Thursday, August 30, 2012

Aug. 27-Sept. 2 | Your News & Comments: Part 3

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44 comments:

  1. Syracuse newspaper to publish only 3 days a week!

    http://www.dailyfreeman.com/articles/2012/08/28/news/doc503cf5904443c618592239.txt

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  2. Not the clearest headline.

    http://wtaq.com/news/articles/2012/aug/28/more-details-about-what-led-up-to-man-shooting-dead-ex-girlfriend-at-gas-station/

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  3. More sloppy work at the Fond du Lac Reporter and Action Advertiser. Just saw a story online with "Audobon" in the headline and "Audubon" in the first paragraph. I could go on and on and on with more errors like this one, but why bother? When professionals don't seem to care about the product, why should consumers? I'm not going to pay for this sloppiness in print or online!

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    1. The top newsroom managers are notorious for working bankers' hours. God forbid they stay after 5 p.m. to put out their morning paper.

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  4. Sloppiness and Gannett go together, even at the flagship USA Today. It's a sign of the times. Gannett laid off thousands of competent writers, editors and others who watched over quality control for years -- real pros who not only caught the mistakes before they ended up in print or on the web, but folks who could have played a role in mentoring less experienced hires.

    So don't come down too hard on the current crop of gatekeepers. They are often short-staffed and without guidance. The real culprit is Gannett for laying off so many newsroom employees who regularly saved the company from embarrassing errors. Of course, those who were laid off were deemed to be making too much money or too old to learn some new digital tricks. Neither was really true, but that's the propaganda that Gannett wanted us to all believe. Sort of a turn brother on brother technique.

    In the end, I believe consumers of news will reject products that are littered with errors, late on the news or just too trivial for serious readers. Gannett is filled with such newspapers and websites. In its quest to throw people overboard, Gannett did more harm to its business (and the spirits of its employees) than the recession. It's a tragic mistake for a company that once did maintain certain production and editing standards.

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  5. Jim: Here's an idea for you:
    Start an "Error of the Week" contest!
    Readers could send in their most ridiculous headline/story/graphic/photo/ and juxtaposition errors, and you could either judge them yourself, or do an online voting contest (there are many apps for that, as you probably know).

    I think it could be an amusing recurring feature for the site and as we know, there would be tons of potential entries each week. Think of the increase you'll have in viewership!

    Print errors could be shot with a smartphone and emailed in; screengrabs for the online goofs. The print mistakes would count more IMHO, since they can't be "fixed" like online ones.

    Winners could get a gannettblog t-shirt or cap.

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  6. WTAQ (of the earlier clear headline post) is in the Green Bay market but is not a Gannett property.

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  7. I just found out from a pointroll sales person that all the display ads for the new USA Today relaunch are going to be served by mediamind a competitor and not pointroll. How stupid is that. Its amazing how little control there is at corporate especially marketing execs who are PAYING for this advertising and don't demand the us of their own companies products. Wow Gannett stupidity at its finest.

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  8. Did you see this ...

    http://jimromenesko.com/2012/08/29/tech-journalist-allegedly-tries-breaking-bad-gets-busted/

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  9. 10:46 8-10 people are working at both the daily paper and the twice weekly paper in Fond du Lac. How can anyone expect perfection with a staff so small they don't have time to change their own typewriter ribbons. There was also a house ad on page 2 today from another paper. Mistakes happen, imperfections to live with.

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  10. Welcome to the corner of Cut and Throat. Newspapers and the Post Office have been on parallel tracks for a number of years. The reason the Post Office will outlive most print papers is that its connection to its customers, AND its monopoly, are much stronger than your local paper's ties.

    The Best Buy number is a real eye-opener.

    http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2012/08/twin-threats-peril-preprint-newspaper.html

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  11. Tip: In your resumes, say you worked for a major newspaper chain but don't mention Gannett unless they ask.

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  12. Yiu certainly can't be referring to such Gannett marketing geniuses as Maryam Banikarim or Sandra Micek, can you?

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  13. Why all the surprise about Syracuse or New Orleans publishing just three days a week? USA Tiday has been publishing for only five days a week for decades. And Weekend barely slips out once a week. The sky is falling. No. Wait. The sky already fell.

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  14. A 100-year-old religious community called Zarephath in Somerset County, N.J. was referred to as Zarepath in the entire front page article. This 100-acre campus is as big as a town and the Courier News can't even spell the name right. Geez!

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  15. Usa Today has a made blunder after blunder on the hiring front. Kramer and Callaway are rare exceptions, but the place may be too far gone for them to set the bar higher. Lousy work ethic, piss poor skills, lack of accountabilty, quibbling factions protecting turf, underperformers, dead weight. Reporters and editors with their heads in the clould.

    This is the worst crew in the history of the paper, by far. And we're supposed to be celebrating our 30th anniversary next month?

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  16. Read the local Sunday rag at a relative's house this past weekend ; Gannett product. Total joke. My Brother-i-nLaw said he just couldn't take it any more; he asked how much we were paying for NYtimes delivery and decided he was switching at the renewal date on the Gannett rag. This is a pretty conservative guy and we trade papers on the weekends, I left with his WSJ.

    This company is a joke. You guys are putting out absolute CRAP. Serious readers can't continue to consume and pay for this drivel. They are slowly but surely, reluctant finding other sources of information. Totally wasted assets.

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  17. TODAY'S DUMBEST ERROR

    USATODAY.com (Android), Life, late add for story on Adele, headline --

    "and" has only one 'a' and not 'aaand'

    Rubes.

