Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Fremont | Court sides with GCI over rival news site

An Ohio judge has granted Gannett a temporary restraining order against four former Fremont News-Messenger advertising department employees accused of conspiring against the newspaper by launching a competing weekly paper they planned during work hours with company resources.

In an affidavit supporting its legal complaint, Gannett claims text messages show News-Messenger cellphones and computers were used during and after work hours as the defendants prepared for their new venture, the paper says in a news story.

5 comments:

  1. Based on the facts detailed in this article, it appears that Gannett has every reason to sue these former employees.

    Here’s an excerpt from the article:
    "The complaint alleges all or some of the defendants misrepresented the condition of The News-Messenger to customers and third parties and attempted to divert their advertising to a new weekly newspaper. While employed by Gannett, the defendants are alleged to have created the Community Media Network of Ohio for competitive purposes and used or removed confidential customer information and proprietary information on behalf of the new company.

    In an affidavit supporting the complaint, the company claims text messages show News-Messenger cellphones and computers were used during and after work hours as the defendants prepared for their new venture."

    Wow, this is some scandalous stuff these former ad reps tried to pull off - if all of these allegations prove to be, in fact, true.

    However, the question is: why would these reps feel the need to allegedly bad mouth the newspaper to advertisers in order to convince them to advertise in their new competition product?

    What type of environment exists at this itty bitty local newspaper that would motivate these employees to turn on their company and attempt do to their own thing? Isn't their current situation in good ol Fremont OH and working for Gannett good enough? Obviously not.

    From what everyone knows about innovation at Gannett and how The Big Shiny stifles any attempts by the employees in the “field” to create anything new on their own, it’s no surprise that this type of thing would happen. The innovation grant program – or whatever it is they call it these days – is too slow and riddled with too much red tape and oversight.

    So, if you want to create something on your own – Go for it. Just follow these three rules:
    #1 Do not create a competing product on company time. That’s dumb. Do it after work - Duh!

    #2 Do not use company phones, software, and other resources to create your product - Duh!

    #3 You do NOT have to intentionally disparage a Gannett product or brand to convince someone not to use it and use what you're developing. Gannett brands and products company-wide do a great job of making themselves look bad - in print, online, on mobile and anywhere else it tries to be.

    So, good try former Fremont ad reps. You just didn't do it the right way - again - IF, the facts outline by Gannett's litigious lawyers turn out to be true.

    There are so many products that are killing Gannett right now, yet they want to spend their legal resource suing four ad reps for creating a product that would competes with a 11,000/14,000 circulation newspaper in friggin Fremont Ohio. Haha - That's the kind of strategic judgment that defines Gannett, their approach to business, how they prioritize, and why they will continue to fail and lose.

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  2. It sounds like a plot for a bad B movie.

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  3. Good post, especially the last paragraph which summarizes it so succinctly:

    There are so many products that are killing Gannett right now, yet they want to spend their legal resource suing four ad reps for creating a product that would competes with a 11,000/14,000 circulation newspaper in friggin Fremont Ohio. Haha - That's the kind of strategic judgment that defines Gannett, their approach to business, how they prioritize, and why they will continue to fail and lose.

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  4. Dumb and Dumber. Anon 1:22 nails it. How stupid do you have to be to use your company provided equipment for anything personal?

    When I worked for Mama G I always kept my own laptop and cell phone. While I very rarely did company work on them, I never, ever used company equipment for personal business or did any personal web surfing on them. I didn't event set up my personal email on the iPhone. It just wasn't the sacrifices or the risk.

    I was covering a political race a couple of years ago for the Gannett paper I worked for and was surprised to see an advertising employee from my paper giving market advice to the candidate I was covering. I didn't know the employee but he had Gannett stickers all over his laptop so I asked if he worked at the paper and he said he did. I asked if that was the paper's computer he was using to crunch polling numbers for the candidate and it was. I just shook my head, my thought at the time was I had just met possibly the dumbest human on the planet. The candidate went on to get crushed in the general election.

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  5. Good for them (former Gannettoids)! Damn the man!

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