Following Tom Beusse's surprise resignation yesterday as president of the USA Today Sports Media Group, here's one version of the backstory, courtesy of a reader I know and trust:
Three years ago, USA Today Publisher David Hunke persuaded CEO Craig Dubow that Beusse was the best man to lead the nascent Sports Media Group -- even though Beusse had been out of work for more than two years.
Dubow's heir apparent, President Gracia Martore, wasn't keen on Beusse from the start. Nevertheless, Dubow was still the boss, and Beusse's hiring was announced in January 2011.
But within a year, management upheaval turned everything upside down. Dubow retired in October 2011, and Hunke followed six months later. Larry Kramer replaced Hunke in May 2012, inheriting Beusse in the process.
Promoted to CEO, Martore started calling the shots. Tensions rose.
Beusse signed a seven-figure lease on prime Manhattan office space near Times Square that generated headlines. Then he ordered a messy reorganization of USAT's Sports Department where everyone had to reapply for work; veteran staffers were humiliated and dismissed. Meanwhile, Sports Media got more and more cozy with advertisers.
Shouting matches
Depending on one's view, Beusse was now a digital visionary trapped in a slow-moving, hidebound bureaucracy. Or he was a fast-talking prima donna with unreasonable demands and too little respect for longstanding employees and company values.
Whatever the view, he and Martore didn't get along. There were more than a few shouting matches between the two. Also for a while, Beusse simply ignored his new boss: Kramer.
Beusse and a handful of his most senior lieutenants stand to make many millions in bonuses if they stick around long enough to see Sports Media hit its promised $300 million annual revenue goal by 2015.
That he left now, two years early, suggests he's either landed an even richer gig -- or Sports Media's so far off course, Beusse was told to "pursue other career opportunities." If it's the latter, Martore may be forced to moderate Wall Street's expectations when she faces analysts Monday after third-quarter results are released. And the outlook is bleak enough already.
Whatever the financial fallout, Beusse's departure creates another post-Hunke public-relations mess for the Crystal Palace, and comes less than a month after the Hilton hotels deal drama. Plus, it leaves many important questions unanswered: Is the business model for Sports Media broken? Can it be repaired? If not, what's next?
 |
| Hunke |
Dubow's heir apparent, President Gracia Martore, wasn't keen on Beusse from the start. Nevertheless, Dubow was still the boss, and Beusse's hiring was announced in January 2011.
Promoted to CEO, Martore started calling the shots. Tensions rose.
Beusse signed a seven-figure lease on prime Manhattan office space near Times Square that generated headlines. Then he ordered a messy reorganization of USAT's Sports Department where everyone had to reapply for work; veteran staffers were humiliated and dismissed. Meanwhile, Sports Media got more and more cozy with advertisers.
Shouting matches
Depending on one's view, Beusse was now a digital visionary trapped in a slow-moving, hidebound bureaucracy. Or he was a fast-talking prima donna with unreasonable demands and too little respect for longstanding employees and company values.
Whatever the view, he and Martore didn't get along. There were more than a few shouting matches between the two. Also for a while, Beusse simply ignored his new boss: Kramer.
 |
| Beusse |
That he left now, two years early, suggests he's either landed an even richer gig -- or Sports Media's so far off course, Beusse was told to "pursue other career opportunities." If it's the latter, Martore may be forced to moderate Wall Street's expectations when she faces analysts Monday after third-quarter results are released. And the outlook is bleak enough already.
Whatever the financial fallout, Beusse's departure creates another post-Hunke public-relations mess for the Crystal Palace, and comes less than a month after the Hilton hotels deal drama. Plus, it leaves many important questions unanswered: Is the business model for Sports Media broken? Can it be repaired? If not, what's next?
Just so you know. Beusse doesn't have another opportunity lined up. He was in McLean last week looking harried. He was fired.
ReplyDeleteA richly deserved firing. What a miserable.... leader.
ReplyDeleteSorry, but unless one is truly a rare and irreplaceable talent, there is no such thing as more than one "shouting match" with your CEO.
ReplyDeleteCan you retro-un-fire all the unfortunate souls this wretched piece of flotsam cast aside?
ReplyDeleteThe theme continues. We'll see a lot of bitter sports people coming up with tales like this one. Some of it may very well be true.
ReplyDeleteBut in the end, it will have the same central idea. The sports people will gripe, but they never have any better ideas to offer.
I saw several better ideas on the previous thread about Beusse, linked above.
DeleteIf you're talking about the ones posted late at night, there was maybe one decent idea among the wreckage.
DeleteThe rest were the usual flops that emerge from the toy department mentality. The person even tried to claim Christine Brennan -- a known ranter with agendas galore -- is a "newsbreaker." It was a silly post.
