Jackson, Miss. | A handout photo, ethics -- and the demands for 'unique, high-impact local journalism'

When it comes to real news -- especially on hot-button subjects -- quality media outlets use their own staff or professional freelance photographers to make sure they're getting the full picture, both literally and figuratively. To do otherwise might compromise a news outlet's integrity.

Syrian rebel video screenshot; watch it.

Sometimes there are extenuating circumstances. In the Syrian conflict, major news organizations including The New York Times have relied on YouTube video posted by rebel groups because journalists aren't allowed in the country. But the NYT and others usually disclose the source of the video, explain why it's being used, and note that its veracity can't be 100% confirmed.

I'm hard-pressed, however, to imagine the extenuating circumstances that led Mississippi's Clarion-Ledger last Wednesday to use a handout photo to illustrate a story on perhaps the most contentious issue in the nation: abortion.

A 10-paragraph story
That day, the Jackson paper published a short article (online, at least) under the headline, "Ambulance called to Mississippi's only abortion clinic." It had only a Clarion-Ledger staff byline. Here are the first three paragraphs in their entirety:

Around 12:20 p.m. on Wednesday an ambulance was called to the state’s only abortion clinic.

“We understand that a female patient was taken by ambulance to UMC,” said Dana Chisholm, president of Pro Life Mississippi.

The Clarion-Ledger reached out to Jackson Women’s Health Organization owner Diane Derzis but she declined to comment.

Lots of background
What followed were seven paragraphs of background material that, although helpful to a first-time reader, did not contain what an editor of mine would call "new news."

A photo without IDs.

But what drew my attention -- and that of a Gannett Blog reader -- was the accompanying photo. In it, a reader can just barely make out a patient covered in a green sheet being wheeled away. There are five other people in the photo, but it's nearly impossible to see their faces; three of them have their backs to the camera.

Violating a cardinal rule in journalism, the cutline doesn't identify any of the people by name. It only says: "A patient is loaded in to an ambulance at Mississippi's only abortion clinic."

And then there's the credit line: "Pro Life Mississippi/Special to the Clarion-Ledge[r.]"

Although Derzis, the clinic owner, declined to comment for the paper, she did speak to the Jackson Free Press for its story the next day. She called the paper's coverage an example of "unprofessional journalistic ethics."

The Free Press said it e-mailed Clarion-Ledger City Editor Sam Hall for a comment, but got nothing back before press time.

Questions, but few answers
I don't know why the paper published the story or the photo.

Many of my readers may be tempted to say that understaffed newsrooms are forced to rely more and more on citizen journalists and photographers for freebie photos and stories to keep websites fresh, and broadcasts and news pages filled with local content. Desperate editors resort to content they'd never consider a few years before.

It's worth noting that a year ago, the Clarion-Ledger advertised for columnists who would fill a position that it called a "labor of love." In other words, they wouldn't get paid. That ad came after a round of buyouts in February 2012 that targeted about 20% of what was then a 50-person newsroom. This is at a paper with current weekday circulation of 54,000.

Now, other readers might say this was just a poor news decision, one that can't be justified by any amount of cutbacks. The editors should have just used something else.

But what?
A wire-service story without any local interest? Generic features on health, food, and sports supplied by the remains of what used to be called Gannett News Service?

A reader tells me that Kate Marymont, who leads Corporate's News Department, sent a memo to editors last week as newspapers across the company were conducting another round of hundreds of layoffs and other job reductions. Dated Tuesday, the memo says:

"Going forward, we know editors face challenges in meeting the content needs of our print and digital readers. To support your efforts, we are launching several content initiatives.

"All are aimed at giving you ready-to-use national content so that your teams can focus entirely on the unique, high-impact local journalism needed to compete in today's crowded media world."

And I think I'll just leave it at that.

Is your site using photos or video from possibly biased sources? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

USAT | In battle for readers, will a national news audience buy Gannett's 'hometown advantage'?

Let me first quote two key paragraphs from Alan Mutter's excellent new analysis of the challenges USA Today still confronts after redesigning its website and print edition:

"As USA Today commences its fourth decade, there is reason to wonder if its business model will be viable for another 30 years, given that it has lost its utility to its primary targets: business travelers and the advertisers seeking to reach them. Further, nearly two-thirds of its coast-to-coast circulation is built on free copies distributed by hotels and other businesses, meaning that barely more than a third of its readers actually think enough of the paper to pay for it."

And:

"Coinciding with its birthday, USAT put its web and mobile offerings in new and appealing Zite-lite packages. The actual content contained in those new packages, however, consists of a thin mix of aggregated and featherweight articles that seem to have been chosen more for their pageview-generating potential than for their journalistic significance. The result is that the aggregation is less complete than you get at The Huffington Post, less illuminating than you get at Real Clear Politics, less stimulating than you get at Drudge Report and less newzy, breezy and sleazy than you can get at TMZ."

