Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Urgent: GCI confirms five new page design hubs at Asbury, Des Moines, Louisville, Nashville, Phoenix; new CMS system, too, with rollout starting in 2011

Following is a note Executive Editor Tom Callinan sent to employees at The Cincinnati Enquirer about an hour ago. In it, Callinan confirms recent speculation that Gannett is on the verge of launching a nationwide network of newspaper page production hubs. Here's the full text of his note:

There was a conference call this morning in which Gannett announced plans to move to a single content management system to be used by all of its newspapers. The new system will be CCI NewsGate and represents a $15 [million] investment by the company.

Now that the announcement has been made (it has not been talked about much openly while the contract was being signed) there will be an open discussion about what that means to Cincinnati.

The biggest news is that we will be part of a regional design center approach that will see news content paginated in Louisville (there will be four other "hubs" -- Asbury Park, Nashville, Des Moines and Phoenix.)

The CCI NewsGate rollout will start in 2011 and the design centers will be set up over the next two years. We will find out where we fit in the schedule soon.

We'll meet in the conference room at 4:30 to start talking about how we will manage this.

But at this point the above is pretty much all I know.

TC

Earlier: Are you familiar with CCI NewsGate? Plus: What were these $15M in Q1 digital acquisitions?

Callinan's note doesn't say whether any of the 81 U.S. community dailies are exempt from being paginated at these hubs. Do you know? 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.

80 comments:

  1. $15! Wow, that's a LOT of money

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  2. Looks like the executive editor needs a good copy editor. I know Gannett is cheap, but I bet this price should say $15 million.

    "The new system will be CCI NewsGate and represents a $15 investment by the company."

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  3. Ooops. That's how it was phrased in his memo. I should have caught that the first time. It's now fixed.

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  4. I remain confused.

    Will page designers still design pages locally, and these hubs are basically big production centers -- setting the pages, ad management, color proofs, etc?

    Or will local editors send story lists to the hubs and the hubs will design and create the pages?

    The first scenario makes some sense; the second scenario sounds like chaos.

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  5. Wow. Since smaller dailies make up the bulk of Gannett papers, this news really sucks for a lot of hardworking and good people. This chain is ... well, just ... wow.

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  6. In an e-mail, a reader tells me:

    A FAQ document indicates that some of the 'larger dailies' won't be affected by hub movement. Any idea which those are? The FAQ says a list is forthcoming and it should take two years to complete. It says staff can reapply for their jobs and a process will be set up. It says all of what you have in that letter.

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  7. Worst. Idea. Ever. Thank God I start a new job soon.

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  8. Here's my question: How is 1 hub going to be able to put out AT LEAST 5 newspapers on a daily basis?
    There's a word that comes to mind ... what is it? I can't quite put my finger on it.
    Oh, yeah, it's 'impossible.'

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  9. Louisville's putting out three on a daily basis now -- its own plus Greenville and Asheville. Lay on more personnel and it could pick up several more papers.

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  10. Five people put out three papers in Oshkosh, seven days a week. Doesn't mean the hubs are a good idea, however. The word clusterf--k comes to mind.

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  11. Jim,

    This story really demonstrates why this blog is so important. Phoenix is one of the centers, but as of 12:34PM MST there's been no official word from our bosses. If it weren't for Gannettblog we would be in the dark.

    Thank you.

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  12. ditto for brevard, and it's 3:50 p.m. edt.

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  13. 2:53 p.m. I bet it's scenario two, since that's how the regional desks operate now. It's barely doable, and you really need top-notch people onboard who care about what they're doing. And from what I see in Gannett, there aren't too many of that ilk left anymore. They've already deserted or are too exhausted.

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  14. You're entirely welcome, 3:35!

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  15. Wonder if they are going to implement the template concept whereby editors essentially have 7 or 8 page templates to choose from for section fronts. Each spot has a number and the city editor or news editor denotes which story, art and graphics will go in particular holes. Once the story has the proper routing fields, it automatically plops itself into that hole along with the bylines heads and subheads. A paginator then works behind to make sure that all the holes are filled and everything looks OK. Adjusts templates to fit around ad stacks (if the system isn't already programmed to do that). Voila an instant page. I guess if that is the case, I'm not really sure why they would need many people to "design" pages. It sounds to me like this is moreso the beginning of hub copy editing. Of course, you can't move the copy editing before the design ... right?

