonuses coming? It's pathetic.
ReplyDeleteHow I see it: The design studio got paint and has the old carpet except for the lounge. The "wall art" was made on the cheap by design staff - unlike the monster-size, obscenely expensive photos of Keith Urban and the bat building in the newsroom. Cost-wise, I'm guessing here, that the newsroom renovation cost a whole lot more than the studio's did. Sorry the "decorator" chose hospital-white walls and clashing blues. No clocks allowed, really?
ReplyDeleteIt's my understanding that the design studio is set up to hold about 70-100 employees as more papers come. The flat screens are there to allow designers to watch local news from their out-of-state stations as well as stream meetings.
The lamps ... well, can't defend those.
But seriously - all that is just stuff and an easy target. The real issue is that relationships are suffering. The great divide now exists because this was a disaster waiting to happen. When you separate creative, intelligent people who were collaborating and discussing pages, headlines and stories and expect a good result, you are kidding yourself.
And management made it worse by creating this "client/studio" relationship.
CCI does not make anything easier for anyone - including designers, who are just as frustrated with it as news side is.
Note to management on both sides: You can turn this around. Figure it out, but this time put people and their relationships in the equation.
I'm sick about all the people and friends who got laid off - just sick.
1:09 Interesting. Have you ever been to Las Vegas. They have no clocks in the casinos if you notice, and that is because they don't want to allow you to know how much time you are spending either winning or losing money. So the idea of no clocks in a newspaper is so you don't notice if you go over your workday time limit, and so are forced to phony up the time sheet to ensure you don't work more than 40 hours a week.
ReplyDeleteI know about wall clocks because I have a friend who is in the Army reserves and was recently activated. He came home and went shopping immediately for a very expensive watch because he said he really noticed that whereever he went in the United States there were usually clocks on the wall, yet this wasn't at all true when he was overseas in some hellhole like Iraq.
ReplyDeleteEven in normal times, newsrooms are not often welcoming places. People are busy working, writing or editing stories. Although there's quite a bit of noise, If you are talking too loud, someone trying to do a telephone interview will shush you because you are breaking their concentration. So these design centers sound like a noise-free zone in the middle of a noisy newsroom, and or a sort of desert island. Do you think they are deliberately creating this "us" and "them" attitude with these design centers, or was that just by accident. Was the choice of paint and artwork a deliberate turn-off, or deliberate? Someone is playing games with you and signaling the future. The future? those who aren't in the design center will find themelves on layoff lists the next round, or the round after that. And design center people will find their jobs safe not because of their expertise and abilities, but because they are new and are generally cheaper to maintain than the regular staff. That they can't produce copy in this design center is a problem, but one that most of us will have to mull over while looking for another job, I think.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to contemplate another "us" and "them" division in operation elsewhere, look at Heather and her goalers at USA Today.
ReplyDeleteAnyone got a link to a picture (perhaps Lamps.com or Amazon.com) of what these lamps everyone here is talking about? Just for those of us not in Nashville and have no plans of visiting soon?
ReplyDelete2:51, you seem to have it figured out. You should be solving Hardy Boys mysteries or something.
ReplyDeleteCome on, people. You are making it too easy to make fun of you. At least try to say something sensible.
4:03 Absolutely, I have figured it out. Interesting you pick the Hardy Boys for your screed, since these books portray the amateur detectives who were agents of the ruling and money-grubbing classes. Indeed I have read Franklin Dixon because my father, a conservative and very affluent New York banker made me, even though it is very difficult because he seems to have multiple personalities. Strikes me you need to take a second look at your selection of literary comparisons to me, and I know very well who I am. I am not making fun.
ReplyDeleteThis looks like the lamp: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/30150451
ReplyDeleteIts $20.
4:03 Like Armand, I also have a full set of all 34 Nancy Drew mysteries, if you would like to use that to attack me.
ReplyDelete4:12 Wow, they really splurged. White walls, white lamps, and blue. Truly an inviting, clean restful place like having a hospital room in the middle of all those papers, books, garbage and weird junk on the desks of a newsroom.