Like I said, no better ideas to offer.
Don't be so quick to spin Martore a pass on all of this. During that long spell when Craig was sick she was effectively in charge. And, for years prior to that, nothing happened without her agreement. She also bragged about Tom quite a bit. People feared confronting her on SMG because she would make it clear that people like she and Tom had vision, and the rest of us didn't.
ReplyDeleteTime to hit the SMG reset button
ReplyDeleteTime to blow the damn thing up!
DeleteMore binary thinking from a sports person. You do realize that blowing the damn thing up would likely mean more purging of the veteran award-winners you lust for, right? Right? Probably not.
DeleteNot necessarily. Blowing it up could involve returning to something closer to the original Sports Department staffing before Beusse arrived.
DeleteDoubtful, but not impossible.
It won't. Not surprising you would post that, though. Jim is kind of the poster boy of binary thought, with a lot of factual ambiguity mixed in.
DeleteBlow it up by doing the following:
DeleteBring in more inclusive, less arrogant senior management.
Actually encourage them to work with Murcko's team instead of working against it all the time.
Hire strong journalists who will break stories that people actually care about and that TV networks will want on their shows.
Merge the sales and marketing departments so USAT marches forward with one voice instead of a Sports voice and a everything else voice.
Bring the sales teams together...physically.
STOP throwing 7 people at every advertiser. They can't take it anymore!
Another set of non-ideas. This is proving my point. Every post so far has been a sports person ranting about changing management and respecting the award-winning veterans. Nothing so far has mentioned content. Typical of the toy department mentality.
DeleteMartore is not blameless in any of this. To allow Beusse to run roughshod over a staff, telling them that the last 30 years were less important than the next few minutes, was pure arrogance. Allowing him to make everyone reapply for their jobs is one of the worst tactics management can tske. Jim Welch, a fine leader, tslented newsman and straight shooter, was cast aside, as were others.
ReplyDeleteThe bottom line is Beusse was the master bullshitter along the lines of other out of work "senior management leaders" Hunke and others annointed who are still around drawing huge salaries despite massive failures. Let's hope Heather Frank is next, and that Kramer clears out some other dead weight as well.
The reapplying for your own jobs stint didn't happen just at USAT, it was company wide. That tactic has Martore written all over it.
ReplyDeleteI worked for a (not Gannett) employer in the eighties that made everyone reapply for their jobs. The manager later said it was the worst thing they ever did, because the resentment it caused even for the "keepers" became a cancer.
ReplyDeleteReapplying for your old job was not company wide. It happened at some shops, but not at mine. Beusse was terrible. We all knew that from the start. There were some veterans in Sports not pulling their weight, but what he did with guys like Jim Welch and a few others in Sports was reprehensible. I'm ready to see what Dave Morgan can do.
ReplyDelete9:42 is correct. Off the top of my head, I can only think of a handful of Gannett sites where staff had to reapply for work.
DeleteFor an HR expert's perspective on why that sometimes makes sense, read this post.
Just to be clear, Morgan was a big part of the staff reorg and having the team reapply for jobs. The current content strategy is also the vision of him and his cohorts. This includes For The Win and Sports On Earth.
ReplyDeleteJust stop and think for a second about the massive senior management failures at this company over the last few years. Starting with Dubow, Martore, Hunke, and on and on and on. And now Beusse. The gang that can't shoot straight.
ReplyDeleteSports on Earth is not a bad product, but Joe Posnanski was a complete disaster. They have some great writers on board. I like Morgan but don't agree with the reapply for jobs strategy.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget: There were many sports people who thought Posnanski was great, despite some of the quasi-red flags that should have been noticed.
DeleteThat's another big problem with sports people. They don't think outside the binary method, so everyone is either great or terrible. Posnanski was only unmasked because of the Paterno book. That was a perfect storm of events, but if that hadn't happened (a huge if), there would still be legions of sports people kneeling at the Posnanski altar.
10:27 is absolutely right. Don't let the corporate posters here rewrite history.
ReplyDeleteMorgan was the guy who humiliated everybody by making them reapply for job in the 'new' USA Today Sports.
Morgan was the guy who fired who knows how many people for no other reason than they made too much $ or were too old.
Morgan was the guy who gave them the cheapest severance imaginable -- 1 week for each year worked at the company -- then set them adrift in the worst job market in 50 years.
And good old Dave Morgan was the guy who couldn't even bring himself to thank these people for their service over 20-30 years.
Instead, he uttered some corporate babble about firing all these people for no reason was all about making SPORTS "better" for the future.
Who is he kidding? He was Beusse's grinning little executioner who stayed out in California so he wouldn't get the bloods on his hands.
He's out the door next, him and his whole crew. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch. Let's see who they'll "rescue" next from sold achievements, award-winning coverage and profitability.