    Oh ... and what happens with all of those living sections. Why not just create one living cover for the entire chain daily with a general interest main package that runs in all markets? A lot of the sites are already running something similar to this.

    I suspect that this approach will end up eliminating far more than 500 positions in the end. Especially, if they implement the template approach.

    It's kind of interesting that an editorial system for the entire chain is only costing $15 million. It sounds rather inexpensive to me when you consider the number of papers involved.

    I'm assuming that copy editors will be locked out of adjusting any design element on a page and have to go through the hub to get something changed. Corporate probably thinks that only allowing copy editors to touch content will save money, too.

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  16. Just had our meeting... no papers are exempt. Not even Indy.We were given a tentative list of all the papers each hub will be doing. Ours in Louisville will be designing 21 total! And there will be no templates. All papers will keep their own looks.

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  17. Louisville will be hiring 74-100 people to put out 20-some newspapers, according to staff there who just had a series of meetings.

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  18. Gannett has been on this path for at least a couple years. Gannett's four papers in Louisiana are already paginated in one location. (I'm a former employee who left not too long before the switch.) I believe what happens is each paper gets an individualized front page, but the inside, non-jump pages are all pretty similar. The design cejter just gets the copy, gets photos from a centralized system, and does its thing.

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  19. No one's exempt? That's hard to believe. The big Indy paper is going to be built remotely, in Louisville? Rochester and Wilmington built at Asbury Park? What about the 10 Wisconsin papers?

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  20. WIll know more from indy after a 5:15 p.m. meeting, I guess.

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  21. @Jim: Any chance of getting that list of which hubs will be doing which papers?

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  22. Designing a front page in a newspaper isn't exactly the same as designing a design-driven magazine. Fonts, logos and the like can be switched out to maintain an individual newspaper's look, but there is absolutely no reason not to use basic section-front templates. There are only so many ways to design a section front in a modular manner until you must start doing really goofy stuff like dog-legging stories to "do it different."

    From the NewsGate brochure
    "Efficiency and creativity: The requirements for a page production tool are highly dependent on the nature of the print product to be produced. Is the focus on high-volume automated and template-driven production of pages in the multi-zone and multi-edition environment of a daily newspaper, or is the focus on innovative and creative page design."

    I can tell you that Gannett is NOT going for highly creative pages. One would guess that the focus of these hubs is "high-volume automated and template-driven production of pages".

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  23. Have fun with my content management system.

    All the best,

    Satan

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  24. Ask the folks in Orlando, or Ft. Lauderdale how it works...

    They all got laid off and papers are now put together in Chicago.

    Pages in all look the same with the same stories, fonts, etc... Hell in Orlando, some of the sports briefs are full-fledged stories on other pages because stuff is just slammed through.

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  25. All 10 WIsconsin built in Des Moines

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  26. Asbury hub:
    Bridgewater
    East Brunswick
    Morristown
    Cherry Hill
    Vineland
    West Chester
    Poughkeepsie
    Rochester
    Wilmington
    Binghamton
    Elmira
    Ithaca
    Burlington
    Salisbury

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  27. Which of the Gannett papers are using CCI NewsDesk now?

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  28. Des Moines Hub:
    Des Moines
    Iowa City
    Springfield
    Baxter County
    Monroe
    Lafayette, LA
    Opelousas
    Shreveport
    Alexandria
    Sioux Falls
    St. Cloud
    Appleton
    Green Bay
    Manitowoc
    Oshkosh
    Fond Du Lac
    Sheboygan
    Wausau
    Marshfield
    Stevens Point
    Wisc. Rapids

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  29. Louisivlle hub:
    Lou
    Greenville
    Asheville
    Cincy
    Indy
    Lansing
    Lafayette, IN
    Muncie
    Richmond
    Port Huron
    Battle Creek
    Newark
    Chilicothe
    Cochocton
    Lancaster
    Zanesville
    Mansfield
    Bucyruc
    Marion, OH
    Fremont
    Port Clinton

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  30. Phoenix hub:
    Phoenix
    Palm Springs
    Reno
    Salem
    Visalia/Tulare
    Salinas
    Great Falls
    St. George
    Fort Collins

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  31. Nashville hub:
    Nashville
    Murfreesboro
    Clarksville
    Jackson, TN
    Brevard
    Fort Myers
    Pensacoloa
    Tallahassee
    Montgomery
    Jackson, MS
    Hattiesburg
    Staunton

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  32. 4:54, thanks for the laugh out loud!

