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Sunday, October 02, 2011
36 comments:
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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"Some of you are grossly overstating what I said last night (10:20). 10:47 your post solidifies why I shared my thoughts. I am now OPEN to an opportunity that may present itself to me instead of being loyal to a company that is sucking the blood from my veins and the air from my lungs.
ReplyDelete8:24 is showing ignorance by making the lottery statement. Of course I have to take things in to my own hands and can't wait to win the lottery. The odds are stacked against me considering I don't even play ..."
Actually, I posted both the 10:47 and the 8:24 remark, so it's kinda funny how the same intended message was interpreted two ways.
That said, the lottery remark wasn't meant to be taken quite so literally.
And given your reply today, I'm glad to see you're not putting your entire fate in "God's will" or, worse yet, Gannett's. (I'm sure CD and his enablers vastly prefer the Old Testament to the New, don't you?) Yes, it's exhausting. I was a salaried employee not hourly. So I put in all those extra hours too. But when you know you got another job to do -- salvaging your career now because you got at least 15 years before you can even think of retiring -- you just suck it up and get to work on your own escape plan. It takes work to figure out how marketable you are and, if not, how to get yourself there.
While it may seem like a difficult thing to do for someone with your obvious work ethic, you may want to consider scaling back on what you do for GCI in the meantime. Delegate more. Evaluate tasks that are non-essential and those that are essential. Assess how much time you spend during the day "doing" and how much is spent on the process of thinking/discussing/meeting about the act of doing something. Don't reply to every email you get. Learn to establish boundaries that are reasonable, etc.
If this bothers your direct reports, what's the worse they can do to you? Lay you off? Suddenly, the "worse" that can happen doesn't really seem all that bad, does it?
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteWho am I?
ReplyDeleteCannibalizing newspapers
Rabid downsizing
Online lack of vision
Titanic future
Circumventing employee suggestions
Hamas
Fraudulent bonuses
Elementary goals
Lunatic corporate management team
Teething infant publishers and general managers
"Hearing that 10 VPs gone today today, including 2 in Louisville & more to come. Details?
ReplyDelete9/30/2011 10:24 PM"
I know that one of those let go in Louisville was VP of circ Mike Huot, who cut me loose earlier in the year. Kind of poetic justice.
Mike was a great guy... hard to see how someone that carried all of that water could just be let go.
ReplyDeleteHe's no different than the mailroom guy that was let go.
ReplyDeleteThis might be a tasteless comment, but I have not tact. This stuff reminds me of fascism's extermination camp inmates where they built the gas chambers for "them," surely not their selves -- and often cooperated alongside their criminal masters in that regard -- only to end up being gassed their selves.
ReplyDeleteRaspy comparison, I know. But if GCI was really interested in ethics -- i.e., business ethics -- it would have done a much better effort in retaining proven talent in its consolidations rather just consigning vast numbers "en masse" to history.
But then that wouldn't be Gannett.
The really interesting thing is that the street is quite conscious of this dynamic. I probably have much more contact with that demographic than, say, Craig D, and certainly anyone at my site with their own office, door closed -- and it's on a daily basis, not some consultant commissioned to chirp wildly about what is essentially their next paycheck.
Within Gannettblog, it might appear to members and trolls alike as if just the victims of this board's incompetence notice, but that ain't so, Joe.
A company doesn't destroy the livelihoods of (so far) 21,000 employees in good standing without some stench wafting from the chimneys.
"Mike was a great guy... hard to see how someone that carried all of that water could just be let go."
ReplyDeleteHello? At this point, surely you realize these qualities matter not one bit to CD & Co., haven't you?
How many jobs could have been saved off Austin Ryan's annual expense account? The Guy works at corporate but commutes home to Des Moines every weekend. How's that for fair???
ReplyDelete8:14 you seem to use Nazi analogies a lot. I think you are scary.
ReplyDelete8:14 Bank of America is laying off 10,000 in one swoop. Are they Nazis as well.
ReplyDeleteBased on your consistently weird posts I think I support on of those 20,000 layoffs
ReplyDeleteHeh Reno was 8:14 always this much fun when you worked next to him?
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like the Gannett people at the SND conference are claiming they are keeping copy editors on site to work with the design studios.
ReplyDeleteThat would differ from what's been reported here. So, who should we believe?
who was the other vp in Louisville?
ReplyDeleteHere's a great TIP!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteTake your package when offered, leave because gannett will manipulate your pensions, freeze your raises again, cut your pay, and lead you down until you can't do it no more- exit as soon as possible. SINKING SHIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Can someone post the list of who was let go relating to the new publishing services?
