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Thursday, November 17, 2011
32 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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Lots of editors meeting yesterday and today in Rochester. Any idea what's up?
ReplyDeleteGroupon selling Newseum tickets. Come get 'em.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.groupon.com/deals/newseum-1
Wonder if DealChicken will follow?
What's up with the RTC in Des Moines lately? It was down on a recent night for more than three hours, and we had to call in a photo tech to process our pictures, not having a clue when the site would be back up. And it was down again for a chunk of time Tuesday night, too.
ReplyDelete8:08, hhhhmmmm. Shouldn't the Chicken have already been selling them?
ReplyDeleteThe chicken has been at our paper for 2 or 3 months but its merchants are obscure things that no one has ever heard of and most deals sell less than 50. the better merchants are on groupon and living social. the chicken can't be a big money maker.
ReplyDeleteThe Chicken is Chicken Shit.
ReplyDeleteLet's see...USAT has laid off the loved and effective Tony Hill and Lori Erdos who were deeply entrenched with big madison avenue agencies and national advertisers and they think this is good for revenue? What a bunch of fools.
ReplyDeleteDon't bother sending your pix to rtc - nobody is judging print quality and it just eats time anyway.
ReplyDeleteThe Regional Toning Centers (RTC's) were a joke for us. Rather than face-to-face communication with in-house pro's, we now had remote e-mails with less-experienced, low-paid high-turnover.
ReplyDeleteWith time an issue, quite often we ended up doing the Photoshopping ourselves when we could have just done it in the first place, hours earlier. Of course, we were forbidden to do this. The move to RTC's was early on in Gannett's "one size fits all" arrogance.
Not saying everything sent to RTC came back wrong -- some of it was good work -- but the percentage of re-do's was far higher than when we had the cohesion of bona fide in-house talent.
Here, too, we knew they could always circumvent their own standing orders, adding insult to injury by relying on the very skills of ex-in-house talent whose original jobs they had brilliantly outsourced to the faceless RTC's.
Those few, that is, who were lucky enough to be assigned some other function and not "let go." Galling to say the least!
Let the games begin, this company is milking all working to the bone or to try and make them quit. I am one who will hand for as long as possible with doing as less as possible. they do not deserve 100% any more..the ship is sinking..fast
ReplyDeleteAll aboard the unemployment Ins. band wagon
Here we go
Story in the WSJ today that reminded me of Gannett: Sears Suffers as It Skimps on Stores (http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204517204577042442598865710.html).
ReplyDeleteRTC does suck (4 hour turn around on photos? Really?) but what choice do we have? This is a part of their plan to make print newspapers irrelevant. Their, of course, is Gannett corporate.
ReplyDeleteLAY ME OFF!! LAY ME OFF!! LAY ME OFF!!
ReplyDeleteDigital vs print
ReplyDelete"STOP THE PRESS!!"
Ve in the Reporter Development and Press Release Rewrite Center in Bangalore have been vaiting for Gannett to deliver on a promised expansion of our vorkforce to meet the needs of U.S. papers. Many quit other jobs to become part of the Gannett "future" and the offices are vired and ready to go. Ve vere told that the American verkers vould be laid off by now. Vhat is happening?
ReplyDeleteAnyone else notice the Detroit Free Press' big Sunday section "Best Workplaces 2011" with its profiles of small, medium & large companies in Michigan that were voted on by workers to be great places to work? No surprise that Gannett, with what must be 100s of employees in the state, didn't rate any mention in any of it's analysis.
ReplyDeleteMartore's rah rah canned speech to usat.reporters and editors felt oddly flat and cold. Especially given her hand in firing key ad executives. no one feels safe these days. perhaps that is exactly how she wants it. preach risk taking and taking ownership before cutting them off at the knees. at least shell be gettong word of her year end bonus while 20000 of her employees sweat out the holidays afraid for their jobs.
ReplyDeleteJim, You might want to delete this, but in the name of honest Journalism---Is it True that Tony Simmons has replaced Mike Huot ?
ReplyDeleteI love the Gannett ad on CNBC, But I then think of the Morons running the Journal News!
Forget about Florida, Detroit, Milwaukee---Sorry but New York is the WORLD, AND Schmutz are in control!!!
This company is a joke, all the people I work with
ReplyDeletejust come to work and put in the hours, no motivation to do a single ounce of work they do not have to do.. what a drag. Were just numbers and have no motivation to go the extra effort. Kinda sums up my work place
Uhm, does someone think Bangalore is in eastern Europe?
ReplyDeleteI confirmed 11 people gone in ad sales/marketing shakeup at USA Today on Tuesday: http://t.co/wba9dJHC
ReplyDeleteSteve Myers
Poynter.org
4:56-you are 100% correct. Teflon Tony has been shipped to straighen out the people at the Louisville Courier Journal.
ReplyDeleteSteve, thanks.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to see that USAT spokeswoman Heidi Zimmerman responded to your questions about this, but not to mine -- which I sent her and a colleague two days ago.
I'll keep trying to get comment from Corporate in the future on things I write, so their side may be included. But, as you can see, they've got to meet me half way.
2:03 Management not only doesn't care how hard an employee works.They will find any reason to fire good workers to save money. I have worked at Gannett giving 100% for over five years as a part time employee. Any company worth a c&^p would have made me full time by now.
ReplyDeleteCurious about health premiums. Our site was one of the ones where the premium is going up -- and wow, is it ever. Mine is increasing $51 every pay period. But the curious thing is that we're finding we're all paying different rates for the same plan. Three of us on the same plan, all with the same coverage on family, all with the same number of dependents. One is paying $151 every two weeks, another $184 and a third $240. I thought the health premiums were a flat rate, depending on who you were insuring. Anyone know what the difference can be attributed to?
ReplyDelete@7:05pm - Premiums are based upon your pay rate. The more you make, the more you pay.
ReplyDeleteCurious about health insurance premiums:
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't worry too much about health insurance premiums.
You should be inquiring about how much to expect from unemployment insurance.
Re: 5pm....perfect summation of gannett employees all over the country. Nobody gives a damn and it gets worse day by day. Just go in and do only the bare minimum.to get by and nothing more. Screw them because they are screwing you.
ReplyDeleteIt is simple, the higher your compensation, the larger portion of the health premium you pay.
ReplyDeleteGood luck getting anyone in the "Gannett Benefits center" to do anything. I called over 24 hours ago and STILL haven't gotten the answer I needed e-mailed to me. And for the trolls that will deride me for waiting till the last minute, I tried in vain to contact them before. Every time you're lucky enough to get a human, they never follow through getting the information you requested. Is it an evil plot to stick us with the "default" health plan?
ReplyDeleteOne thing for sure, the employees there should be named customer disservice representatives.
I wouldn't have squawked at all and found out about the differing prices except that my plan went up 40 percent from last year -- more than 50 bucks a pay period! If your salary determines it, they really have you coming and going. If (and I know that's a big If these days) you should get raise, you'll get double-whammied at benefits -- once because health plan premiums generally go up on their own and another time because you're now making more money.
ReplyDeleteErdos and Hill gone at USAT. Congratulations, we now have no one in senior management with any meaningful relationships at agencies and clients at a time when we need it most. One bad decision after another.
ReplyDelete