What do you mean "corporate poster(s)?" It's clearly one guy.
DeleteThere's no way all of that can be one guy. Try to stay within reality.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteOnly a fool ignores Larry Kramer. LK LOVES sports - just look at the USAT redesign for its sports section. Gorgeous, fast, colorful. I wish the rest of the site would make the morph, and I think it will.
ReplyDeleteFrank Barnako
As someone who was a victim of Morgan's hatchet, if he gets cut it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. He supposedly loved all his guys at Yahoo -- so how many writers has he brought over to USAT (not including Pesavento)? ZERO. All his writers changed their Twitter logos "in solidarity" when Morgan was forced out at Yahoo. What fools they were. Morgan needs to be axed and find out what it's like in the real world to find a job these days. He sold USAT a bill of goods, but it's going to catch up with him soon.
ReplyDeleteThank goodness Beusse is gone. Anyone who thinks high school sports coverage can be successfully nationalized is not playing with a full deck.
ReplyDeleteBeusse proposed national ad sales across a network of local high school sports readers. But that was just sales.
DeleteI don't think he expected readers in, say, Rochester would ever want to read about high school sports in Reno or vice-versa.
High school sports, like politics, is local, local local. Tough brand to sell advertising for.
DeleteJim: God only knows what Beusse expected. He was another failed Gannett hire who was responsible for failed initiatives. Advertising sales initiatives surrounding local high school sports and local college coverage will work. It's a shame so few Gannett newspapers are on that path. If they were, perhaps there would not be as much downsizing.
DeleteI agree wholeheartedly that H.S. sports commands ad dollars. But it comes from the LOCAL advertisers sold by the local properties - not a national effort. It is such an ego buy (support your alma mater) that if the local markets could sell it, they'd rack up the bucks. It's just not available to sell...what a shame.
Delete9:42 But wouldn't national marketers like Gatorade and Axe and Red Bull be interested in a network of high school sports fans?
DeleteJim, no one in Wyoming gives a crap about sports in Rhode Island.
DeleteDoes that answer your question?
Jim - Gannett does not have a nationwide footprint, despite their efforts to say they do. Gatorade, Axe and RedBull would all be great targets if you could achieve national scale with a "one order" strategy for all top 50 or so markets. That is not what GCI can sell.
DeleteBut doesn't pricing ads by CPM make traditional big market definitions irrelevant?
DeleteSounds to me like Gannett learned the hard way why Beusse had been out of work for more than two years.
ReplyDeleteAnd as always, Gannett is too slow and too dumb to notice many of their execs banking money for doing nothing. NOTHING. “Tom is a seasoned media executive and we are excited about the experience he brings to Gannett,” said Dave Hunke. “His leadership will provide us with the vision to help grow our national sports initiatives.”
ReplyDeleteNow what to do with the rest of self-serving personal-agenda-driven execs who continue to run up to Gracia's penthouse every day?
Hunke did a lot of damage in a short time. He gave us Hillkirk and much of the. Lated management structure we have now. He gave us Rudd Davis. He gave us Heather Frank, and of course Tom Terrific. By far the worst publisher , ever.
ReplyDeleteHunke. Every time I see his pix I get angry. The epitome of what ails this company.
ReplyDeleteAnyone know how much $$ Beusse got on his way out? Seems he has a knack for getting $$ when he gets canned from a job.
ReplyDeleteCompanies like Gannett are only required to disclose annual compensation for what are typically the five highest-paid officers, known as named executive officers. Last year, excluding two NEOs listed for other reasons, the lowest paid of the group earned $1.8 million. That was chief digital officer David Payne.
DeleteTom Beusse wasn't anywhere on the list.
His severance would have to have been extraordinarily large to required that it be disclosed when the next proxy report to shareholders is released in the spring.
He walked away from the Gannett and SMG mess with a very nice chunk of dough. He's very happy. Trust me.
DeleteHunke used to be on that list, too.
ReplyDeleteBelieve me, Beusse leaving is definitely a firing. And, certainly an indicator that not all is well in Sports. Beusse doesn't get a chance to prove his $300million promise, so what comes of that when Gracia talks to the Board? A re-start of expectations, for sure. Rumor is, Beusse wasn't the only Sports leader to leave. By putting Morgan in charge - an editorial guy who doesn't have much business side under his belt - Gracia is putting Sports back under some central control. She very obviously didn't put any of Beusse's business-side underlings in charge. I know Beusse...he isn't the type of guy to take any interest in reporting to anyone, much less a woman like Gracia. Those guys liked to preach how they were creating something non-Gannett within Gannett, as if they could be independent in spite of headquarters. Well, look who's in charge now, Beusse...
ReplyDelete