Monday, February 13, 2012

Feb. 13-19 | Your News & Comments: Part 1

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45 comments:

  1. 1. Josh Resnik is officially gone.

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  2. The reference is to the vice president and general manager over Gannett Digital -- one of the most senior digital executives in the company.

    Josh Resnik was once reported to be a leading candidate to be Gannett's chief digital officer, a job that eventually went to David Payne.

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  3. 12:06 mentions "The CCI front end system is a big problem with the hubs and the volume of work really seems unbearable - someone miscalculated on how many pages were going to be designed on deadline. little is done in advance." What have been the big issues with CCI? Have many pages are people being asked to design on deadline? Guessing the studios are not hiring enough help and trying to see how few people they can hire?

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  4. The design studio process seems to be identically mirroring the GIADC rollout for ad design.

    Initial surveys of what work might be brought in were done months or years ago by high-level managers (i.e. less intimate with the workload). Software and hardware design was far below what reality demanded. ROI was built around people hitting deadlines religiously. New low-cost Center staffers were brought in by the busload - eager and cheap but not effective.

    I believe, just as happened with centralized newsprint, RTC and GIADC, each site will be allocated more expense and costs will magically spiral upward.

    Centralization may save money. We've done exceptionally well proving the opposite.

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  5. Jim - I don't know if it's something you have a handle on but your Blogger software time stamps comments differently if you are viewing the mobile site vs. the full internet site. Just a small annoyance when trying to follow rebuttals.

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  6. I'd love to hear more about these design studios. Have deadlines been changed? Have they hired more people than anticipated? Or laid off fewer? Have they changed the way the "design" pages? Do tell.

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  7. At The Arizona Republic, the buyout offer for 70 employees companywide turns out to be targeting 44 in the newsroom. Jim, how about a survey to find out what's happening at other properties? How many reporters and editors is Gannett going to lose? The 2008 buyouts took 800 years of experience out of the Republic newsroom. No count for this buyout as yet.

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  8. Iowa must not be on the radar.
    Nothing posted anyway.Guess LH has them classified as the chosen few,the special ones, and has them all under her wing.

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  9. 9:55 - Good idea. Could be added to the spreadsheet by property.

    Des Moines, Are you snowed in?

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  10. Can't compliment enough on the great job Florida Today/Gannett is doing with their double price Sundays. last week, 38 +/- percent returns. This week, with the exact same draws, pushing 40 plus. How does one justify this with all the buyouts, furloughs, layoffs to cut costs? They suddenly have an excess of newsprint and ink? Even some stores from what I understand, aren't taking them all out of storage boxes. Amazing.

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  11. I, too, would love to know more about the design centers. Not a single designer/paginator from my old paper applied for a job at one of these centers. I wonder who Gannett hired to work at these places, which sound like a nightmare to me.

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  12. Any thoughts on what happens to the buyout pay if Gannett would go bankrupt before the 52 weeks are over?

    Is this covered in federal EROP laws?

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  13. 8:36 I"ll look into what sounds like a software bug.

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  14. 9:55 Is that 44 in the newsroom the number of buyouts offered, or the number that will be accepted?

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  15. APP had huge fluff piece on south jersey knucky thompson. Sure the people in monmouth and ocean county are riveted in what happens in camden. besides being total fluff it was irrelevant to the area. way to waste space and resourses.

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    1. Nucky ruled atlantic city which is in Atlantic county directly adjacent to ocean county. And, boardwalk empire, the hbo show is a major hit.

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  16. Thanks to the few who have been posting about the design hubs. No one at my site knows much at all about the centers, the only thing we know is that the copy desk will lose their jobs, but not even really when, except to say May. The beginning or the end, we ask, and no one has an answer. And then they talk about how rosy life will be at the paper this year, as if we can't hear.

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  17. 9:55 again. It's the number offered in the newsroom. I haven't seen a number for how many will be accepted. Maybe someone else can help out there.

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  18. Why is corporate putting people through this if it's only going to go hold up its end of the deal on a certain number of offers? Is corporate trying to figure out how many other people would take a future buyout? Or is it trying to smoke out those who want to leave but then pull back the offer, only to lay them off later?

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    Replies
    1. Once again, it's Federal law. They have very specific rules they have to follow.

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  19. Jim and 9:55/3:28: It's both. For the News/Information Center, 44 offers were made and 44 will be accepted. That means 69% of the cuts in Arizona will be in the News/Information Center. I think it also means that, if you are one of the 44, it would be hard to understand why you wouldn't accept. Seems like the handwriting is on the wall for you.

    It will be interesting to learn if the ratios are similar in other locations.

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  20. What criteria will be used by corporate to decide who gets accepted for a buyout and who does not?

