Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Week July 5-11 | Your News & Comments: Part 1
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48 comments:
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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Are you taking this week off?
ReplyDeleteJim took part of this week off last year, and then he took off the rest of the summer, too.
ReplyDeleteHey Jim I'm hearing some gannett debt issues will cause the stock to drop if they don't have an improved 4th quarter. It will be interesting to see what type of bonuses corporate will be taking. Any word on this?
ReplyDeleteYeah, Jim, are there any rumors you can start about that?
ReplyDelete12:14 pm: I've heard nothing about that.
ReplyDeleteGenerally, however, it's now obvious that all businesses are more concerned about future earnings, following Friday's disappointing June employment report, and the worrisome consumer confidence figures earlier in the week.
Corporate will give its next assessment of Gannett's financial outlook with the release of its second-quarter earnings report. That's currently scheduled for July 16 -- one week from this coming Friday.
So Jim, in this world of a different story every day about the economy - it is good, it is bad, it is good - this is up, that is down, no wait, that is up again - are you really going to pin your future projections for Gannett what the stock market was worried about last Friday???? And you call yourself a former Money reporter????
ReplyDeleteNo wonder you were offered a way out.
3:25 p.m. is ill-informed.
ReplyDeleteThe monthly U.S. Labor Department report is one of the most important, if not the single most-important, indicators of the economy's current direction. It is more than a mere, transitory worry for Gannett and other companies.
No, Jim, you are ill-informed.
ReplyDeleteThe only mistake 3:25 made was not citing your past record of finding the gray cloud in any silver lining where this company is concerned.
You have been wildly inconsistent and inaccurate with any projection. Your record speaks for itself. That poster's criticism of you hits the center of the target.
Not a single one accurate? How about this one:
ReplyDeleteOn Dec. 15, 2007, I urged my readers to consider selling Gannett shares they owned in their 401(k) accounts. "Even companies that seem rock-solid can take a fall -- as we've seen with Gannett since early 2002, when the board of directors finally allowed employees to sell GCI shares,'' I wrote.
Gannett's stock was selling for $35 a share back then. It closed Friday at $13.13.
Anyone who relied on stock from a sole company to drive an entire portfolio deserved what they got.
ReplyDeleteYou'll have to do way better than that.
I tried convincing a colleage to sell his shares on numerous occasions, but he just keeps hoping for more. A lot of people just hope without knowing much. And the greed factor, the hoping for more, takes control.
ReplyDeleteJim is more right than wrong. The stock market is one of the leading indicators used by the Federal Reserve Board to determine the direction of the economy. As goes the stock market, so goes GCI. I find Jim to actually be more hopeful about Gannett than I am. There is good reason to be gloomy, as financial writers are today. I note that the most popular story on the NYT today is:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/your-money/04stra.html?src=me&ref=homepage
Hmmm...I wonder if Gannett pays tools like 11:14, 3:25 or 6:27 more for slamming Jim and his site on a company holiday.
ReplyDeleteTrolls are out -- corporate's gonna be droppin a bomb soon.....
ReplyDeleteFollowing is a projection, but we won't know whether I got it right until the second-quarter earnings report is released on July 16.
ReplyDeleteFrom a May 17 post:
As the economy strengthens in the current quarter, Gannett could soon see its first year-over-year revenue increase in more than three years -- since the last quarter of 2006. Indeed, there was momentum in this year's first quarter, when revenue fell by just 4.1% from a year before, to $1.3 billion.
9:25. You're dead on. A bunker buster bomb must be on its way. Tell tale sign is when Gannett sponsored trolls start slamming this site as being irresponsible. Next tactic will be pot shots at Jim and his sexual orientation. Watch out, incoming!!!!
ReplyDeleteThe troll is hogging the handicapped bathroom stall again. He's in there with his laptop, flushing occasionally to cover up the sound of his typing. It's pretty amazing how someone can let shit fly from different ends of his body at the same time.
ReplyDeleteThere's paranoia overload on GannettBlog. You know what that means ... Jim's going to have another breakdown soon and the blog will shut down forever (again).
ReplyDeleteI agree about the trolls getting louder when something is afoot or as soon as Jim or someone here touches a nerve (SERP, perhaps?) -- although I have a sneaking suspicion that 3:25 and 6:27 are the same poster.
ReplyDeleteLet's not forget that Jim does good solid reporting and, thanks to tipsters, we occasionally get a heads-up. As for specualation, I'd rather read intelligent speculation about the future than be left by corporate to twist in the wind like we would be without this blog. So thanks, Jim, for this blog and for not rising to the bait.
Trolls are out -- corporate's gonna be droppin a bomb soon.....
ReplyDelete7/05/2010 9:25 PM
Anonymous said...
9:25. You're dead on. A bunker buster bomb must be on its way. Tell tale sign is when Gannett sponsored trolls start slamming this site as being irresponsible. Next tactic will be pot shots at Jim and his sexual orientation. Watch out, incoming!!!!
