Tuesday, September 06, 2011

Sept. 5-11 | Your News & Comments: Part 2

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31 comments:

  1. Simply amazed at some of the inocous comments you pulled last night.

    Way to go, Scoop. You are doing nothing to promote free debate and an exchange of ideas.

    I will think twice about trusting this blog again. The friends of jim club sure has a strange pro management bias.

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  2. There has been no concrete news here for a long time.Deletions are who knows what.I think people are ignoring this blog.
    Can there be absolutely no consolidation news?
    No design studio news ? Good news,bad news nothing,just a lot of whining and complaining and name calling,critizing seems to be main theme . You can't post here if you are former Gannetteer with a good news story or a cuurent Gannetteer with questionable news,but at least that would something other than just trivia.

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  3. This was posted in a previous tread. Does anyone one know the time lines for the design hubs? I understand there were problems with Newsgate:
    http://www.mediabistro.com/mediajobsdaily/gannett-preps-for-consolidation-layoffs-tk_b3030 This links to a story from last July announcing Gannett's purchase and transition to NewsGate CCI. Page layout will be consolidated into 5 design hubs. It seems that Asbury is very close to going live (Sept, Oct, Nov?). How are the other hubs coming along?

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  4. The Wilmington site is having two corporate visits. One in September from Mike Kane and another in October from Craig and his friends. Have other sites had similar visits?

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  5. Numerous jobs posted on careerbuilder.com for Hub positions. This is for a copy editor:

    http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSeeker/Jobs/JobDetails.aspx?IPath=QCKV&ff=21&APath=2.21.0.0.0&job_did=JB96R26J2D5Y1RB966C

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  6. Here is another job listing for a page designer:

    http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSeeker/Jobs/JobDetails.aspx?IPath=QCKV&ff=21&APath=2.21.0.0.0&job_did=J8A4ZM6KHKXGMBH13SW

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  7. Hey everyone, check out 9news.com this morning. I hope you are in the mood to buy some tires. With that huge wrap around ad, I can't even concentrate on the stories!

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  8. 12:20, find something else to complain about. Wrap-around ads have been around forever, and they're not nearly so distracting as you suggest.

    Furthermore, I'm curious what your ad strategy is. With revenues down enough as it is, where do you draw the line between telling an advertiser no and risk annoying readers?

    I think, this time, 9news erred on the right side of the line. Then again, it's easy to find something to complain about, right? Everyone's a critic.

    Full disclosure: I do not work at 9news, but I do work in Digital.

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  9. 12:20 I took your advice and went to 9news.com. The tire wrap is barely there. What the heck are you talking about? I wouldn't have noticed it if you hadn't said something. This is what you complain about? Really

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  10. Yahoo is having its own internal struggles, yet Gannett trumpets an expansion of its partnership with Yahoo in the latest At Gannett email to the troops. Gaaaaaahhh.

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  11. Detroit News and Free Press going down. Not certain about Detroit News, but assuming because Free Press is going to have its design done and most copy editing done someplace different in January, no way Detroit News will survive I believe because Gannett has control for the most part there (in reality). Free Press was sucking anyway, still sorry for the jobs though.

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  12. Can anyone supply the timeline when each hub will assume the page layout of the other papers and sections? Jim? Any news on this?

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  13. Gannett shares closed at $9.96. Sounds like the price of souvenir T-shirt about to go off-season. The P/E ratio is down to 4 and change, 6 based on the Street's collective estimate. No one wants to touch this dog. The NY Times is at 15 and 17, respectively. Washington Post Co. is 9 and 21, NewsCorp. 13 and 13. These are GCI's peers, but GCI shares sell for a huge discount. Not a coincidence, perhaps, after Gannett stripped all the content from its news outlets save beer-swigging, cleavage-baring teen babes.

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  14. 2:53 The hubs are for U.S. community group newspapers; the Freep has never been one of those. It's part of the USA Today group.

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  15. HUGE NEWS: GANNETT just bought US PRESSWIRE.

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  16. 5:34 Where did you see/read that?

    All I've found is the following 18-month old item:

    In a March 11, 2010, news release, US Presswire said:

    "US PRESSWIRE and Gannett announced today that they are testing the benefits of adding US PRESSWIRE’s daily regional photo coverage for all Gannett-owned newspapers and broadcast properties."  

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  17. 4:28 All the newspaper publishing stocks got slammed today -- although GCI was hit hardest.

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  18. 4:23, Jim knows nothing. You might as well ask the wall for information.

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  19. Jim: I heard from a colleague that was on the webinar/conference call at 1pm today. USPW is having 2 more repeats of the call, around now and another at 9pm. Also, a legendary Sports Illustrated photog will be leaving his job to run it.

    Look out, Getty and AP.

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  21. How many Gannett executives does it take to screw in a light bulb? Three. Hunke to hire a VP to hold the ladder while he hires another VP to schedule a meeting to discuss what a light bulb is. Makes sense since no great ideas have derived since he came to USAT.

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  22. Why is it that so many people have not yet been notified that their jobs are ending? There are folks who have not gotten calls from jobs they applied for at the Design Studios Gannett, don't have much work at their current shops any longer, but no one has officially informed them of anything. This is typical Gannett. I guess they just expect people to read the writing on the wall. Cruel.

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  23. Huffington Post beats up on USA Today, though the link seems to go to USA Weekend.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/06/usa-today-math-for-grownups_n_950707.html

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  24. You'll have to excuse jim. He just got back from band camp. He's still fishing for info that's common knowledge around Gannett.

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  25. Jim, someone is making a repetitive comment about a vice presiden. Shouldn't that be removed under your new policy?

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  27. From my personal experience, Gannett's biggest weakness was its concentration of power in a small group of corporate bigshots.
    Less-than-average journalists become all-knowing assholes after a corporate pin is stuck on their chest. Because of their high salaries, they felt compelled to create company-wide programs designed to improve profitability across the company.
    Editors are often ignored. And questioning corporate initiatives often leads to ridicule, brow-beating and even dismissals.
    I heard the following exchange at an on-site several years ago. It kind of sums up the "Passion Topics" thing. Just substitute the passion for the bureaus. Forty corporate types and local managers listened to this very telling exchange:
    VP: "Tell me, who closed the northern bureaus? Who could have done something that stupid?"
    EDITOR: "Your predecessor did that, sir. She encouraged us to focus on our core population. She said that's where our growth would come from."
    VP: "Why didn't you protest?"
    EDITOR: "I wasn't here then or I would have. Obviously, the north is where to be."
    Two weeks later, the editor was fired. "He didn't know what he didn't know," the publisher said.
    I am certain most Gannett editors would agree that getting corporate off their backs would help them "do more with fewer resources."

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

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  29. A deleted my boss post? Really?

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  30. Probably the bogus My Boss.

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  31. 7:08 It included a reference to someone being fired, without anything to back it up.

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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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