Getting what they pay for
Piggybacking on Mutter's argument, I've tried to focus more discussion on the paper's competitively weak editorial content over its shiny new look. One measure of that weakness: USAT is (I believe) the only Gannett daily (other than Detroit) that's not erecting a paywall. Why?

The answer appears to be management doesn't think readers are willing to pay for the content USAT so far is delivering. Publisher Larry Kramer has promised some editorial improvements, but none of them sound like the sort of sweeping changes that will make USAT really stand out in a very crowded market.

Callaway

Its exclusive niche is of dubious value: news and video from Gannett's 81 U.S. community dailies, 23 TV stations, and specialty publications like Army Times. In his column introducing USAT's redesign, new top editor David Callaway wrote about the value of Gannett's companywide "5,000" journalists -- a figure I still find of curious origin.

"That's a reporting army, Callaway says, "almost twice the size of what is now Thomson Reuters, which has traditionally billed itself as the world's largest news organization."

The national news desk
Then Callaway inserts an important caveat: "Numbers aren't enough: The trick is to make them work together."

This is where the still developing national news desk comes into play. Callaway calls it "a hub-and-spoke news desk where the senior editors from news departments such as video, graphics, breaking news, and enterprise will work together and across platforms to deliver national news, charts and visuals to every local Gannett paper and TV station across the country."

In other words, it's back to the future: Gannett News Service, which became ContentOne, which then became Gannett News Network after founder Tara Connell's retirement in May 2011.

The national desk may benefit the community dailies and TV stations, but how will it strengthen USAT's hand? Callaway writes: "We'll use the best of what is coming from Gannett papers such as the Detroit Free Press, the Louisville Courier-Journal, and KUSA-TV in Denver, the top-rated TV station in the country, to leverage their scoops and unique reporting across all of our media."

Look: I love the dailies and stations. And the larger ones, including my alma mater in Kentucky's Louisville, do incredible good work -- with community news. Collectively, they are Gannett's "hometown advantage," as CEO Gracia Martore reminded Wall Street media stock analysts at a conference in June.

Dateline: Lafayette, La.
But do USAT's readers really want local-local news from Fort Myers, Fla.; Portland, Maine; Great Falls, Mont., or Lafayette, La.? Is that really the sort of aggregation that will power USAT's much-needed competitive edge for its next 30 years?

We're now going to find out. I'll close with Mutter: "Even though there’s still a bit of time for Kramer to determine how to leverage the waning power of the print brand in the digital world, there can be no doubt that my esteemed friend knows there is little time to waste."

Related: Newspaper design blogger Charles Apple's super-detailed critique of a super-big Page One graphic.

Former GNS chief Washington reporter Ringle dies

From a report in The Washington Post:

William Ringle, a chief Washington correspondent for Gannett News Service who nimbly covered foreign policy and national affairs and who was known for taking a dim view of opinion writing, died Monday at a retirement home in Davidson, N.C. He was 88.

Ringle

The death, from colon cancer, was confirmed by a former colleague, columnist Jack Germond, who called Ringle "one of the finest reporters I ever knew."

When he retired in 1988, Gannett honored him with a Best of Gannett Lifetime Achievement Award.

A funeral mass is scheduled for tomorrow (Sept. 9) at 2 p.m. ET at St. Therese Catholic Church, 217 Brawley School Rd., in Mooresville, N.C. A reception for friends is planned at The Pines retirement home at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, according to DavidsonNews.net.

Ringle started at the old Rochester (N.Y.) Times-Union in 1951, and later wrote editorials for the Saratogian -- a job he found less than rewarding, according to the Post's Adam Bernstein.

He made the piquant observation, Bernstein noted: “Editorial writing is like wetting your pants in a blue serge suit. It gives you a nice warm feeling all over, and nobody notices."

Gannett is launching 'sponsored' cold/flu website; project among first led by unit given to Banikarim

Testing newsroom ethical boundaries and local editorial independence, Corporate's advertorial department is launching a specialty website on Monday focused on seasonal ailments. The cold and flu portal will publish through the end of September across Gannett sites, including U.S. newspapers, TV stations and MomsLikeMe.

It's being sponsored by a single advertiser: Similasan, the Swiss maker of over-the-counter products including Similasan's Nasal Allergy Relief.

The site is one of the first to be created by a former ContentOne department -- Custom Publishing -- since it was turned over to Chief Marketing Officer Maryam Banikarim in May, when ContentOne (the former Gannett News Service) was split after the retirement of its manager, Tara Connell.