7/05/2010 11:05 PM
ROFLMAOOOOOOOOO @ Anon 9:25 PM and Anon 11:05 PM
.....twas thinking the very exact same thing!
Something huge is about to go down!
Why use "Stock Market Indicators" when the Blog has its' very own "TROLLS INDICATORS" that are just as good and/or better?
BWAAAAA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAA
Regarding the impact of paywalls erected last Thursday in Greenville, S.C., Tallahassee, Fla., and St. George, Utah, one of my sources told me today:
ReplyDelete* Unique visitors were down about 40% on average across the three sites
* Pageviews were down about 50% across the three
This source did not provide any more recent figures, however.
Also, 8:04 am and others: The only news "afoot" that I know of is the pending second-quarter financial report, scheduled for July 16.
ReplyDeleteAbsent any new information from Corporate, it seems likely that the company is on track to report the earnings and revenue figures Martore confirmed June 7.
I haven't seen any published references to "whisper numbers" accounting for the recent decline in GCI shares.
Yes, but part of the paywall idea was to get new revenue. Any word on how many subscribers?
ReplyDeleteThanks 7:42! You reminded me of a couple more classic Gannett sponsored troll posts.
ReplyDelete1) Any posts not flattering to Gannett or its leaders are the result of mass paranoia.
2) Jim is cracking and the blog will be shutting down soon.
Yikes. Sound the air raid sirens! Whatever they are planning must be big!!!
Just a random thought - does the internet make people more likely to hold extreme views because it allows so many views that people can exist in their own echo chambers and ignore unpleasant facts?
ReplyDeleteOr does the internet just make wackos easier to find???
The Internet empowers -- for good but mostly for bad -- the powerless.
ReplyDeleteYou are having problems with the comment counter again. Shows no comments on Hattiesburg, when there are four.
ReplyDeleteRe: Jim's 9:12am post:
ReplyDeleteJim, your numbers must be the average of all three paywall sites.
Because at ours, Uniques are down much less than 40% which is good.
But Page Views are way down, like 80-90%, which is bad.
However, even if we lose 25% of the subs, we'll still have a huge increase in profit; maybe double.
Or so everyone was told.
No matter what happens ... there was always someone somewhere who said it would.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting piece from Mediapost. This reporter was smart enough to call Saridakis and get a quote from him. This is very telling and foots with what we see internally. Clearly, there is no strategy for the pay wall and I think it is interesting that Saridakis confirmed that!!!
ReplyDelete********
http://bit.ly/cnSXd4
Heading into the holiday weekend, Gannett Co. quietly leaked word of a controversial paywall initiative. In what it's calling a "a small-scale test," Gannett told Poynter Online that three of its local newspapers -- The Tallahassee Democrat, The Greenville (S.C.) News, and The (St. George, Utah) Spectrum -- will now charge readers $9.95 a month for online-only access. Web access bundled with a print subscription, meanwhile, varies by market.
Gannett Co. representatives with knowledge of the experiment could not be reached for comment before the weekend. The news, however, comes as no surprise to Chris Saridakis, who served as Gannett Co.'s chief digital officer for over two years before leaving the company in April. "This is not new news, at least internally," Saridakis tells Online Media Daily.
Saridakis -- who joined ecommerce services provider GSI Commerce as CEO of its marketing services segment after leaving Gannett -- was rumored to have left the publisher over a paywall dispute. Not quite, he says. "I was incredibly frustrated by their lack of decision making, and the fact that they haven't thought [a subscription] model through," Saridakis says. "My opinion is that it won't work," says Saridakis. "They haven't done the right research," which he says would involve figuring out what readers would actually pay for, and then comparing those findings with available editorial resources. "If they're going to start charging [for content], they have to think about marketing ... like a marketer of consumer packaged goods," Saridakis adds. "They haven't done that," he says of Gannett.
Might the publisher have conducted the appropriate research since Saridakis' departure in April? "I'd bet my net worth they didn't," he says.
Saridakis first joined Gannett in 2005 upon its acquisition of rich media provider PointRoll, where he was then serving as chief operating officer. From 2005 to 2008, Saridakis served as PointRoll's CEO.
Due largely to its struggling CareerBuilder unit, Gannett saw digital revenue decline 1.8% during the first quarter. Digital operating revenues were $140.6 million in the quarter -- down from $143.2 million in the same period last year.
During the quarter, digital operating expenses declined 4.9% and totaled $137.3 million, while operating income improved at nearly all digital segment businesses, Gannett said.
Company-wide digital revenues, which include the digital segment and all digital revenues generated by the other business segments, totaled $225.7 million for the quarter -- 17.1% of total operating revenues.
Overall, Gannett reported a 51% jump in first-quarter profit thanks to a gradually improving ad market coupled with relentless cost-cutting.
The company's digital segment includes results for CareerBuilder, PointRoll, ShopLocal, Planet Discover, Schedule Star and Ripple6.
At the end of the first quarter, Gannett claimed more than 100 domestic publishing Web sites, including USAToday.com, as well as Web sites in all of its 19 television markets. In March, Gannett's consolidated domestic Internet audience share was 41.3 million unique visitors, reaching 19.4% of the nation's Internet audience, per comScore.
