Sunday, June 03, 2012

May 28-June 3 | Your News & Comments: Part 5

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28 comments:

  1. Here is one more problem with Gannett digital papers. If you would like to leave a comment on a story it makes you log on with your facebook account. Talk about restricting access and controlling free speech. I know they should have the ability to not let people post anonymously but why make people sign up for facebook. There are many people who don't use facebook and find it to be an invasion of privacy.

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  2. Why doe the Gannett digital papers make you log on to your facebook account only to leave a comment? Many customers don't have and don't want a facebook account.

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  3. Have you seen Rick Green's latest Des Moines Register column? How can this be? The writing. The style. The "golly-gee ain't lfe great" tone - "check out all these 'platforms' we are rolling out to market" tone. The split infinitives. The Biblical references. The chief news guy at a once great Time magazine "top 10 in the USA newspaper." This is really classic. A small town newspaper guy, Green, speaking as if he's a newly-minted MBA, trying to weave in every buzz word he's recently learned. Don't think that's the role of a news chief. Isn't marketing and promotion the mission of the publisher - to be the chief marketing officer? Here's Rick Green's column in case you missed it. Be sure to read it in full. It's classic. http://www.desmoinesregister.com/interactive/article/20120531/OPINION01/305310040/Rick-Green-Look-more-from-us-print-digitally?nclick_check=1

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  4. There used to always be comments left by readers before they made them sign in to their facebook account. After checking many stories on my local papers website I didn't see one comment.

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  5. That whole "must be Facebook user to comment" seems to have tip-toed away very quietly.

    The way things are happening now - culturally - Facebook is quickly transitioning from THE HOT, NEW BIG THING to the latest version of Enron.

    When GM took its ad dollars away because Facebook just wasn't "worth it", Facebook's reputation went from money-making cash machine, to that all-too-common internet destination: Time-Waster.

    You'll know it's over when Facebook icons start disappearing from websites. Remember when Myspace logos were everywhere? How many do you see today?

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  6. FaceCrook...lol.

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  7. I don't know. I think I enjoy reading the blog. But I hate it when people keep refering to me as Stoney LaDouche. My name, and please spell it correctly, is Rockey DuPrix.

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

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  9. 10:42...It is Citi Field now. Shea has been gone 3 years now. Little fact.

    I always have to record the games due to my sleep/work hours and I always figured a no hitter by a Met would be front page news. Mine had a 10 paragraph spot under the fold, on the sports page. Good thing though as it would have spoiled the watching of the game.

    But then what do I expect from a paper who puts how a house can burn up on the front page!

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  10. What is a Gannett digital paper?

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  11. Facebook IPO lawsuits are flying because a lot of idiots who bought the stock are upset they aren't billionaires now.

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  12. Moving solely to Facebook authentication for commenting was a bad move as it significantly reduced pages views, unique traffic and ultimately, accelerated the loss of readers to Gannett’s websites who increasingly find that if they miss a day, they really don’t miss anything at all as even core content offerings and other adjacent verticals are notably less.

    For a company of Gannett’s scale, one that talks a lot about leading the industry and its digital strengths, it should have developed a solution on its own. The fact that it didn’t and how long it’s taking to rollout paywalls now speaks volumes, none of which is good.

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  13. 10:36 how a house can burn up? You mean a story explaining why a 12-year old house went up in flames so fast that four people were killed within minutes -- while firefighters helplessly watched. Yes, I can really understand why you'd question that story. Those idiots!

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  14. Correction in yesterday's Cincinnati Enquirer

    "A quote in a Local Krista Ramsey column on May 27 was attributed to Richard Hutchinson. It should have been attributed to Robert W. Guldner of North College Hill."

    Typical sloppiness from a train wreck of a Gannett paper. But this mess of a column also reports, without skepticism, that military veteran "Harry J. Reardon of North College Hill remembers being spit on" by war protesters.

    Even if the columnist can't be trusted to show a trace of ordinary journalistic curiosity, does the Enquirer have no editors left who'd question that spitting claim? Slanders about war protesters spitting on veterans have repeatedly been exposed as urban myth. A notorious dispute about this point took place in the Enquirer's hometown.
    http://www.cincinnatibeacon.com/index.php/content/comments/bill_sloat_ace_news_hawk_or_modicum_of_credibility/

    The Enquirer looks like a publication with the credibility it deserves after pushing all of its grownup editors out the door.

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  15. Paywall watch: Now I am getting e-mail with "Top Stories Exclusively for E-Newspaper Subscribers!" But the same three "top news" items (two graduation lists and one community awards article) have been posted two days running with the dateline changed.
    Top news, my ass.