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  18. Anon@633: Cops busted a meth lab in an apartment inside the Beltway, rented by a writer for the former Gannett News Service. Swell!

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  19. Louisville press problems led to papers after 5:00 AM and over 100 down routes. Good luck getting USA Today out of there on time folks.

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  20. So what percentage of subscribers have activated their digital accounts in your Gannett market?

    A smidge over 25% in the market I'm in and I don't think that's going to work well in an attempt to sell digital advertising.

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  21. From CBS MoneyWatch (too late for many):

    How to fire someone without looking foolish

    Terminating an employee should be a deliberate process, not a reflexive action, writes Suzanne Lucas. That means exploring other options, keeping your bosses in the loop and abiding by human resources' rules for terminating employees. "Doing these things before you terminate someone help ensure that things go smoothly," Lucas writes.

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  22. How can the Arizona Republic's national political reporter miss the biggest Arizona story out of the GOP convention Wednesday?

    Dan Nowicki rarely travels, despite the title of NATIONAL political reporter, but he's at the convention in Tampa. Today, he has a front page story about the Paul Ryan and John McCain speeches, something routine that could have been handled with an AP story.

    Meanwhile, Arizona's verbally challenged governor, Jan Brewer, accidentally endorsed President Obama for reelection in an interview with NBC -- and there's not a word about it in today's Republic. Yes, this is the same governor who pointed her finger at Obama while lecturing the president about immigration. The Brewer video has gone viral - it's everywhere.

    TV stations have the story, the small daily in suburban Mesa has the story, even radio stations have the story, but not the Republic.

    http://ktar.com/59/1571638/Gov-Brewer-endorses-President-Obama

    It's approaching noon in Tampa, so Nowicki has plenty of time to recover. But there's still nothing about Brewer's embarrassing gaffe on the azcentral.com home page.

    And Gannett wants us to pay for this?

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  23. An Enquirer online story starts out saying the suspect has been arrested and is in jail. Then it says he's still at large and cops are looking for him. This story attracted plenty of comments -- not about the story itself but complaints about how sloppy the Enquirer reporting has become. Readers are disgusted. Meantime, Carolyn was interviewed on local radio today touting her 150 journalists. When challenged, she admitted that, OK, some are Community Press peons and some are bloggers and some are commenters, but hey, it's all journalism. Interestingly, it was the same radio station that hired her top-notch political commentator the week after he took the buyout.

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  24. Credibility and accuracy are everything. It seems most Gannett managers, including those at USA Today, have forgotten that without relatively clean, error-free stories, captions, headlines, graphics, etc., nothing else matters in terms of building an audience.

    Of course, I have to wonder whether USA Today is even interested in being a serious news product anymore. Almost all of the well-documented actions of its leaders and mid-level managers (past and present) in the last 4-5 years indicates that USAT is moving out of the mainstream media business and into something more, uhhhh, "entertaining." Maybe it's time USA Today leaders just admit they aren no longer interested in competing with the Times, Post and other legitimate news publications. Perhaps USAT, like a lot of Gannett publications, just doesn't have the horses to do news/journalism these days. Time to find a new niche, a new audience.

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  25. So Washburn got called out on the air with that "150 journalists" claim. Way to build credibility as you're trying to sell the public on higher prices.

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  26. So for most of August I did not receive my print edition. Daily phones calls from circulation, sometimes twice a day for two weeks resulted in finally getting the paper for three days. And today? No paper! I don't want to make getting the paper my new daily time-wasting chore, so I am waving goodbye to print.

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  28. 11:59 that is probably because they have made so many cuts to employees and rely heavily on contractors and private distributors that are not being paid adequately or what they are being asked to do. I know there is no excuse for poor service but Gannett just doesn't care. I dropped my subscription years ago.Never read online now i get my information from TV and other sites on the web like this site.

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  32. Nj.com has a billboard in the APP's territory - "now better serving Monmouth county" Step your game up folks they're coming for ya!

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  33. Tennessean rep just showed up at my door offering me today's paper for free if I accepted Sunday-only print with online daily access included...

    That ship is sinking fast!!!

    P.S. I live "near" the Gaylord Opry resort.

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  35. 12:45 is correct. Service doesn't matter anymore, if contractor A gets paid $25 a day to deliver with perfect service, and contractor B gets $24 a day to delivery about 75% correctly, contractor B has the job. Gannett will never learn that giving your product to the competitor to deliver to save a few bucks will be offset by the loss of revenue from circulation due to service issues and non delivery.

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  36. If Martore allowed a competitor of pointroll to serve the ads for USAToday relaunch, someone in USAToday marketing should be FIRED.

    That is HORRIBLE!

    That's like paying for someone to cover the white house for USAT when you already are paying Susan Page to do it.

    Who are these idiots in USAToday marketing?

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  38. Jim - where's Miss Davis?

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  39. New SVP of Sales at the Sports Media Group, Andy Sippel. Came over from WSJ. No announcement made. Peter Lazurus situation remains in flux... Entire business unit is total disaster. Good luck with that one pal.

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  40. 8:34 Hmmmm. Lazarus got that same SVP job in October 2011. What's going on?

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  41. Lazarus has been out on medical leave. Great guy but not gonna cut it there. Buesse hoodwinked Gannett into this giant disaster and now the fallout begins.

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  42. Is that why we sold so few ads during the Olympics? Should have been a slam dunk. Where is the accountabilty up and down the line at Usa Today?

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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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