Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Feb. 27-March 4 | Your News & Comments: Part 3

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39 comments:

  1. I am confused now -- as is everyone else here. Who from USAT SVPs and EVPs and VPs now reports to Banikarim? Who reports to Hunke and who reports to Ellwood?

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    1. News and the Travel vertical report to To H & E

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  2. 2:56,
    Just be concerned with who you report to. And more than that, if the recent changes effect you, you would have been notified, already.

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  3. Yeah, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Just do your job and stop asking questions. Jeez.

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  4. Someone in a previous thread mentioned that Buffett remarked on the Newspapers industry' blunder of offering content for free. I totally agree Buffett. The Newspaper Industry should banned together to protect the "value" and price of content. Its been a painful lesson for all of us in the Newspaper industry.

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  5. Who is running the Production show in Indy and Lafayette. Bolger has been promoted to some sort of VP of the mid-west and no body know's who to report too..what a way to do business, O forgot, it the new Gannett way

    HP

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  6. ANOTHER reorg at Westchester yesterday...still no idea what is actually new. Seems like the deck chairs on this titanic have been rearranged about three times with no effect.

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  7. Part "2" of, this is, really good.

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  8. Whoever is in charge is proven talent and best of class. So don't waste our time asking questions. Just get back to work.

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  9. so still no word on what happened with Rudd Davis? How can we lose someone that important with absolutely no explanation!

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  10. Why do I have to come in to work on time? Just to help all the other employees who get to work early but
    still can't do their job.

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  11. Advertising restructuring is under way in Wilmington. Brought in a new guy today to take over a sales manager's job and demoted this person to outside sales rep. No notice, nothing. Also have an outside group in the building that is assessing each sales person's performance. They are slowly getting rid of the older sales people and managers and replacing them with younger lower paid sales reps. The changing of the guard is under way throughout the entire building.

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    1. This needs to happen at the courierpost in nearby cherry hill. The place is loaded with do nthing, overpaid middle managers who got their positions from a now gone regime.

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  12. Actually, I have heard what caused the ruddster's demise. Tried to post a couple of times and Jim didn't allow it. There was no name calling or nasty commentary. This is second hand, but very plausible. Jim?

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  13. 6:29 You can try again. But I've got my doubts.

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  14. Who says the new, younger sales reps are paid less in Wilmington? They have a higher salary (starting)than veterans who actually bring in money.

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  15. Pay walls are ill-fated money grab for short gain through Gannett's higher priced access-print program. Will deliver needed cash but not long term results for advertisers who will continue to slow print investments.
    Signed,
    Industry Insider

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  16. Just allow the post about Rudd, Jim. Enough already.

    You allow all sorts of other crap, even when you put the diaper back on like you did last night and part of today.

    It's no secret that you have lost control of the blog. One guy said as much a few weeks ago. He and the other insult-tossers run the place -- you just control the thread topics.

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  17. Is it true that they will be eliminating more people from support roles in advertising and hiring more reps?

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  18. I am curious about how these "successful" paywalls work within demographic groups. It sounds like they may skew to the older demographic groups. Do they decimate the under 35 category?

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  19. The CP is next. In case you haven't noticed you report to the same Publisher. Not to mention you have have a larger sales force with a circulation 60% of Wilmington's.

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    1. Wilmington doesn't have to compete with other papers. The C-P must contend with the inky, daily news, gct, bct and numerous other outlets for the same ad dollars and eyeballs. Not really fair to compare with news journal, pretty much the only player in a good chunk of delaware as far as i can tell.

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    2. Lame rationalization Melissa. It is a fair comparison. The powerful.inquirer is directly adjacent, plus others.

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  20. What is the CP and what is this in reference to?

    The CP is next. In case you haven't noticed you report to the same Publisher. Not to mention you have have a larger sales force with a circulation 60% of Wilmington's.

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  21. Please tell us more:

    Who says the new, younger sales reps are paid less in Wilmington? They have a higher salary (starting)than veterans who actually bring in money.

