Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Jan. 28-Feb. 3 | Your News & Comments: Part 2

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46 comments:

  1. Another day, another reorg . . .

    From: A message from Evan Ray
    Sent: Monday, January 28, 2013 3:30 PM
    Subject: GPS Operations Management Restructure


    To: All GPS Employees

    Subject: GPS Operations Management Restructure

    I’m pleased to announce a new structure for Gannett Publishing Services’ Operations management team. This new management structure will better serve our customers and improve the daily management of operations throughout our network of 39 production facilities and 28 3rd party print partners.

    Under the leadership of Senior Vice President – Operations, Austin Ryan and Vice President - National Printing & Packaging, Dale Carpenter, the operations management team will now oversee three regions versus the current four.

    Leading the three regions are Greg Fiorito, Jack Roth and Bill Bolger.

    To support the new structure, nine General Managers have been promoted to Regional Directors and will add responsibility for a group of locations. Listed below are the new regional operations teams:

    WEST: Regional Vice President Greg Fiorito, with the following Regional Directors: Mark Kurtich, Tom Tate and Kevin Johnson

    EAST: Regional Vice President Jack Roth, with the following Regional Directors: Bill Taylor, Ray Thomas and Jim Kroeze

    CENTRAL: Regional Vice President Bill Bolger, with the following Regional Directors: Tom Letto, Thom Gregory and Travis Komidar

    There are no job reductions as a result of this restructuring, however, one open position will not be filled.

    We are confident that the realignment will provide greater results by allowing the regional vice presidents to focus on our strategic initiatives and analysis while the regional directors work with the general managers to improve our daily operations.

    Please join me in congratulating the nine Regional Directors on their new roles within GPS. All are very well deserved.


    Evan

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    1. Yep - MORE PROMOTIONS ! The Gannett way !

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    2. Apparently female operations managers are a thing of the past. The "good old boy" network is alive and well!

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    4. Yes congratulations, you all laid off enough people that you get a promotion.

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    5. Now do they get the authority to hire people back and get rid of the lame outside distributors.

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    7. 9:34 maybe, just maybe, there were no females wanting that position? It's entirely possible

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  2. Funny that when a major Appleton employer, School Specialty, filed for Chapter 11 it was on J-S in Milwaukee early Monday, and not on Appleton or other Gannett sites. It now showed up on Appleton site and in the a.m. edition today as an AP story. Not even anything localized.
    Last weekend's death of two teens was all over Green Bay TV sites before Appleton ever got anything on.
    Great work by a staff that has been cut to nothing and lost all of its experience.Editors must have been busy.
    P-C has become an afterthought for news seekers.

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  3. Today's print edition of The News-Press in Fort Myers, Fla., does not have the name of the newspaper in what is supposed to be the masthead. All you see is blue sky, bringing literal meaning to the term "skybox."

    Not good for business or integrity, but it sure is pretty!

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    1. Oooooh. Please post a photo! Last week one print edition in Shreveport didn't have the day/date on the front page. As one long-time newsroom person said, just sloppy.

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    2. It's on newseum.org; it's pasted into the skybox photo, hmm...those clever kiddie designers, NOT:
      http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/hr.asp?fpVname=FL_NP&ref_pge=gal&b_pge=3

      Coming next week: Will it be pasted into the full-page 1A ad?

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    3. I would assume the mistake occurred in an early edition/run and was corrected later; this Newseum copy would be the corrected version.

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    4. Jim post that photo please to make it easy for us plz.

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  4. Actually, the Journal News should shut down after I read this:

    'Newspaper's Gun Map Woefully Inaccuracy'

    "Just 3,907 of the 16,998 permit-holding households displayed on the Journal News' Rockland County map were current...."

    http://www.newser.com/story/161729/newspapers-gun-map-woefully-inaccurate.html

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    1. This has become a full-fledged scandal, complete with coverup!

      Where's the accountability? Why haven't heads rolled and why is the Journal News still operating.

      Gannett needs to provide some answers. And fast.

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    2. The paper ran what was on file with the county clerk's office. If you want to be angry at someone, be angry about the way the records have been neglected in Rockland County, and or the many loopholes in New York's gun laws.

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    3. So your defense is: That's what the government gave us. No need to check how OLD the information is. No need to ASK how often is the information updated.

      If less than 25% of the permits listed in the paper are current, that means YOU PUBLISHED a story that was 75% INACCURATE.

      James Callender puts you all to shame.

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    4. Did you even bother to read the story. Sure didn't make the paper look bad. It says the paper put up a separate version of the map explaining that the data was historical. The county hadn't updated its records in decades. Doesn't that scare you just a little. Or don't you care that no one apparently knows what happened to all of those guns?

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    5. I imagine "what happened to all those guns" is the same thing that happens to shopping carts, bicycles and government property. They got lost, got stolen, wore out and got thrown away.

      The REAL question is: If we dredge a few miles of the Hudson, which of the above items will be found most frequently?

      As for the "historical" data . . . as the text in the story (yeah, I DID read it) says: Permit holders who have died or moved out of the area may not have updated their permit records, so some locations marked with a purple dot may not represent a current permit holder.

      A story with a significant amount of "may or may not" in it is in serious need of editing. Otherwise, you're presenting speculation as "news". And speculation has no place in REAL journalism.

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    6. The data was accurate, according to that county. Looks like TJN's work is getting those records cleaned up. Isn't that a public service?

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    7. PoopGate, meet...

      GunGate!