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  33. I work in the IT department of the Tribune company and I hear nothing but complaints about Newsgate. Users hate it. They call it Hellgate. I enjoy it because it ensures that I have a job for years to come. Best of luck with it, Gannett. Also, my sympathies to your editorial staff. Just remember, it's all downhill from here.

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  34. Dancing in Aarhus tonight!!!

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  35. I'm leaving newspapers in six weeks. I'm going to an uncertain future, but I would rather be uncertain and on my own than have to watch any more of the stupid decisions I've seen in my career repeated again and again and again.

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  36. 3:58...my guess is the $15million is only the initial software fee to CCI...no hardware, network improvements, CCI annual software maintenance, necessary data center expansions, backup systems, development trips to Denmark, Ceres Fadol at the SAS Radisson and more. Also new costs for all the integrations which need to be done....and workstations.

    This is at least a $30million project over the next three years....so any guess on the ROI?

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  37. Typical Gannett management..."We'll have a meeting to discuss how we're going to manage this but this all we know for now." Then why have a meeting if everything you know has been spelled out in a memo that you distributed to everyone?

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  38. Any idea how deep this goes? The daily paper is just one product at most papers. There are also magazines, weeklies, tmc's, specialty products, young adult publications, etc. Does anyone know if these were discussed in the meeting?

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  39. Heh, $15 mil? When Gannett went to an online system for its online pubs, the IT staff had to scramble to keep adding machines and keep the whole thing from crashing. That went on for a while, so would think something similar happens with the hubs.

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  40. 5:00 -- Rochester, Louisville, Cincinnati, Phoenix, Indy, USA Today, Detroit JOA,

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  41. Great Falls was just informed of the change, and needless to say the desk is incredulous and depressed. Hope our Arizona replacements know the difference between Chouteau and Choteau.

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  42. Hope they think of bandwidth this time.

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  43. Good luck with the Asbury Hub. Those hacks will continue to screw up everything they touch. Atta buoys!

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  44. From the folks who brought you the Centers for Excellence: the local-local newspaper put together by people who live 500 to 1000 miles away from your community.

    What a joke and what a hell for those who still care even a teensy bit.

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  45. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  46. Wow. This isn't surprising, and you can see why it makes business sense from 40,000 feet. But it sure is tough to swallow. All the creativity that will be lost, all the designer and copy editing jobs that will be lost, all the local feel that will be lost....it's awful.

    How long until they hire the guys in India to write city council stories off the public access TV feed? You can bet it's been considered.

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  47. I'm with 6:08. Is it just the dailies? When you add in the niche pubs, that really ups the number.

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  48. According to our GM, everything will be paginated elsewhere. That includes sports, which I think could be a big issue, with late-night live events.

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  49. Late stories won't be an issue because of early deadlines.

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  50. The selling point of newsgate for gannett is the savings in liceses per user. At 15 mil, that's not a lot of licenses. Newsgate champions the ability of one person in the field to do everything. Kate Marymount and Carolyn Washburn's fantasy of a mojo world have finally come true. The body count will be in newsgathers followed by copy editors. No more photogs, columnists or reporters -- just newsgathers.

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  51. 10:14 pm: The FAQ asks and answers:

    Will our deadlines have to be earlier?

    No. The Design Centers will be staffed based on your current deadlines.

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  52. Asheville lost considerable deadline time in its hub switchover is my understanding. Maybe someone there can chime in with specifics.

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  53. Great management. Economy is bad enough, but now Gannett has put all newsroom employees on notice for the next two years. At least some will be able to use the time to flee before being flogged.

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  54. If this hub system works as well as the RTC, COE, NSS and GPC, we're screwed. Time to look for a new job.

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  55. It is a very sad day indeed. We have now taken the local out of local news. Wasn't that a corporate agenda a few years back? The more things move to hubs, the more cookie cutter newspapers we will have. I have to say this is a great incentive for someone out there to capture the local news content and run with it. There is still a need for local news, no matter where you are. Gannettt's ship has sailed, but there is still room for that one person with drive and ambition to steal the market share from Gannett on local news. Hey you local guys! Now it is time for you to move ahead of the BIG guys and capture market share. It sure wouldn't take much to steal it from Gannett. Who is ready to move forward with this in your community?