The project comes as GCI struggles to  shore up revenue after a recent quarter where newspaper advertising fell 6.5%. And it follows GCI's ongoing shift toward becoming a "marketing solutions" company, and away from a traditional news producer.

Risking newsroom credibility
Custom Publishing produces what's generally known as advertorial: news stories, video and other matter meant to cast a subject in a favorable light, one that's pleasing to potential advertisers.

But when produced by newsrooms, advertorial risks undermining the editorial staff's credibility by creating the impression advertisers can dictate the content of news columns. At the best publications, advertorial is produced outside the newsroom, and is presented in typefaces and design that clearly separates it from traditional news.

The Custom Publishing department is not directly demanding upbeat, non-critical coverage. Editors have been told the site "will feature quality cold and flu content from Gannett news sources." They've been advised to place an online link to the portal "with any content you may be running locally about cold/flu season.''

Mandate to participate
Yet, by telling editors in advance that Similasan is the sole sponsor, Corporate is nonetheless pressuring newsrooms to produce material that doesn't, for example, mention cold and flu remedies that would be competitive with the Swiss manufacturer.

There's no doubt that local news sites are expected to participate. Because it is a sponsored site, all U.S. newspaper and broadcast sites, "are expected to cooperate in promoting the portal and making efforts to drive traffic to it."

Banikarim

The project comes as newspaper newsrooms, especially, are struggling to produce the most basic public-service content -- such as government watchdog reporting -- after a big layoff in June. Editors of the company's 31 biggest papers met only last week to learn about a new editorial initiative dubbed "passion topics."

What's more, the cold and flu site is the latest example of Corporate dictating news content across the entire company, a shift from the company's historic practice of deferring to local editorial control.

The site is among the more high-profile signs of the direction Banikarim may be leading the company since her March appointment as GCI's first CMO.

Memo: boost revenue
When Banikarim inherited ContentOne's Custom Publishing, COO Gracia Martore said in a memo:

"It will create and manage a corporate editorial calendar, develop content and enterprise packages and further develop Gannett’s custom publishing business. The goal will be to generate additional revenues for the company and add scale while leveraging our vast content portfolio."

Banikarim came from NBCUniversal, where she was senior vice president of integrated sales marketing. In that role, she was responsible for "working across NBCUniversal’s portfolio to develop custom, innovative ad sales solutions on behalf of clients as well as overseeing marketing for NBCUniversal,'' GCI said at the time.

Memo: Meeting set for top editors on producing 'unique, high-impact journalism' with smaller staffs

News Department Vice President Kate Marymont has sent the following memo to editors of Gannett's 31 biggest U.S. community newspapers:

Friends:



How can we create unique, high-impact journalism with smaller staffs?



I’d like to invite you to an editors meeting at corporate Aug. 16-18 to discuss this tough question.



A team of editors has worked for more than a year to identify how news and information for every platform needs to evolve. They will be sharing what they’ve learned.



There are many corporate initiatives underway to give local journalists the ability to focus on local storytelling -- the CCI rollout, the Design Studios, a reconfiguring of how we use ContentOne, etc. We’ll be sharing what we’ve learned and talking about helpful strategies.



The goal of the meeting is to support quality local journalism.



Details:



We will cover the cost of the hotel and meals during the meeting. Details on making your room reservations and other logistical information will follow in a separate e-mail. You will need to arrange and cover the costs of your own travel and send [XXXXX] your itinerary.



We will begin at noon on Tuesday, Aug. 16, and end by 2 PM, Thursday, Aug. 18.



If you have a conflict, let me know. We’ll need to talk through who would be a good sub from your site. I do want all of the top 31 sites represented.



Thanks.



Kate

The category is: Hyped initiatives for $9.4 million

And the answer is:

He made this hyperbolic announcement in December 2008 to a Wall Street audience about a then-new initiative: "It will, I believe, upend the traditional thinking about content in our industry both in how we gather it, and how we sell it."

And there was this: "It also will allow us to develop and gather information much more efficiently by eliminating duplication and allowing our local entities to focus on what's important -- a deep, rich local report. It is the logical next step from our local Information Center initiatives, creating a national head to the local content gathering bodies."

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

That was, of course, CEO Craig Dubow, speaking to the UBS media conference about ContentOne, a repackaged version of the old Gannett News Service, slimmed down after a round of layoffs. Tara Connell, who had been Corporate's chief publicist, was put in charge. And then the upending began.

Until last month, that is, when Connell abruptly retired, and ContentOne was split into three parts. The reporting and editing part -- in other words, the old GNS -- was sent packing to USA Today, where Executive Editor Chet Czarniak was put in charge. And now (drumroll, please) it's been reborn as . . . the Gannett News Network!