ReplyDeleteIt's been 12 months to the day since I was let go, very quietly, from Gannett. That day was one of the most deflating of my career. Unlike many posters on here, I didn't have an unending hatred for the company or management, a statement that held true even after being let go. I was a worker, a line on a spreadsheet, and my number was called.
ReplyDeleteBut, it was still a deflating day.
12 months later and 1 year into my LAG (Life After Gannett) I am happier than ever, professionally and personally. I am no longer in the newspaper business and I would be lying if I said there aren't days that I miss being a reporter. But, on the whole, my LAG is far more rewarding, far more lucrative, and far less stressful.
My only advice to those who are left is to think big when considering another career. It's not too late to start something new. Think about how your skill set will fit into something different and then promote yourself under that assumption. Retrain yourself.
I spend two weeks feeling sorry for myself and asking "Why me? I worked so hard. There are others who deserved it more than me." Then I realized "deserves got nothing to do with it" and I started my quest for the next chapter.
I spent 6 months retraining. I got a licensed in a new field. Learned a new job that uses the same skills. And, I spent 4 months beating the streets.
I got a new job. I work more than 9 hours a day, but I like my job. My pay is substantially higher. My stress, although not gone, is diminished. My wife likes being around me more. I like being around me more.
My only regret, 12 months later? That I didn't force myself to make the move earlier.
Good luck everyone.
4:35 I've been told that the other one who left was Huot's wife, who was vice president for marketing and digital.
ReplyDeleteYes, Hout's wife was the other vp in Louisville
ReplyDelete10:33 Yes the move earlier would have been better, but at least you got lucky!
ReplyDelete10:12 I agree wierd posts!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Check out the AOL news feed. Every week they list the top ten companies hiring now.
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ReplyDeleteI alway's read these posts from people like 10:33, who were let go and deflated etc. Do any of you know of any employees who were let go, celebrated on the way out the door, maybe even bought drinks for the office, or better yet, bought drinks for the boss who set them free. Those are the ones I'd like to hear about.
ReplyDelete12:30: Plans to create wire copy editing desks at design centers have been scrapped. Don't quite know why, but it was a decision made quietly.
ReplyDeletePapers are keeping some copy editors -- but there are copy editors at the new design studios; they will edit wire copy (AP.,etc.). Local copy continues to be read by editors at the individual papers -- but those papers will have fewer editors than before.
ReplyDelete6:10 and 6:26 You are offering very different takes on whether there will be wire copy editors at the design centers. Can you resolve this?
ReplyDelete"...was 8:14 always this fun when you worked next to him?" I dunno, why don't you ask the people who did. As for "always" scarily referencing the Nazis, no, I refer to totalitarianism.
ReplyDeleteCorporations aren't democracies, nor should they be. But that leaves the disparity, as we have witnessed between office culture a matter of whim (as with any fascist)and as day-and-night as Gannett compared to, say, healthy business model.
But thanks for the derision. One should be able to point out surprising similarities of mindsets without "scaring" anyone.
Just my opinion, nothin' more. And it's taken some time to regroup from what was a personal catastrophe, friends at work while suit types rarely bothered to introduce their self with an ear to listen.
But recover one does. A year of making sense of what happened, a year of cheap shots (few in Reno at my former dreg level have the courage even to browse this site, paranoia to create any digital track),and an occasional posit on the blog.
Jim's blog thrives because the office culture of Gannett is a poster child for impersonal, isolated and cold leadership.
Last I checked: absolute definition of fascist thought. I reckon the parallels are surely mistaken!
But this is my last post here. I wish everyone the best. See, just another need for a dictionary... rather than slights on strangers.
Who wants to take odds this isn't this guys last post on here. Maybe his last post as Craig Sevier, but no possible way after reading his farewell, is this is last post.
ReplyDelete6:02: I walked out of the CP with my head up and my heels clicking. And I even treated myself to the most popular chicken tender salad lunch on my way out the door -- and expensed it to GCI. Does that count?
ReplyDeleteGood for you, 8:26.
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ReplyDeleteNice to see the hard-hitting, community connecting journalism that Carolyn Washburn brought with her from Iowa to Cincinnati. Love that huge photo on home page that highlights the photos from the grand opening of a new downtown nightclub and the surgically enhanced and foundation-fortified breasts that were in all their fleshy abundance. By why only 24 photos? Why not 40 or 50 so you can connect better with readers?
ReplyDeleteI see what you mean, 10:11. The Enquirer.com is primarily a showcase of Bengals and boobs. I do see a news op here: a special advertising section on Cincinnati's burgeoning breast-enhancement industry. What is Washburn waiting for?
ReplyDeleteAmazing how simple it can be to communicate with people and have them understand a certain topic, you made my day.
ReplyDeleteConsignment tulsa