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  56. Give me a break.

    Gannett and all newspapers had a chance years ago to make money by using the Web to do something like craisglist, but they twiddled their thumbs and stuck to the old business model. Now they are doing all they can to slash costs because they couldn't adjust to modernity.

    This is their idea of how the world is changing. They are wrong. It's more about localization than ever and they are moving in the opposite direction.

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  57. If you think that the local papers will retain their own distinctiveness, you're delusional.

    The only way that significant savings will be achieved is through content sharing. 78 pages done 78 times saves nothing. One page put on 78 presses saves a lot of time and labor.

    When the current Tribune hierarchy came in, they preached "local, local, local." But as they began looking at savings, they realized that one paper (or part of one paper) replicated across markets made the most sense.

    If the current brass at these companies doesn't realize that editing a paper on a local level (and make no mistake -- when you remove design and copy editing functions from a locality, you're impairing the ability of a staff to edit a paper for its readership), they shouldn't be surprised when the loyal readers they've been trying to keep say "fuck it" and read the papers online for free.

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  58. How much does removing the production capabilities of these papers from local markets reduce the overall value of the paper?

    Certainly anyone looking to buy any future Gannett property would have to factor in the cost of adding those people and that content into the purchase price.

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  59. I work at a CCI Newgate newspaper and here is the blunt truth about what all the fine folks at Gannett will be getting for their $15 million:
    - The most cumbersome, time-sucking and counterintuitive system you will ever use.
    - Massive crashes that will take down every paper in the chain for 4 or 5 hours at a time. Expect this several times a month.
    - Tasks that once required only 1 step now take 5
    - Tasks that once took under a minute now take 10
    - Web functions that were once completely automated must now be handled manually.
    - Edit the same story 2 or 3 times because someone has created a print "branch" or copy of the web version too early.
    - Write all captions in a tiny box, with tiny text, with no spellcheck. Also, type in caption box and wait 1 minute for any text to appear in box.
    - No ability to track crucial editing change/revisions in text whatsover. This is great whenever a correction arises. If no one owns up to it, you guess how the mistake got there.
    - Exponential increase in the number of F-bombs in your immediate vicinity.
    - Highly advanced, $15 million system that can't seem to remember simple copy and paste commands. Paste something into a file and don't be surprised if what shows up in CCI is something you copied many hours or days ago.
    - Photo cropping tool circa 1981.
    - State-of-the art, $15 million system that decides, depending on the day, whether it wants to include notes copy in the official story word count, making it much harder to accurately gauge the length of a story for layout purposes.
    - User-friendly, $15 million system that forces you to slog through all content in the chain -- yes every newspaper -- in your search queries upon first log-in because it can't remember very simple search criteria. If you want to search for all story folders slated to run on a specific day: A) Run search. B) Go out for a cup of coffee C) Return to office D) Stop off at co-workers' desk and have a long conversation E) Return to computer. F) Drop F-Bomb. G) Go to bathroom, read entire paper. H) Stretch. I) Return to desk and see search results. Once system crashes two hours later, repeat.

    Good luck all

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  61. 12:40 -- I would say this move does very little to reduce the value of the papers. In my market, the local Gannett paper is already a shell of what it used to be, and it's respect is nill. You can't reduce the value of something that is already perceived as worthless.

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  62. What about major packages, which are in flux? Say, the reporter is getting images and maps and etc and things are very live and changing? Do I call up my hub-associate in Tennessee and discuss my package as it evolves? Or is this just the end of special report designs?

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  63. @6:08 and @8:08, Yes, all of the various weeklies and custom type publications will probably be produced in the CCI system by the hub. At least that's how it is at my paper. (Though we have a slick monthly mag aimed at rich housewives that looked like crap when it was designed in CCI. Someone made enough racket that it's now laid out in house in Indesign and EPS files of the pages are pasted into CCI.)

    I work for one of the papers already affected by the hub. Here's what I've found: @12:40 a.m. is dead on. But the folks that I deal with in my hub have been professional, try to do what we want and will tell you, "we didn't ask for this shit." After a couple of months of F-bomb dropping and notebook throwing you will get the hang of it. Your product won't look like it used to, but you'll get used to it. What choice do you have?

