Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Why Gannett Blog rivals a big-screen soap opera



Anonymous@7:34 p.m. has been paying attention! Regarding my recent post about why non-Gannettoids read this blog, they wrote:

I have never worked at Gannett, knew none of its executives until I read this blog, and have no investments in GCI stock (although I do wonder why it keeps rising). So why do I read this blog? It's because it is better than any of the Perils of Pauline soap operas, except it is real.

There's the white hat Chris Saridakis, brought in to lead Gannett into the digital future, who as the revenue picture shows fails, and heads off to other operations. There's Craig Dubow (left), sidelined by what sounds like a very serious back operation, who re-emerges looking like a bearded hippie. Could it be the morphine for the back pain?

What is Dave Hunke going to do with USA Today after engineering the cutbacks in Detroit, and will Tara Connell's ContentOne be successful in cutting expenses at community newspapers? There's also the reports from the rank and file, including one plaintive former employee who felt his layoff unjustified, and repeatedly said that. Haven't heard from him recently. It's all anonymous, but it is all so real . . . and interesting.

5 comments:

  1. Craig Dubow did show up at at a recent company event in a wheelchair.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Can anyone list Mr. Dubows top accomplishments (bullet points would be fine)?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dubow's accomplishments:

    * Let company stock slip from the mid-double digits to $1.85 per share.

    * Ran the stock up from $1.85 a share to nearly $19 a share.

    * Accrued huge bonuses and a windfall in stock options while doing the latter.

    * Seriously cut expenses by laying off thousands of Gannett employees.

    * Closed the Tucson Citizen, a long-lived Arizona paper.

    * Donated thousands in Gannett Foundation funds to charities of personal interest while willfully ignoring charities in communities served by Gannett.

    * Grew a beard

    ReplyDelete
  4. 11:32a you forgot the following:

    • 2008 hires chris saridakis as head if Digital and receives a huge bonus for it.
    • 2010 loses chris saridakis to another firm
    • 2010 Dubow receives huge stock and bonus
    • 2011 ???

    ReplyDelete
  5. Excellent point 10:36. He's had even more "accomplishments" than I could remember. :-)

    ReplyDelete

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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