ReplyDeleteHhhmmm. Interesting development:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.tennessean.com/article/20110702/WILLIAMSON01/307020006/Williamson-A.M.-to-publish-3-days-a-week-in-favor-of-e-newsletter
4:51 Yes, very interesting. One wonders if this is the beginning of the new suburban initiative Crotchfelt has been talking about launching in September. I previously thought it might be zoning, but perhaps it is newsletters.
ReplyDeleteIkea certainly gives good, solid, plain vanilla no frills, no fuss furniture and accessories. Good value for money, too, except they really don't have the longevity you get from spending a little more for style.
ReplyDeleteAcer computers to follow.
ReplyDeleteFor photos from the various Design Studios -- including Nashville's -- see their Facebook fan page by searching for "Design Sudios Gannett."
ReplyDeleteFor the most part, everyone let go in Nashville was well respected and liked, both within and outside the paper. I get the logic of almost everyone let go - I can almost hear that ghoulish conversation among the top editors about who they could replace with freelancers and who can be replaced by reshuffling other reporters schedules without doing too much damage to productivity. There were one or two on shit lists, but well liked among their peers. Maybe that should make everyone feel better, since there was NOTHING PERSONAL about who was let go.
ReplyDelete'Course it doesn't.
The pattern I do see - actually, two - are these: I think, down to a person, everyone let go had at least a decade of experience. Some considerably more. So it's just another, not particularly wise or creative exercise in cutting the people who cost the most.
Second, and let me give a big old preface to this by saying that I have shaken my head sadly at the bitterness of other posts in other rounds of cuts directed at those who weren't cut: the losers, the jackasses, the unproductive people and thought that those personal gripes may have a grain of truth, but seemed a little unseemly during layoff news, which tend to magnify everyone's daily frustrations about the workplace.
But, OK, I've come to the point where I'm mad as hell about the terrible managers who don't get fired while we lose all these quality people. The managing editor who nobody really saw for years come out of her office until she started enthusiastically inviting us to examine paint swatches and carpet colors to decorate the newsroom. She's still here. The team editor accused of serious, serious ethical misconduct - plagiarism, making deals with corporate flaks in exchange for favorable coverage - The rumor is he was disciplined and we all got a nice email clarifying our attribution policy after his latest lapse blew up. But you know what? He's STILL HERE. The other manager known for her predilections for hiring only presentable young men in button down shirts. Still. Here.
I don't wish the loss of livelihood on anyone, but the underlying problems Gannett has always had with hiring editors mainly for their ability to be loyal just blows when people, good people who give a shit about journalism and whose work actually brings readers to the paper are shown the door. Read all the postings in our alt weekly about PC and NK losing their jobs from music industry insiders who are appalled at their loss. People who pick up the paper to read JB are posting they will cancel their subscriptions. I'm so disgusted. When are we all going to show up at our respective workplaces and just start screaming "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore?" When did we reporters and editors who pride ourselves on being tough, on getting into the business to kick ass, become such pussys?
6:27 Good, you have come to the correct conclusion. The corporate powers that be want you to feel guilty and blame yourself for what is happening. But you are not to blame, and those laid off were not to blame. It was not the economy, because that is improving as you can see from the national statistics. It's not the newspaper business, because other newspapers are muddling through without all these rounds of layoffs. They did one or two rounds, then stopped. We are up to five by my count now, and they dribble them out so we lose count. Thanks Jim for your PDF list so we can keep it straight.
ReplyDeleteThe real story is that corporate execs are getting raises and bonsues for imposing these cutbacks, and they are going to get bonuses and pay increases next year for what is happening now. As others have said on this board, face up to the facts, as you appear to have done.
If you want to know the difference between Gannett and other newspaper companies, take a look at what Gay Talese, the New York writer, says about the New York Times. A few years ago, he appeared on TV to criticize the Time's new publisher as leading the Times down a rathole toward degraded journalism. Talese appeared on TV's Charlie Rose show last week to retract that statement and say the NY Times is better today than he has ever seen it. Talese is frankly not my cup of tea and I find him an insufferable before. But this retraction shows he's an honest bore. That retraction changed my opinion of Talese because I agree with him on the improvement of the NYT.