All this is according to a recent Czarniak memo to the troops, announcing details of an expanding investigative project into federal highway project overruns.

So, after much committee meeting; brainstorming and bonuses paid all around, Gannett News Service became ContentOne only to be renamed Gannett News Network. (Right now, I picture CMO Maryam Banikarim rolling her eyes and updating her resume.)

In his memo, Czarniak also drops an oh-by-the-way paragraph about the Des Moines Register's decision last week to lay off its widely read agriculture reporter. Philip Brasher, you'll recall, was the paper's lone D.C. reporter on a beat of critical importance to the newspaper.

Referencing "Des Moines support," Cznariak writes: "The Gannett D.C. Bureau is working with Des Moines Register Executive Editor Rick Green to ensure Washington-based coverage of issues and lawmakers important to Iowa in light of a recent staff cutback by Des Moines. A communication plan is in place currently and firm staffing plans are expected to be resolved in July."

Des Moines | Why they're dancing on K Street

On the Civil Eats blog, Paula Crossfield writes about the serious consequences of The Des Moines Register's decision this week to lay off Philip Brasher, the well-known agriculture reporter in Washington.

Brasher

"Brasher," she says today, "was one of the only reporters who was not working for agriculture industry-sponsored outlets in the room at Senate and House Agriculture Committee hearings, and played a key role in informing the public about these as well as the inner workings of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. For the most part, the agriculture industry will now have a free reign over coverage of national food policy issues in the Midwest."

Asked for comment, Register Publisher Laura Hollingsworth -- who also is head of Gannett's Midwest regional group of newspapers -- said:

"While we made the difficult decision this week to close our Washington, D.C., office, we maintain a 45-year reporting veteran in Des Moines who covers the agricultural issues that affect Iowa and the Midwest. We also are augmenting his coverage with resources from Gannett’s ContentOne team. Fully leveraging our resources in Iowa and Washington allows us to still provide comprehensive political and agricultural coverage for our readers in Des Moines and beyond."

We could fertilize a lot of farmland with statements like that.

Hollingsworth's is an increasingly common, and false, refrain from publishers and other senior managers whenever the ax falls: Less is the same. (Or, in the case of The Tennessean, it's actually more.) Worse still, Hollingsworth glosses over the fact that Brasher was a big contributor to ContentOne's ag coverage.
On Twitter, Brasher wrote: "Years with @DMRegister were wonderful. Real pros have lost jobs they loved -- and still working their butts off there."

To be sure, Brasher wasn't the only Register journalist who lost his job when Gannett laid off 700 U.S. newspaper employees on Tuesday. Among the other 12 in Des Moines: Jane Schorer Meisner, who won the highest of journalism's highest honors: a 1991 Pulitzer Prize in public service for groundbreaking reporting that -- with the victim's consent -- publicly identified a woman who'd been raped. Meisner's work, the Pulitzer judges said, prompted widespread reconsideration of the traditional media practice of concealing the identity of rape victims.

The Register's weekday circulation is 108,247; Sunday, 211,880.

(K Street?)

[Image: today's Register, Newseum]

USAT | A big shake-up disclosed at USA Weekend; VP Frank takes reins as mag merges with Your Life

In another power grab, USA Today's consumer media vice president, Heather Frank, is taking control of editorial content at the nation's second-biggest newspaper magazine supplement -- further tightening her grip on a risky digital bet by Gannett's most visible brand.

Frank

The newspaper disclosed today that Frank will oversee a new editorial team comprising the merged staffs of USA Weekend and the daily's six-month-old Your Life online vertical.

The struggling paper also said it had appointed a new general manager for Your Life, and confirmed that it hired a Washington Post editor for the site, which focuses on subjects meant to to draw female consumers, including health, food and beauty.

The moves come amid other shifts in resources at USAT, which at one point accounted for as much as 10% of GCI's overall revenue -- illustrating the high stakes in the paper's turnaround under Publisher Dave Hunke. Two weeks ago, Corporate disclosed that USAT would absorb much of the remnants of the old Gannett News Service, now operating as the ContentOne news distributor.

Frank was among a clutch of newly created vice presidents that Hunke named last fall in a reorganization of the paper to reverse sagging advertising revenue and circulation. Your Life is one of five planned verticals that form a centerpiece of Hunke's risky bid to get the paper back on track, so has drawn considerable attention across GCI and the newspaper industry. The paper prints 1.8 million copies, but trails The Wall Street Journal in overall circulation, including digital subscriptions.

Today's statement said USA Weekend's president and publisher, Charles Gabrielson, would continue to manage sales, marketing, research and affiliate relations. The magazine prints 22.6 million copies weekly, distributed by its more than 840 affiliate newspapers. Conde Nast's Parade is the top title in the Sunday supplement market, with 32.2 million copies in more than 510 papers.