    Will corporate's hands be tied because of age - in other words, does it have to take a mix of ages, instead of taking just the older employees?

    Also, what about potential discrimination against minorities and women?

    Finally, can corporate simply buy out those who are the highest-paid and want to go?

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  21. Talk about a process that should be much more transparent than it is. Instead, longtime employees are left wondering about Gannett's motives, instead of focusing just on what's best for the employee.

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  22. @ 12:36, you're making no sense. If there was an article about Nucky Thompson (there's nothing on the APP site), then that's related to Atlantic City and to a top TV program -- not related to Camden in any way.

    And anyway, it makes more sense than when the dopes at Asbury decide South Jersey readers want to hear about Barnegat Bay pollution. But what should we expect from the brilliant minds that rubber-stamped Leon Tucker as managing editor and have allowed Gene Williams to remain as (what is it he does?)

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  23. Folks, This is about what is best for Gannett, not what is best for employees. I know, I know, at one time those two things were usually the same! I've seen one of the EROP offers. It clearly states that, by law, those accepted will be selected by seniority with Gannett (years of service, not your age.

    EROP = Early Retirement Opportunity Program

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  24. Sarcasm when I said Nucky Thompson it was a article about George Norcross. An article about Nucky would have been more interesting .

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  25. With the design centers, are they being filled with mostly Gannetters or are they bringing in bunch of cheaper, inexperienced youngsters???

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  26. Hopefully Zidich at the Arizona Republic was offered a buyout along with his buddy Dickey... talk about a couple of the most inept and incompetent executives to run a business. If they didn't work for Gannett they would be hard pressed to acquire a job at McDonald's. No knock on the folks who work for McD's. But that level of work is all those two are truly qualified to handle.

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  27. Jim, Can you bump the buyout spreadsheet up towards the top of the page again? Maybe the folks from Des Moines can't find it!

    Why some sites will accept all or nearly all of the buyouts and others are accepting fewer is a puzzle. Does anyone see a pattern or have more info?

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

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  29. Maybe no buyout offers were made in Des Moines.

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  30. 3:36, you are wrong that all newsroom buyouts will be accepted. I know of some people who will not be accepting them, and reasons vary.

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  31. The problem with the buyout is that if there are more than one person in a department that choses the buyout then the company can only replace those people with less than 20 percent of their earnings. So some of the people will not be replaced and most won't. That also shows they are going to reduce the workforce.

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  32. The target for the Asbury Park Press is sad. Obviously a move to clear the last vestiges of employees hired during the ownership of the Planger-Lass families. They cared about good journalism and business and the APP was among the top regional dailies in the country.
    Now it's just another basket case in the Big G family of newspapers in N.J.

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  33. 7:40: I never said everyone who got an offer will accept. Gannett will accept all 44 if the News/Information Center people choose to accept the early retirement offer. That is not true for every department.

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  34. Does the Asbury target include any positions at the Daily Record, Home New Tribune or Courier News? Jim's chart has nothing showing for these 3 minor NJ dailies. I'm thinking Boris Karloff should be eligible.

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  35. 7:59 that place was torched by bob Collins and anyone left especially in a management position sold out or would be gone by now.

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  36. It is becoming more and more obvious that this company is ready to dump anything print and move forward with digital. It is a ghost town in our building and once the buy-outs are confirmed I know that layoffs are next. I have been with this company for over 20 years and all I can see is a downward spiral. I remember when the other person had a blog when Jim left for awhile and their was a poster who was a VP and he spilled his heart out and told everyone to be prepared for a Gannett no one would even recognize in a few years. Now what he said has come true. It was Gannettoid. I wish I could find his thread because everything he said has come true. If you believe you will have a job with Gannett beyond five years you are truly delusional. It is a very sad state of affairs.

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  37. Jim, anything on Josh Resnik? Out manuevered by Payne and Gilman? Or is someone just finally coming to their senses and purging the ranks of executives with little to do?

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  38. Why is Gannett even bothering creating these design studio centers if they're going to have a short existence?

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  39. Bob Collins. If people only knew...

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  40. 11:44 do tell I thought he at least had some guts not like his spineless puppet skippy. Both. Total jerks but. At least Bob didn't pretend not to be.

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  41. 4:45 PM,
    I don't think that age is relevant. I hope that when they are hiring for the Design center, that consider skills, talent, and formal education. For design center jobs, I anticiipate that they would openly except an applicant of any age, who has a college degree and passes a background check & drug-test. I would expect that age is irrelevant.

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  42. I mean "accept".


    4:45 PM,
    I don't think that age is relevant. I hope that when they are hiring for the Design center, they look at skills, talent, and formal education. For design center jobs, I would expect that they would openly accept an applicant of any age, who has a college degree and passes a background check & drug-test. I would expect that age is irrelevant.

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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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