    Someone asked whether anyone would have local control over page design. Here's my experience: If something's really F'd up, you can ask the Hub to fix it the way you want it, which they're usually happy to do. If it's something major, let them do it -- the layout part is VERY complicated, and if you don't know what you're doing, you'll blow up the page. However, it is possible to get in and tweak minor things.

    Am I a CCI apologist? Hell no. But I'll call an Ace an Ace. The system worked a lot better than I feared it would. What used to take an entire workday to design can be finished in about an hour and a half. Would I go back to the way we used to do it? In a hot minute.

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  64. What platform does CCI use? Is it Windows based?

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  65. There's no way around it - copy desks at Gannett and every newspaper are the composing rooms of the future. It's a shame it took this long.

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  67. what about ad layouts? Will the hubs control the ad content too?

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  68. Take it from someone in Tribune who is working with this system and a main module-producing hub in Chicago: Gannett is outsourcing almost all of the local copy-editing, wire-editing and layout jobs to the hubs. Standard, systemwide pages and modules will replace locally produced wire pages -- and local staffs will be slashed by half or more. Good luck to you all.

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  69. 4:08, how is that working out? More specifically with the ad deadlines.

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  70. Years ago, when I still worked for Gannett, I predicted that eventually, all of the papers in the chain would become little more than a few measly pages of local coverage stuffed inside USA Today. This seems to be bringing things one step closer to that. I'm sorry for all the people — those I knew and worked with, especially — who will wind up losing their jobs because of this. It is perhaps the worst thing to happen to journalism since Fox News.

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  71. 12:42's comments are to be taken with a grain of salt: His/her problems with captions and "massive crashes" don't match reality, and there IS a track-changes function, if you choose to use it.

    Overall, I'm stunned at how many people are condemning this development without having experienced it. Speaking as someone in the middle of it, the process is not that bad and the product is still as good as you want it to be.

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  72. I worked with an earlier version of CCI at USA Today (maybe it was called CCI News?).

    Indeed, it did crash now and then, and the occasional story got completely lost, or all the editing I'd done was missing when the story reappeared. Certain copy-and-paste functions didn't always work. I always created and wrote my first story drafts in Word, then copied it into a CCI file, so I had a backup copy in case CCI ate it. And, sometimes, it was incredibly S-L-O-O-O-W.

    But it wasn't a complete disaster. And in eight years, I don't think we ever failed to print an edition -- and that included on 9/11.

    Now, maybe NewsGate is different; we'll have to see.

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  73. if you asked every page designer and copy editor across the country whether they like their front-end system, maybe 10% would say yes. It's been the same everywhere I've worked, and in each case, you hear the same "it's the worst ever/our last system was better" type comments

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  74. That proves it: 90% of the systems are terrible!

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  75. Jim posits, "Now, maybe NewsGate is different; we'll have to see." At the Los Angeles Times, we all heard the advance horror stories about NewsGate, but we hoped it would be better than advertised. After all, over the last ten years we've successfully used traditional CCI (software loaded onto individual PCs), plus the web-based Citrix CCI. Both worked fine. Unfortunately, NewsGate is a GIANT step backwards. For example, last Thursday (July 8), the entire Tribune Company was mostly dead in the water for a crucial late-afternoon/early-evening 4-hour publishing period, depending on your time zone. The LAT almost couldn't publish its main-A section and began making radical contingency plans. Everything @12:42 said is true, and I could triple the list. Lookit, I totally get the economics of why these media companies are doing this stuff. I think the salient point is that if you ARE going to publish from hubs, etc., pick a good, fast, reliable system. You need every edge you can get. At the LAT, we call it HellsGate. I've spent countless hours watching the hourglass on my screen while I try to load "Story Folders Today" or a "Media-neutral Worklist." It's like, for 30 years there has been a steady evolution of computing. Suddenly, along comes this piece of NewsGate caca, built and bought on the cheap, and things have taken a huge clunky step backwards. It's like going back to the old "dumb terminals" of yesteryear, where all the eggs are in one basket and when it crashes, everyone is S.O.L. Oh, make no mistake, it can be made to work. But my God, we have been struggling with it all year in a still relatively highly staffed newsroom. I shudder to think how the poor Gannett hub folks are going to crank all this stuff out. Good design, poor design, templates, modules -- none of it matters. Tribune Technology hasn't figured out how to fix it, and I'm pretty sure that if the company is broken apart as it emerges from bankruptcy that any individual business units like the LAT will drop it like a hot potato. It's just a total fiasco. (I embrace technology, having worked on almost every common newspaper publishing system in the last 30 years.) I went into this with a positive attitude, thinking it would eventually get better. But, it only gets worse. Good luck, guys.