ReplyDelete.....not before, but bore
ReplyDelete@4:51, I read the announcement, and I am dumbfounded. Especially with this graf:
ReplyDeleteWe believe the email newsletter and online posting will provide an opportunity to be more timely with Williamson news at the beginning of the week.
"More timely?" Bullfuckingshit. Those are slow advertising days, and everyone knows it. Why wouldn't the reader still want news on those days? And wasn't that one of the positions axed this week, the person who covered that area?
Aw, they haven't Facebook-posted any pictures of The Design Center By Lamplight. Sadness.
ReplyDeleteBecause when they dim the lights and fire those suckers up, the place looks like an acre of glowing mushrooms.
Kinda creepy, actually. Nobody wants their workplace to look like a community theater production of "Avatar."
Careful, 6:27. Speaking truth to power is the sort of thing that can get you fired at The Tennessean these days.
ReplyDeleteI'd like the paper to keep as many writers and editors as possible who still care enough to get angry.
9:32, don't know who you are, but you are an uninformed ass clown.
ReplyDeleteNobody on the online team is even vaguely aware of the design studio or what goes on there.
And holding some kind of grudge against a reporter like CS - who sometimes writes as many as three A1 stories a week and at times six to seven stories overall per week - is a joke. Chances are you have never displayed his level of productivity. Sounds like he put you in your place one day after yet another late, inane request for a meaningless infobox and you went back to the design studio to pout about it. Suck it up, Cupcake.
2:16 and the like - you're all acting like spoiled children. Grow up and stop the pettiness. Y'all should be supporting each other. Don't let poor corporate decision-making rip you apart and make you more vulnerable than you already are.
ReplyDeleteAh-ah, 10:41! No name calling! It's fine to want everybody to hug it out and get along, but it's not cool to make that demand immediately after you called your colleagues spoiled children.
ReplyDelete2:16 was merely defending CS, as is proper, because CS is mighty. Power on, CS.
Look, you're not going to win a comment war against a bunch of pissed-off reporters. You're just not. Snide typing is our milieu. Best to just step aside and let us scream and hate on the lamps a little longer.
Then on Tuesday, everyone can return to work refreshed and relaxed. Except, you know, the people who were fucking fired last week.
One of the reporters the Tennessean laid off was a recent widow with two kids to feed. Another needed her paycheck to care for a husband who has Alzheimer's.
Neither one of them was drawing a big paycheck. The money the Tennessean spent on paint and lamps and a forest of unnecessary flatscreen TVs could have covered their salaries for the next year, easily. How can you not want to scream about that?
"Snide typing is our milieu." You're not very good at your milieu.
ReplyDeleteHere's a hint: If you have to run around telling everyone you're good at something, then you're probably not good at it.
Milieu isn't a boast, chucklehead. It's the environment in which someone operates comfortably. Like, say, reporters on keyboards.
ReplyDeleteWanna go another round, comment troll? You know you don't work at the Tennessean. You're bringing a toothpick to a knife fight here.
Nope, still not a good response. For someone who trumpets "snide typing," you sure suck at it.
ReplyDeleteSo where does this leave all of us? I understand the "mad as hell" shouting impulse, I understand being upset at the trolls, I understand that irritation levels are rising with inept or unethical or arrogant managers and co-workers, and being heartsick at the forced departures of good colleagues - with babes to feed and sick spouses to support, etc. But three years into this massive tanking of our newsroom, what really is the answer? Is it: LEAVE - as in, find a PR job? Create a nonprofit news org? Wait tables? Or, STAY - and do what? Continue to be embarrassed by producing work that doesn't rise to our own standards? Develop ulcers? Pick your battles and try and be satisfied by subversively managing to do good work once in a while?. Seriously, what are people going to do now?
ReplyDeleteJust wow. Must be lonely being you, 1:52 p.m.