7:31 PM said, "Might the publisher have conducted the appropriate research since Saridakis' departure in April? 'I'd bet my net worth they didn't,' he says."
ReplyDeleteI'll bet not either, because GCI has been gutting corporate and newspapers' research and marketing departments since 2008. So there weren't many quality people left to do the right research, or to ask the right, and sometimes unpleasant, questions.
It seems to me that one telling point is that the price is the same at all three locations. It's quite possible that research would show that people would be willing to pay different sums in different places.
ReplyDeleteThe content, of course, will be a key determining factor for what people will pay. It better be more than mom and pop local stuff. It better be what Gannett has been so reluctant to pay for in the past: top-notch reporting that does more than skim the surface.
Word is editors are getting nervous about the lack of reporters left to do actual work.
ReplyDeleteI find it hard to believe that Gannett editors would be concerned about a paucity of reporters. This company has strived for mediocrity for so long that lowering the notch a bit more shouldn't be a big deal.
ReplyDeleteAnd what the heck, after thinning the ranks of some of the most senior people, editors can have a field day hiring folks for half of the pay.
So what if they don't know anything?
The trolls are funny. Instead of attacking Jim, you should be putting out a better product. In Westchester County the product is awful ! If it is awful in the biggest market in the U.S. , I can only imagine what it is like in Gannett's other community newspapers.
ReplyDeleteThe drones are not able to improve. They come here and whine because they cannot adjust to change.
ReplyDeleteRe 1:42 and 8:40 a.m. Well, when a site like mine has as many editors, with goofy titles (content editor?) as reporters they should be getting nervous. God forbid the editors type in press releases. Or they could hire some more part-timers, like the two in photo and the two who paginate. They're supposed to do the same amount and quality of work, but for $10 an hour and zero benefits.
ReplyDeleteIt's apparent they didn't do enough market research. If they had, they wouldn't be charging $9.95 a month. Or, perhaps they did, and it just wasn't good enough.
ReplyDeleteEven research can be misleading. Remember the New Coke fiasco?
ReplyDeletehttp://paidcontent.org/article/419-gannett-closes-in-on-new-chief-digital-officer-resnik-set-to-be-promote/
ReplyDeleteGannett Closes In On New Chief Digital Officer; Resnik Set To Be Promoted
After a nearly four-month search to replace Chris Saridakis as chief digital officer, sources tell paidContent Gannett (NYSE: GCI) is close to promoting Josh Resnik to the post. A Gannett rep said that the company had no comment. If Gannett does move Resnik up as expected, it would be passing up former digital head Jack Williams for the role.
Williams, president of Gannett Digital before Saradakis joined Gannett, is currently president of Gannett Digital Ventures, an umbrella unit for the online classifieds businesses such as CareerBuilder, Classified Ventures, Topix.net and ShopLocal. He was considered the most likely internal candidate to follow Saridakis, who exited Gannett to become CEO of GSI Commerce’s (Nasdaq: GSIC) Marketing Services unit.
Before joining Gannett Digital as VP, business development for Gannett Digital in late 2006, Resnik, a lawyer by training, spent seven years in the legal department at AOL (NYSE: AOL). In May ‘08, Resnik was promoted to VP, strategy & business operations for the digital unit; last year, he was named VP/GM of the Gannett Digital Media Network, which encompasses USAToday.com, MomsLikeMe.com, Metromix.com, and HighSchoolSports.net, as well as all of Gannett’s local newspaper and television station web sites.
Resnik is well-liked within the Gannett Digital realm and is considered a sensible choice, though some have noted that he doesn’t have experience running an independent business. Gannett has been using executive search firm CT Partners, but they hadn’t been able to find any candidates that the company felt were suitable. In any case, if Resnik’s promotion gets final approval, Gannett’s board is likely to be pleased that this issue is over with as the company prepares to report its Q2 earnings a week from this Friday.
One holdup in making the decision had to do with the process of integrating two of its more successful digital holdings, rich media provider PointRoll and social media marketing unit Ripple6.
Other activities occupying the digital division’s time and resources lately include the establishment of the GannettLocal program, a social media marketing effort aimed at striking relationships with small advertisers. The initiative got off the ground in Phoenix two months ago. Gannett is also still working on devising some sort of subscription model for its successful USAToday iPad app.
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ReplyDeleteThe Blog is newsy and smart today. Good work.
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ReplyDeleteAs far as paywalls go, say it with me people...You don't give away your product for free. Paywalls should've gone up at every damn paper in the country over 10 years ago. However, most of the bucketheads making the decisions spend their time sitting on their thumbs waiting to see what everyone else is doing. Get that spine transplant and make a freakin' decision.
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ReplyDeleteFor Part 2 of this thread, go here.
ReplyDelete4:02 lets give proper credit, Sue Clark-Johnson said the internet was the "Dirt Highway to nowhere!" Thanks Sue, I gues it was "Good enough"
ReplyDelete