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  5. Hmmm, which region got consolidated? South? Interesting numbers comparison. GPS had 44 Gannett-owned production sites when it spun off in 2011; this morning, website mentions 43 owned production facilities; memo above mentions 39. That's a net loss of five sites in a little more than a year. I wonder how many jobs went with them.

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  6. The "good old white boy" network - that is.

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  7. Cage liners in SF.

    http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/national/west/2013/01/library_solves_digital_age_puppy_potty_problem

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  8. First time in a long time I picked up a Gannett rag here in Ohio. Eight pages cover to cover, 2 ads, one a house ad and it cost a buck. WTF?

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    1. Which paper?

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    2. Marion Star. City of 35 or so thousand. Completely pathetic. Shell of a newspaper it once was.

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    3. That paper was once owned by Warren G. Harding.

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  9. Good luck to Gannett in cleaning up the damage you did in Kentucky last week. Why would you let go of a DM BEFORE a partnership happens with no carriers under contract and nobody with knowledge of the area left in charge. I don't care if the partner is ready to deliver, give me my contract buyout and get me out of here. What a joke.

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    1. Who is the delivery partner? Part of the distribution or all?

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  10. Oh, I think there's room to be angry with the Journal News too.

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  11. Does anyone know when some of us of a certain age are suppose to get the top-up to our 401K's from Gannett??...I always thought it occurred sometime in January, but so far, nada.

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    1. Just go into the benefits website, sign in, click on 401K, go to accounty activity, and then look at your contribution history.
      Just set the calendar search to Jan. 20, 2012, and Feb. 20, 2012.
      You will find the lump contribution (a bone for taking away pensions) went in on Feb. 3 last year (even earlier than in 2011).
      Thus, it's possible that this year's contribution will be added on Feb. 1.
      I do, however, find it hard to believe that someone has to ask this.
      The contributions have been made since 2008, always around the same time.

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    2. Can you be a little more specific as to what might have been "promised" or "suggested"? Unless there's a provision in a union contract, I can't imagine a company "topping up" a 401k. Company match is generally about all you're going to get.

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    4. Yes, I know the the contributions have always been made about this time of year...But was thinking it was closer to Jan. 1, and was just curious...Thank-you for your response.

      Also, I'm the spouse not the employee, but when they stopped the pension plan there was some provision made for employee's closer to retirement age whereas Gannett adds a lump payment to those employee's 401K's to make up for probably not having enough time to catch the 401K's up to what was the anticipated pension payment...I think...If wrong, I'm sure someone will correct me...My spouse is union, but I think it was applicable to salaried employee's too...It had more to do with employee age than job or position.

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    5. I asked Gannett Benefits that question within the last thirty days and it is scheduled to be posted to the 401k account on February 8th.

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  12. Hah-Hah-Hah. USA TODAY SPORTS' big Sports on Earth hire, Joe Posnanski, is dumping them for NBC Sports only a few months after jumping from Sports Illustrated. Can't wait to see the press release on this. Maybe losing his salary will save a few jobs.

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    1. I haven't paid much attention to Sports On Earth since it was launched last summer. But I see that Posnanski appears at the top of its list of writers, suggesting that his departure is fairly significant.

      A Google search of his name shows there's plenty of attention being paid to his sudden exit. Here's a report from the Gannett-owned Big Lead Sports.

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  13. Just ate at an IHOP, the USA Today window copy was from May 2012. Nice job folks.

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  14. Are you shitting me? Banikarim gave away $1m in advertising to Google? And her point is (besides trying to get her fce out there once again)?

    USA TODAY said Wednesday that Google Creative Lab won $1 million worth of full-page print advertising in the newspaper by taking the top prize for its contest for the most creative original print ad.

    Google's ad featured the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu coming together for a live broadcast hangout on Google+, its social-network site.

    The contest was announced in October as part of USA TODAY's redesign and 30th anniversary celebration.

    "This competition was an interesting exercise in looking at the role of print in an advertiser's brand story in 2013," says Maryam Banikarim, an executive sponsor of the competition and chief marketing officer for Gannett, the parent company of USA TODAY. "Advertising has changed over the years, but the objective is still the same — to get consumers to take notice of your brand. Sometimes a simple ad can convey a futuristic idea. We think our judges did a terrific job of determining what really makes a great print advertisement."

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  15. It looks like USAT still isn't out of the French Riviera party-crowd and the tens of thousands of dollars thrown away for what?

    USA TODAY hosts the 2013 U.S. Young Lions Competitions to select teams who will represent the country as "TEAM USA" at the global competition in France. The winning U.S. teams will be sponsored to attend the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to compete against the most talented and creative young professionals in the world.

    In 2013, USA TODAY will administer four Young Lions competitions – Cyber, Film, Media and Print. The competitions are open to teams of two young professionals employed by an advertising company or agency, or media industry company in the U.S., who are twenty-eight (28) years of age or younger (born after June 22, 1984). The competitions will run from January through May.

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  16. Who does one turn to when HR breaks confidentiality?

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    1. Possibly, a call to the Gannett ethics hotline. That number is 1-800-234-4206, according to this document about Gannett's Ethics Policy.

      For employees in the U.K., it is 0-808-234-8157.

      In that document, it says: "There is no need to identify yourself, if you prefer not to do so, when reporting a suspected violation. All reports will be treated in confidence except as necessary to conduct investigations."

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  17. 6:47...where? USA (and Florida Today) racks were given to home delivery carriers some time ago now. Their priorities are not as they should be. They bypass a rack to finish HD on time and don't care whether the paper gets into the rack or not.

    Of course now one couldn't give them back to the single copy carriers. They don't miss all the theft that's going on.

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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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