ReplyDeleteGood question, 2:36. Wish to hell I had answers, my friend.
ReplyDeleteDon't see a 1:52 p.m. here. The cluelessness goes up here on holiday weekends.
ReplyDeleteWaaaait! 12:36/1:58/2:38 et all isn't a troll! OMG, it's the Deal Chicken! That's the only creature lame enough to troll a layoff board!
ReplyDeleteHow you manage to type with your wee flappy wings is a mystery for the ages, Deal Chicken! Or are just be hunting and pecking on the keyboard with your cruel pointy beak?
Either way, sit back and pour yourself a frothy mug of STFU. First round's on the house.
"Or are just be" -- what? Here's a tip, lemming troll. First learn English, then hurl insults.
ReplyDeleteDrink, chicken. Drink deep.
ReplyDelete@2:51: Huh. No wonder 1:52 is lonely. Not existing is the loneliest existence of all.
ReplyDeleteI am a designer at a small daily Gannett newspaper. If I decide not to apply for a Design Studio job, I will probably not have a job with Gannett. I don't want to leave my current newspaper, and this is not my choice, but as a last resort, I may end up there. I understand that people are upset about these layoffs, and I am very upset about them too, but I'm not sure why this is being taken out on the designers. This type of division and resentment toward the designers is a big part of why I don't want to work there. Are other Design Studios having as many problems as in Nashville? I'm planning to apply to the Design Studios soon, but I'm not sure I want to work in such a negative environment.
ReplyDeleteJust heard 22 more lay offs tomorrow at the Tennessean. They said that will bring the employee count down to the lowest it has ever been at the Tennessean since they have existed under Gannett.
ReplyDelete10:55, this is completely out of the blue. Are you pretty confident in your source, or is this just gossip trying to scare a bunch of already-scared people?
ReplyDelete2:52 Very.. No Gossip, Sorry. Just what was said.
ReplyDelete10:55/2:52, either your source was very wrong, or you're a liar. A pathetic liar.
ReplyDeleteThe corporate troll once again?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThe Reign of Terror at the Tennessean. Phony 40 hour time sheets.( Isn't that what got gannett in trouble in New Jersey with the labor board?) KS, the leader of online, and Silverman's number one , has poisoned the atmosphere in the newsroom and other department with her divisivness. None of her people got laid off. Some one explain to me why so many people are needed in online when so many that produced content got laid off. A managing editor who stays in her office and only emerges when she wants to show people carpeting and paint swatches. DF, the inept editor who put most of the best reporters on her hit list because they stood up to her and her dumb story ideas. DF only likes to hire male reporters because they don't have as many issues as women do.This woman has single-handedly destroyed the Tennessean. And then there is Silverman who has quite a temper and has everyone in the newsroom afraid to talk in the news meetings. Let's not forget publisher Carol Hudler who announced that layoffs would happen two weeks early during a celebration/tip rally and then immediately had to show everyone the new Deal Chicken ad which came up on the screen
ReplyDeleteand said FIND A JOB! Then to add insult to injury, Hudler's house husband Keeps calling on the weekends and hassles what is left of the the staff that things are not getting updated on the web quick enough. Again, no one in online works in the weekends KS has seen to that. No weekend editor, they laid off JM which also apparently caused them some circulation cancelations. Mix this with the Gannett hive mind which delights in rubbing things like this layoff in the faces of it's employees. What will these overpaid parasites do next? Make us sit around, hold hands and sing Cum bay ya?
3:26, you are spot on. Good post.
ReplyDeleteThis is just a guess on my part but I have seen this happen in several other companies. In all the TIP and sales meetings I attended, the overall theme was and has been always the same, "We are a very profitable company, just not as profitable as we were this time last year". So why all the changes over recent years? It's quite possible, and highly likely, Gannett is preparing to sell The Tennessean in the near future. This would explain the reduction in labor force costs and the renovations being made to departments. It makes perfect sense, reduce costs, increase share value. Renovate departments, increase appeal to potential buyers and/or investors.
ReplyDeleteI'm just saying.