The statement was unclear on whether Gabrielson would report to Frank, saying only that "the new management team" will report to her. That would at least include the merged editorial staffs.

Combining 'core strengths'
Frank said: "The combination of the highly tenured content teams represents an opportunity to bring together the core editorial strengths of USA Weekend magazine -- engaging, celebrity-driven coverage of social issues, entertainment, health, food -- with the core strengths of USA Today's Your Life -- outstanding health, medical and fitness coverage and a vibrant online platform."

Frank's editorial takeover today is likely to deepen the angst among some Gannett Bloggers, who have expressed concern about the authority she is gaining at the newspaper.

Like the other verticals, Your Life has its own general manager, a position similar to a deputy publisher for the paper. The new GM is Christine Allegro. Like Frank, she is an AOL veteran, and got hired last year "to drive new content strategies across multiple content niches,'' today's statement says.

The statement was equally unclear on whether Allegro and the new editor from the Post, Nancy Kerr, were hired into new positions, or as replacements for existing managers. I reported Kerr's hiring last week. Denise Brodey was Your Life's GM at its launch; as I post this, her photo is still illustrating the site's introduction to readers.

Today's shakeup suggests Hunke may be unhappy with Your Life's progress since it was launched in November -- a concern, given the attention he's focused on the vertical sites as sources of new revenue and readers. Corporate has disclosed little about Your Life's traffic since a lone report in GCI's annual report to federal securities regulators.

About Frank's bio
Word for word, from a USAT statement, announcing her promotion to vice president of vertical development last September; her title has since been changed to VP of consumer media:

Frank joined USA Today in 2010 as general manager of USAT’s Your Life health and lifestyle vertical. Previously, she led the content programming and operations teams for RevolutionHealth.com. Prior to that, she was the editor-in-chief for Meredith Corporation’s women’s lifestyle sites.

From 1997 to 2003, she was an executive at America Online, where she led editorial teams in developing programming in response to popular culture and current events. Prior to joining AOL, Frank was the general manager for new media at WHERE magazines. Frank is a graduate of Newcomb College.

Memo: ContentOne's Connell reportedly retiring

[Updated at 6:26 p.m. ET with link to memo on ContentOne's future.]

Anonymous@5:40 p.m. says they just received the following in an e-mail, concerning ContentOne's first chief, Tara Connell. ContentOne, launched in late 2008, is the former Gannett News Service. Note: Connell is 61, according to the Annual Report to shareholders. She was a major supporter of COO Gracia Martore, which partly explains the length of this note:

Gracia Martore
President and Chief Operating Officer

Dear Colleagues,

I wanted to share with you the news that Tara Connell, vice president of ContentOne, has made the decision to retire at the end of May. Although she is leaving, the mission of ContentOne will continue.

Connell

Tara joined our company in 1972 as a reporter in Westchester. She covered many local and national stories, including the sensational Jean Harris trial. In 1982, Tara became a founding staffer of USA Today, beginning as a reporter and eventually assuming responsibility as the Page One managing editor.

In 1999, Tara moved to the corporate staff as director of media relations, where she says she was able to learn the business “from the other side.” She was named Gannett’s Corporate Staffer of the Year in 2002 and in 2003, she became the company’s vice president of Corporate Communications.

In 2009, Tara worked closely with our chairman and CEO, Craig Dubow, and other senior members of the management team on a new concept: ContentOne. As the leader of ContentOne, Tara helped established a company-wide culture of content sharing, created “The Dashboard,” and orchestrated instrumental partnerships both inside and outside the company.

Over the past few months, we have worked closely with Tara to develop a plan for the continued success of Content One following her retirement. Some fundamental changes will be made that will continue the mission while enhancing the impact.

Finding, sharing and guiding the development of content across Gannett was the goal and has been the accomplishment of ContentOne and that will continue. Leveraging that content and growing revenue around it also has been the vision and is quickly becoming the reality of ContentOne, and the changes that will follow Tara’s retirement I believe will enhance those abilities. In fact, Gannett continues to be committed to sharing and leveraging the content that is generated across our vast portfolio of media properties. The attached contains our going-forward plan for ContentOne.

Tara has contributed to Gannett’s success for nearly 40 years. When she begins her next chapter, she plans to travel to China with her husband, after which she will be staying local -- working on personal writing projects, assisting local businesses and enjoying her community.

Please join me in wishing Tara all the best. I know I speak for many when I say she will be missed.

Survey | Nearly all feature jobs series on Page One

My survey of Gannett newspapers today found that 43 of 47 print front pages featured at least one element of the Corporate-driven weekly jobs series. I counted three elements: a story; a "refer" to an inside story; a refer to the A-section CareerBuilder job listings, or a combination of any three. Today is part five of 12 in the Sunday series, designed to promote the GCI-controlled employment site.