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  16. Anyone who is basing facebook's relevancy on its IPO price and not the fact that it has a billion users doesn't understand where news, information and data is headed in the next 5-10 years.

    Quality content matters but if t were all that mattered then the NYTCO wouldn't have gone from a $7 billion to a $900 million dollar company.

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  17. My Space: What Facebook will look like in a frw years.

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  18. 4:26 Regarding the number of Facebook users, here are the specific numbers from the company itself.

    The site had 901 million active users in March.

    Of those, an average 398 million users were active with Facebook on at least six out of the last seven days.

    That latter, smaller figure interests me more.

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  19. 3:34 The heading is "Top News" Not recent news or breaking news. That would be too much work2

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  20. 4:26 Facebook could just as easily be obsolete in five or ten years.

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  21. Facebook may have a gazillion users, but the company still has the same problem the dot.com ghosts of a decade ago had: How Do You Monetize Them?

    Myspace WAS Facebook ten years ago. After Murdoch bought Myspace for $500 million, he got Google to spend more than that on Myspace over three years. But THAT was the high point. News Corp dumped Myspace for some bats and a sack of balls a few years ago.

    On a similar note, consider Groupon. Hottest thing on the planet a year ago. Value dropped 60% since the IPO. Here's the kicker: Despite the stock price dropping from $20 to around $6 (Groupon, not Gannett. Don't get ahead of yourself), Groupon is still worth . . . (Dr. Evil voice) SIX BILLLLLION DOLLARS.

    A one-trick pony, copied by EVERY digital organization on the planet, and it is STILL worth more than every newspaper, TV station, website and digital service under the Gannett umbrella.

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  22. I heard a rumor that Shreveport missed printing an edition last week. Is that true or was it just the Monroe paper that missed the print edition?...with Shreveport merely being hours late?
    Inquiring minds want to know.

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  23. I very much doubt that. I was corresponding with someone at Shreveport recently; they would have mentioned this if it were true.

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  24. Here you go, 3:28 a.m. Neither paper missed print, but both were way late. We've had press problems off and on since switching to the Berliner.

    From: Bailey, Donald
    Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2012 9:02 AM
    To: Shreveport-All
    Cc: Ramey-Greiwe, Linda; Hollingsworth, Laura
    Subject: Press issues last night for today's paper, 5/30/12


    Good morning Shreveport,



    As you arrive to the office this morning you may receive phone calls concerning papers being late. Please let our readers know that we had technical problems with the press last night and that the carriers are in route with their papers. The last of the papers came off the press a little after 6:00 a.m. this morning.



    I do want to commend Mike Griffin and his crew last night for not giving up in what appeared to be a hopeless situation with the press having a “hard fault that prevented it running”. Once they realized that this was a critical situation our GPS crew kicked into full emergency mode by notifying the printing back up sites for both the Monroe and Shreveport papers. All pages for Monroe were sent to Jackson, MS and Shreveport’s were sent to Longview, TX where both of those sites waited for the signal to print. Around 4:30 a.m. a work around was established and we were able to print the Shreveport paper on a portion of our press. Monroe was printed in Jackson this morning. At this point we still do not know what the exact issue is that caused the shutdown, but it has been narrowed down to one of the press towers. According to GPS we should be able to print in Shreveport tonight even if last night’s issue is not resolved.



    Thanks to everyone that worked last night. The daily miracle continues!



    Don



    Don Bailey

    President & Publisher

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  25. Probably had they included in the contract when they purchased the press that support had to stay onsite for more than a month and that more than one or two people had to be trained, many of their problems today would not exist. Oh, and that the press operating manual had to be translated into Enlish, not German. Funny how the paper (i.e. color) was in register those first couple of weeks of the Berliner launch but now because operators can't get it in register, the color bar at the bottom had to be removed and some of the column logos now run in black and white. They obviously didn't pay for tech support. You get what you pay for, right.

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  26. How would DB know anything about Shreveport? He is out of touch with employees and is out of the office more than he is in. When he is in the office he is never seen around the building. So sad for us.

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  27. As to the old veteran-spit-on story, I, and my fellow grunts stationed at Ft Ord, California in 1970 would spend our weekends in San Francisco and Haight-Ashbury and were well treated everywhere we went. Even got military discounts in some cases, including the stage production of "Hair". But paid full price at the strip joints on Broadway of course.
    Never heard of or saw any spitting incidents.

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  28. REGARDING SHREVEPORT PRESS PROBLEMS THE PRODUCTION MANAGER MIKE GRIFFIN HAS TO LEARN TO STOP THE LIES. YOU CANNOT MAKE MAJOR MISTAKES AND ASK EMPLOYEES TO COVER IT UP. WAKE UP PETE BEFORE HE SINK YOU.

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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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