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  22. I have said it before here, and I'll say it again.
    Local newspapers can survive and be profitable, given they provide quality in-depth local news and sports. This is what the readers want.
    There is no way a local newspaper can compete with the wast national and international news available for free on the Internet, and it will be a fools errand to even try.
    What a community paper cannot survive is footing the bill for a large corporations existence. Slaving under cookie cutter templates, web and print, will kill any good local product, filling it with irrelevant fluff pieces.

    Paywalls are good for business, but not an easy pill to swallow for the consumer, after they have been getting the content for free for years. Paywalls should have been implemented 6, maximum 12, months after the website went online. It will take years to recover readers, and hopefully we will still be around when it happens.
    Gannett should start worrying about USAT and USAT alone, and leave the local papers do what they do best, let the TV stations do their job. If any entity isn't capable of turning a profit under these parameters, there is a reason for it. Time to cut the cord and see if it swims or sinks, and leave it at that.

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  23. Fantastic article on the paywall strategies of papers, and how even the NYTimes is a sandbag strategy.

    http://gigaom.com/2011/10/31/if-a-paywall-is-your-only-strategy-then-you-are-doomed/

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  24. You would expect the Arizona Republic to be on top of today's Republican primary in Arizona. But the polls closed a half hour ago, and the paper still hasn't declared Mitt Romney to be the winner. AP has. CNN has. MSNBC has. Fox has. The New York Times has. The Washington Post has. The Los Angeles Times has. The Republic says that there are reports from other media that Romney has won but leaves it at that. Talk about weak coverage right in your back yard.

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    1. We got the starter in Louisville @ 10:30 eastern with Romney wins AZ headline

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  25. Newsday, the 300,000-circulation newspaper in Long Island, NY will launch new digital products — web as well as iPhone, iPad and Android apps – specifically for Westchester County beginning this year. Newsday is owned by Cablevision Systems Corp., which provides cable TV and Internet service in the tri-state area; the company combined the ad sales groups of both the cable TV system and the newspaper. The company is going to more closely align its amNewYork free commuter daily with Newsday. Newsday will also utilize Cablevision’s Channel 12 – whose service region includes Westchester – and Cablevision’s MSG Varsity network featuring coverage of Westchester school sports, arts and other activities. Newsday will be able to mix and match these three sister multi-media products with its new Westchester digital network as a potentially attractive triple advertising cross-sell – print, TV and digital.

    Expansion into Westchester County for Newsday means a direct assault on one of Gannett's strongest operations, The Journal News and its web site lohud.com. It should be interesting to see the two groups actually compete for readers and advertisers in that lucrative market.

    The Journal News web site, lohud.com will soon begin charging for its web content. Newsday will also charge for its web content unless you are a current Cablevision subscriber. Then there will be a no-additional-charge Newsday Web sub.

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

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  27. 9:21 - The CP refers to the crystal palace = Corporate.

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  28. Jim, why are you holding back the comment about the reason behind Rudd Davis' departure?

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  29. For the first time since May of 2008, the Dow closed above 13,000 yet Gannett went down today. What do the cheerleaders have to say about that? I'd say our investors are still not buying what you're shoveling.

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

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  31. At my site we've been "hubbed" for about a month, got the amazing abortion called NewsGate and an exec editor who thinks T&A Metromix and BeerCRawl photos are lead items on the website (they get hits from guys at work who can't access porn from their offices, apparently). The actual news and the print paper is an afterthought if it's thought of at all. Errors, inserted by the hub and by harried local editors are rampant. Each day, we sink further into oblivion and our cred is underwater. The exec is clueless. This is Gannett's future, and it brought it on itself.

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  32. 10:56 says: "Jim, why are you holding back the comment about the reason behind Rudd Davis' departure?"

    Answer: I've removed dozens of comments in recent weeks, including -- apparently -- some about Davis.

    In this case, I don't know which comment you're talking about.

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  33. Doc Zzzz the poster meant to day why are you ignoring the story

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  34. Wilmington has a new Production Manager who lives in Virginia................wow!!!!..I hope they got him a easy-pass...LOL

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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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