Note: I examined only those pages appearing in the Newseum's daily database. (I didn't count two N.J. papers -- the Home News Tribune and the Courier News -- because of apparent glitches in uploading their Sunday pages to the database.)

Which four papers didn't include any Page One presence? See my spreadsheet.

Kicking ethics aside, Gannett launches jobs series

[Circled part of screenshot highlights Indianapolis' jobs series]

So much for deferring to local editorial control, eh?

Marching in lockstep, Gannett newspapers today launched a Corporate-driven editorial series about jobs, one that reads too much like advertorial to boost employment advertising -- even as it's being presented as public-service journalism.

For example, the Indianapolis Star's homepage features four links under a "Top 10 jobs in Indiana'' headline. (See screenshot, above.) One of the links takes readers to CareerBuilder, the employment site majority-owned by Gannett. Bending journalism ethics, the Star-branded CareerBuilder page doesn't disclose that the two companies are owned by Gannett.

A second link takes readers to another Star-branded page that appears to be a ContentOne production. It includes some editorial matter produced by USA Today and the Star -- and yet more content produced by CareerBuilder. Once more, the CareerBuilder business tie isn't disclosed.

Elsewhere across GCI, here's how Publisher Amy Pack tip-toed around the project in a letter to readers of her two California dailies: "We’d like to help our readers by creating an environment for the employment ads right here in the main news section of the Times-Delta and Advance-Register."

[Updated at 6:21 p.m. ET: It appears Corporate supplied some of the language for Pack's note. When I Googled her phrasing, I turned up similar letters signed by other Gannett publishers in communities that include Burlington, Vt.; Mountain Home, Ark., and St. George, Utah.]

Now, it's your turn. How did your newspaper launch the series? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

In new sports czar, USAT expands GCI-wide reach

Today's announcement of a newly created USA Today Sports Media Group -- and a top executive in charge -- is at least as interesting for its broad mission: The newly hired Tom Beusse will be responsible for overseeing business and strategy for national sports initiatives across not only USAT, but also Gannett’s 82 other daily newspapers, 23 broadcast TV stations, plus HighSchoolSports.net and action sports subsidiary BNQT.com. (I note that HighSchoolSports' tagline already says it's a "USAT partner.")

In this move, GCI is once more knitting together its flagship daily with the rest of the company -- a change from the days when USAT was largely independent. It's the business side's equivalent to editorial's ContentOne.

Beusse will work out of GCI's New York City office and, it appears, will report to USAT Publisher Dave Hunke. (That Hunke is still announcing such hires suggests he's not leaving anytime soon, despite rumors to the contrary -- or, Beusse is in for a surprise.)

Corporate's statement says Beusse was most recently president and CEO of Westwood One, a publicly owned content syndication company focused largely on network and local radio. Prior to Westwood One, he was president of Time4 Media, a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Warner. In his role, he was responsible for 18 consumer brands including GOLF Magazine, This Old House and Warren Miller Entertainment. Prior to that, he spent five years as president of magazine publishing at Rodale.

CareerBuilder | A peek at the upcoming jobs series

[Screenshot shows employment series webpage]

Several posters have reported that Gannett's newspapers are expected to publish a new series about the job market through the spring. It's the latest production of ContentOne, the former Gannett News Service now run by ex-Corporate publicist Tara Connell.

A reader has provided a link to a webpage that appears destined for The Des Moines Register's site. "It's surprisingly simple; you take take the basic URL, then type in the newspaper name after the "=" sign to get each paper's version."

At a glance, the series looks an awful lot like a promotional vehicle for CareerBuilder, the GCI-owned jobs site based in Chicago. It's part of GCI's portfolio of digital companies. What I don't see is any disclosure that CareerBuilder has a business relationship with GCI newspapers.

My questions: What form will this take in print? What sort of content are local newspapers producing? What's the role of any TV stations?

Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

Tech 101 | Brevard wins first place 'BUD' award

A Gannett Blogger forwarded a memo that ContentOne Vice President Tara Connell apparently sent yesterday to U.S. newspapers and other sites, about an award for use of the "Dashboard" software for newsrooms. Florida Today won the $500 first place prize.

As I understand the concept, Dashboard is a tool that lets newsrooms to see what other newspapers are producing in real time, in order to coordinate coverage across multiple worksites. In other words, it would create a unified news "budget." That's in keeping with Corporate's overall push to create a more seamless and less costly network of content production. Question: Do advertising departments have access to Dashboards?

Following is the memo's top; here's the full text.