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  76. Re: 12:42 am; 11:03 pm. Anyone who tells you CCI Newsgate works well has never worked on a streamlined front-end system, so they have no idea what real efficiency is. CCI is all they know, so they have nothing to compare it to.

    Yes, CCI will get the paper(s) out. It's also true that a pair of roller skates will get me to work -- eventually. Make no mistake, CCI is an unstable, remarkably stupid, incredibly inefficient system.

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  77. I'm a native Montanan and I am extremely dubious that a Montana newspaper produced in an Arizona local can maintain a "Montana flavor".

    Arizona is TOTALLY different than Montana (thank God or we wouldn't have a sunny spot to migrate to in the winter. Artists traveling south paint differently (differnt styles, differnt color palette, etc) when influenced by the southern light and atmosphere. A production team in AZ isn't going to have a "feel" for what makes Montana- well, Montana. They aren't going to have a feel for what Montanans are used to nor want in their "local" newspaper. The Great Falls Tribune has always maintained the "heart" of Montana - How is someone in 90 degree January AZ weather, in an airconditioned office, going to appreciate a story about a 20 BELOW, zero visibility blizzard... or the February chinooks? Do they even know what a chinook is? How can they do appropriate design when they don't KNOW their subject -- from the heart?

    Yes, the NEWS (writing) is still going to be generated IN Great Falls but those laying the paper out and designing the "look" in AZ still have no FEEL for what is happening UP here!!!

    A prime example is something we were exposed to in Design School (abet a VERY long time ago...): a big graphics agency was supposed to design a new logo/look for the national Thoroghbred (horse) Assn. (a $250,000 account)... the final product they proposed... had a picture of a Quarter Horse - not just ANY Quarter Horse but the American Quarter Horse Assn sterotype logo/painting!!!! Needless to say - their work was not appreciated nor acceptible to the Thoroughbred people... and they lost the account!

    I don't think AZ design and layout will be acceptible to us native Montanans...

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  78. Does any one know if this will affect the pagination departments or the teams who layout the advertisements and set up the publications to the press?

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  79. 3:39 and 3:32 have a valid question. I'd like to have it addressed. Our paper has a department which lays out the ad placement and is in control of page count and press configuration. After this is done it goes to Editorial for their design work and layout.
    Will this job stay local? Jim, what do you know?

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  80. I'm a native Montanan and I am extremely dubious that a Montana newspaper produced in an Arizona local can maintain a "Montana flavor". Arizona is TOTALLY different than Montana (thank God or we wouldn't have a sunny spot to migrate to in the winter. Artists traveling south paint differently (differnt styles, differnt color palette, etc) when influenced by the southern light and atmosphere. A production team in AZ isn't going to have a "feel" for what makes Montana- well, Montana. They aren't going to have a feel for what Montanans are used to nor want in their "local" newspaper. The Great Falls Tribune has always maintained the "heart" of Montana - How is someone in 90 degree January AZ weather, in an airconditioned office, going to appreciate a story about a 20 BELOW, zero visibility blizzard... or the February chinooks? Do they even know what a chinook is? How can they do appropriate design when they don't KNOW their subject -- from the heart? Yes, the NEWS (writing) is still going to be generated IN Great Falls but those laying the paper out and designing the "look" in AZ still have no FEEL for what is happening UP here!!! A prime example is something we were exposed to in Design School (abet a VERY long time ago...): a big graphics agency was supposed to design a new logo/look for the national Thoroghbred (horse) Assn. (a $250,000 account)... the final product they proposed... had a picture of a Quarter Horse - not just ANY Quarter Horse but the American Quarter Horse Assn sterotype logo/painting!!!! Needless to say - their work was not appreciated nor acceptible to the Thoroughbred people... and they lost the account! I don't think AZ design and layout will be acceptible to us native Montanans...

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