Saturday, August 13, 2011

Aug. 8-14 | Your News & Comments: Part 6

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50 comments:

  1. Has anyone heard about a consolidation of IT services?

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  2. Re: yesterday's USA TODAY meeting

    Were any journalists in the room embarrassed by their colleague who asked "what are you going to do to keep us happy?"

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  3. @10:24 - good question

    How come the editor never answered any questions?

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  4. You aren't Barack Obama, 10:26. Hillkirk responds only to power: noblesse oblige

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  5. My motivation working for Gannett , survey says- 0
    I can say I lost all motivation over a year ago, as well as our entire pressroom staff. No one gives a hoot anymore. The layoffs and furloughs, wage freeze and all the rest has brought us down. We print one off the top 5 QC papers every period for the last 5 years, that's only pride in our craft, the rest is horse shoot.
    The company is a joke, with no vision, all the press ops are looking for new jobs outside the newspaper BIZ. We will bail, before they shut us down..that's a fact.

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  6. @10:24: You must have missed the collective cringe. Any adult knows that it's not anyone else's job to make you "happy."

    I'd say she pretty much made a joke out of the morale problem by opening her mouth.

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  7. 9:14 Any consolidation of IT services would come after this person's promotion in April.

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  8. 9:14 PM: Have not heard a anything, but with all the other consolidations I'm sure it's not too far down the road. ENG (Editorial), COE (circulation), RTC (photo toning), GPC (ad make up), NSS (finance) and HR. What's left? Classified call centers, marketing, advertising and IT. Of those, call center, marketing and IT would be the easiest to consolidate. If corporate IT support is any indication of what a consolidated IT would be like, I pity those left behind.

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  9. One division's IT departments announced a consolidation this week.

    From the same people who little more than a decade ago were scrambling to ensure business continuation plans and redundancies were in place for whatever Y2K problems would emerge, it's disheartening to see the leadership in this change rush to decrease that flexibility they trumpeted back then.

    Case in point: Yesterday Wave2 obituary self-service went down AGAIN for several hours. What used to be an inconvenience for one site or cluster of sites now affects a major revenue stream for most sites.

    To be honest, there's no point in consolidating IT half way. If we will have to call somebody and wait a week to have a site visit, we might as well call Bangalore and ship overnight to a service center.

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  10. Jim,
    How many were laid off at the Brevard site ?
    We never did get a final report here or on the other thread.

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  11. MSNBC's story, "Use your real name on Google+ or get minused fast" should be of interest to Gannett.

    http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/12/7359007-use-your-real-name-on-google-or-get-minused-fast

    "I will be removing Google+ from my online activities. There are many reasons for the use of pseudonyms, including personal safety. For years, we have instructed children and others to not use their "real names" online for privacy and safety concerns. Now Google, in its INFINITE UNwisdom decrees that only "real names" will be used," said "gwyddonaid" on YouTube. "Goodbye, Google. So much for 'do no evil.' "

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  13. 11 a.m. Good question. Brevard would need to answer that. Here's why:

    The newsroom cut about 20 positions. But some newsroom staff quit, rather than reapply for a job. So, some of the cuts were achieved through attrition.

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  14. My heart goes out to those in Brevard but I have a question that only someone who quit could answer.

    If you choose to quit rather than reapply do you still qualify for Transitional Pay? If you do not qualify for the TTP, why quit? Why not reapply and make only half an effort thus more or ensuring you're not rehired?

    I'm not being snarky here. I am asking these questions because I see a pattern in Gannett making employees reapply for jobs during reorganizations and I'm curious as to the options and procedure.

    thanks.

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  15. About 10 in Brevard. More to be laid off when they go to the design center.

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  16. 12:32 they didn't quit, they chose not to interview. They get TPP

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  17. Any of the half dozen or so brave souls left in Photo @ FT get the axe? MD? CB?

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  18. MD & CB OK. The only one I heard who is no longer with them is MB.

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  19. HEY 3:42pm: You're $hitting me?
    FT laid off one of their Pulitzer-Prize finalists who shot the shuttle explosion?
    A veteran (age 45-50) photojournalist?

    Damn, that STINKS to high heaven!

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  20. The generals are getting shot.
    The end for Gannett must be near.

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  21. WOW and what about the last 10 years, or did that mean job for live ahead of other more qualified shooters? Just wondering.

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  22. IT consolidation. Yes.
    But not instantaneously.
    IT services are slowly leaking out of the local sites, to Corporate, and consolidation sites.
    The Local IT services are losing the ability to control what happens at individual sites.
    As mentioned earlier, look at GPC, RTC, Mail, etc..
    Then comes Newsgate.
    If you aren't familiar with how this will all eventually work, call your local cable company, and see how well your problems are addressed by them. See how much they care.

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  25. 4:30pm, not sure if they let him go or he decided not to apply. Either case it sucks. MB was a good guy, will miss him.

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  26. Jim, why do you defend Crotchfelt so much?

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  29. 6:38 You are the first person to say that I do. In any case, I remove all comments that make fun of her last name. They're boring when they're not juvenile.

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  30. Bullshit, Jim. You haven't been removing them until recently. Don't lie to us.

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  31. Jim, debate over the usefulness of this Blog is fine and you've been very open to criticism.

    But we support you in cleaning the blog of nonsense. Please be aggressive in weeding out nutcases. In the end, this is your Blog and being transparent does not mean you have to wear a "kick me" sign.

    Everyone knows nonsense. Please don't hesitate.

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  32. 7:53 I'll amend that: I remove all such comments THAT I SEE.

    That said, if you find any I'm missed about KC, please let me know, and I'll take a look at them.

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  37. 7:53 I've now done a search and found about dozen references to KC that include inappropriate uses of her last name. I've removed them.

    Some of them were nearly four years old, dating to a time when I didn't know she'd even appeared on this site.

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  38. Jim, who is kissing Gannett ASS now.

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  39. It's not fair or appropriate to make fun of someone's name which they had not control over. Plus, KC was so full of smoke and mirrors in Phoenix and is apparently doing the same in Indy that there's plenty of other fun stuff to talk about!

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  41. Gawd, all trolls on GCI $5 per post payroll ... We know who you are and your efforts are pathetic. So just go away. Jim is a godsend to GCI workers. Without him, CD would even get away with more inconceivable greed and ineptitude than he's already getting away with.

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  42. Oh grow up.

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  43. Jim can delete and keep whatever he wants. It's his blog. If someone disagrees, they don't have to read or comemnt. Pretty simple really. Old subjects are old. Moving on....

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  46. Even The Indianapolis Star is having trouble dealing with KC's name.

    The paper's Dec. 22 story about her promotion to publisher has drawn 27 online comments. Among the 17 that weren't removed by editors, the following remain on the paper's site:

    "The name makes me think of TSA screening at the airport."

    "There's a name you don't want to Google Image Search without turning on the Safe Search feature."

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  47. good to have confirmation on how you run the blog, jim. You dont even read it???? Always thought so, now know so.

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  48. 6:12 Your comment is No. 86,459 posted to this blog, according to my Blogger publishing software. I've tried to read them all. But, yes: I miss some.

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  50. Jim - don't let the bastards get you down. Keep fighting.....

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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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