Subject: BUD Awards (Best Use of the Dashboard)

From: Connell, Tara
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 4:57 PM

All: I am pleased to announce the winners of the Best Use of the Dashboard (BUD) Award. Thank you all for your submissions. More importantly, thank you for the creative, collaborative and enthusiastic work you’ve done to adopt the Dashboard.

Got a memo? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

Hubs | Print's future, new site designs, USAT's role?

The following questions relate to the just-announced News Design Center page production hubs, and the CCI NewsGate computer system to be installed at all Gannett's U.S. newspapers:

Print's future. Corporate sees printed papers for at least another two years, based on the timetable set for introducing the hubs. But I wonder: Is part of this consolidation in anticipation of eventually eliminating or severely scaling back advertising-weak editions, like Mondays and Tuesdays? With fewer editions, you need fewer people to design and produce those printed pages, after all.

New website designs. CCI NewsGate sounds like software tailor-made for integrating multiple publishing platforms, including the soon-to-launch new website templates for the 81 dailies in U.S. Community Publishing. Those redesigned sites are supposed to be live by the end of this year. Today is July 14. We're already past the year's mid-point. Can anyone supply a current timetable on when the papers switch over to the new templates?

USA Today. The company's marquee title also will adopt CCI NewsGate, according to the hubs FAQ distributed yesterday. That suggests USAT is being drawn ever more closely into the orbit of the community papers, even as USAT top management plans what is sounding like a major reorganization. USAT is already building national and world news pages for the smaller papers. Will its move onto the same software mean more merging of its content into the smaller papers?

ContentOne. The former Gannett News Service was restructured and renamed last year, in one of the earliest examples of the productivity push across news. In late 2008, CEO Craig Dubow famously described ContentOne as a vehicle for producing "information much more efficiently by eliminating duplication and allowing our local entities to focus on what's important -- a deep, rich local report. It is the logical next step from our local Information Center initiatives, creating a national head to the local content gathering bodies."

Naturally, ContentOne will work off the new CCI NewsGate system. How might it work with USA Today, the smaller dailies, and their new websites as more company-wide news gathering and page production gets further centralized?

Gannett Production Centers. These are the still-developing operations at Des Moines and Indianapolis, where advertising artwork is to be produced for all the community dailies by early 2011. How will that artwork be shipped back and forth between ad salespeople, advertisers, and the page producers at the five new hubs?

Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

Hubs | Pubs, editors briefing said called for Tues.

Regarding reports that Gannett is on the verge of opening five large editorial production hubs, where pages will be built for many if not most of the 81 U.S. community newspapers, a reader who appears to be in the know wrote me late this evening:

U.S. newspaper division President Bob Dickey and News Department Vice President Kate Marymont will hold a web call Tuesday morning for all editors and publishers about the common front-end system to be installed at all U.S. Community Publishing newspaper sites, plus USA Today and ContentOne. Broadcast sites will have access to the system, too.

A follow-up note sent today from Marymont says the call will include details about five regional centers that will handle design and pagination. That information, the note says, will help editors and publishers counter and correct what staff members are reading on the blogs.

Call should be over by noon.

Can anyone confirm -- or add details? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

Mommy wars, Martore, ethics -- and a USAT story

A comment posted today by Anonymous@12:44 p.m. leads to an interesting ethical question: When is it appropriate to include a Gannett-owned business in a story produced by one of the company's newspapers, TV stations or magazines?

The case in point: A USA Today story yesterday, "Why do mothers judge one another and their parenting?"

I first saw the article in USAT's Facebook feed, and immediately wondered whether the story included Gannett's Moms Like Me subsidiary, which targets female consumers who have kids. (USAT apparently posted it via Facebook because the newspaper doesn't produce its own version of Moms Like Me. That's a subject for another day, however.)

In fact, the story doesn't mention Moms Like Me. It does, however, link to several other websites, including blogs written by women quoted in the story. One of them is a March of Dimes blog called News Moms Need: What moms and moms-to-be need to know. The other is Seattle Mamma Doc. And the story includes links to three other USA Today stories. All of that seems entirely appropriate.

But @12:44 p.m. claims the story didn't sit well with the 11th Floor: "Gracia Martore has ripped David Hunke a new ass because USAT did not mention Moms Like Me."

I don't know whether Gannett's president is really pissed at USA Today's publisher. Certainly, however, the "mommy wars" are a staple on Moms Like Me sites. A recent post on The Arizona Republic's included a debate over how a mother should have responded when, uninvited, another woman questioned her parenting skills in public.

I don't know whether the USAT reporter checked the discussion forums on Moms Like Me, or any of its rival websites. Still, it seems to me that USAT's story stood perfectly on its own.

Ethics vs. product placement
Now, I surely know the newsroom pressures to include Gannett businesses in stories -- whether the references are warranted or not. It's a form of product placement. Virtually all companies like to encourage synergies among their business units, to maximize revenue and profit.

But newspapers and TV stations have a special obligation to be fair and impartial. Deliberately favoring Gannett companies over rivals, just for the sake of boosting GCI's fortunes, would be unethical, and risk undermining reader trust. And that, in the long run, would do more harm to Gannett's bottom line.

Earlier: And, now, the 'Hot Dad' envelope, please . . . 

Have you felt pressure to favor a Gannett business in a news story? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

Lost in switch to USAT news: local reader opinion; what do Iowans think about Kagan? Hard to know

[Landing page, above, for Des Moines's Supreme Court news]

More than ever, Gannett's community newspapers are relying on USA Today for national and world news, both in print and online.

But until now, I didn't know they were outsourcing online reader opinions, too.

Almost certainly, this isn't a decree from Corporate. Turning over production of nation/world news to Gannett's biggest paper saves money, because it lets a handful of employees do the work of many: building pages from one worksite for all 81 community papers in 30 states and Guam. Nonetheless, this consolidation has the effect of homogenizing reader's views, and further undermining Gannett's long-held pledge to support local editorial control.

Where is america1stboy?

I discovered this when I surfed online for story comments this morning in a range of Gannett states, looking for what I expected to be a diversity of opinion on a controversial subject: President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan (left) to the U.S. Supreme Court. I checked websites in seven states: New York, Kentucky, Michigan, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Utah and California -- areas that included blue collar workers in the Northeast and Midwest, conservative voters in the South, and libertarians and liberals in the West.

Here's what I discovered: Clicking on the nation-world link took me to a page dressed up to look like the work of a local paper; in the example, above, it was The Des Moines Register. Three clicks later, I was reading a USAT story headlined, "Kagan's credentials take hits on Hill." Then, clicking on the comments section, I read the first entry: "What a joke," wrote reader america1stboy. "All these so called quallifications, and NO connection with what the average American deals with on a daily basis."

I assumed that remark was one of many Iowa readers sounding off, because I believed I was still on the Register's site; in all that clicking, it was hard to keep track. Regardless, I expected the site's software was tuned to only show comments posted by Register readers; it's reasonable to imagine Iowa readers would have the same expectation. After all, what's the point of having a local news source if I can't read local opinion?

But, no. And when I checked sites in the other six states, I found the same story -- and the same comments. Over and over.

Crackpots -- or real people?
Now, it's tempting to dismiss reader comments as the work of wing nuts and crackpots, people whose opinions don't influence the news. Real opinion, according to this view, is only that reflected in traditional letters to the editor.

But as print versions of papers head into oblivion, won't those letters fall by the wayside, too? And at that point, we'll know a whole lot less about what readers think from New York to Michigan to Utah, and all parts in between.

Earlier: Is your paper publishing a USA Today page inside?

Do story comments by local readers matter? Or are they just a trick to drive up page views? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

Springfield | What are they smoking in Missouri?!

While researching a post about a controversial reader-submitted column in the Springfield News-Leader, I landed on that Gannett paper's website. Yikes! Talk about a poster child for why Gannett needs to hurry up Project Odyssey, the reported code name for the planned redesign of its community newspaper websites. Check out the screenshot, below, of the Missouri paper's homepage (click on image for bigger view):


Of that redesign, Anonymous@5:26 p.m. wrote in a recent comment:

The new website design is the mastermind of Chris Saridakis and Kevin Poortinga in Digital. Actually, our site (and many in U.S. Community Publishing) like the initial designs and thought process behind it. The internal code name is Project Odyssey.

It is in the early phases, but we will see parts of it rolling out by 3rd quarter with a bulk of it by the end of the year.

ContentOne has not been involved (Thank God!) with this project. This will certainly be better than GO4, but many of us are worried that with the exit of Saridakis, will his team be able to deliver on the initial vision for the redesign.

Got a website that beats the News-Leader's? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

Status of 'major redesign' of news, TV websites?

[Florida Today: One of more than 100 websites due for overhaul]

Following is from the company's latest annual 10-K report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Can anyone tell me the status of this project? Plus, does this have anything to do with ContentOne?

In order to drive audience growth, in 2010 the company will begin a major redesign of the company’s core newspaper and broadcast websites that will not only create a more relevant and enjoyable experience for users, but also establish an infrastructure that will allow for constant updates. This will allow the company to be more nimble in making future changes to its sites to benefit both users and advertisers. The redesign project will add appropriate social and contextual tools to create better experiences for users and will establish unique advertising opportunities that will deliver better engagement and enable stronger connections between advertisers and consumers.

Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.