Monday, October 03, 2011

Passion Topics | Here is your newsroom's future

"Using markets as examples, identify key audience. Personify that audience, share passion topics, and discuss how to incorporate into the Information Center."

-- from the "Putting it into action" segment of the Aug. 16-18 conference of newspaper editors who oversee Gannett's 31 largest U.S. dailies. The conference was meant to help editors run newsrooms after dramatically shrunken staffs.

12 comments:

  1. I recently stumbled across a copy of the meeting's agenda after a reader sent it to me.

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  2. Sounds like you weren't the only one doing some stumbling, Jim.

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  3. Zero substance.

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  4. More please. The bs is hilarious

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  5. Can someone translate that from gobbledygook into standard English? Please? Anyone? Buehler?

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  6. Hear, hear. How many bullshit words can we use in one memo? Do any of these people speak English?

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  7. It is the hallmark of a company with no intellectual or creative capacity to concoct the illusion of having such by spinning buzzwords and jargon. Gannett is the leader of nothing but mediocrity and incompetence. In everything else it is a bad cover act.

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  8. 6:02PM Oct 2. I knew I was going to get cut and opted to stay and wait for the TPP pkg. By the time my day came, yes, I was just about doing a tap dance on the way out. I had started packing up my stuff a full 3 months before my estimated last day. My Happy Hour had to be postponed but yes, I would have bought my boss a drink but they aren't a drinker and booze is a depressant and they had already spent a number of days crying. I haven't had any luck yet with a job search but it hasn't been that long and I haven't lost hope.

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  9. The people in my market are passionate about in-depth beat reporting and good, solid local news and features. Oops! Too late for that. We'll just print more one-source followups and recycled press releases.

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  10. A key goal of the passion topics seems to be making the news more shallow and superficial i.e. whats the best route for your commute, whats the best nursing home for your aging parents... It will actually make us even less relevant. Sad.

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  11. Blah blah blah. How did any of the newsroom types keep a straight face?

    I can't take anybody seriously who uses the words 'information center' seriously, unless maybe it's someone on the job at 4-1-1.

    Vacuous words, vacuous strategy - and really just a reheated version of other plans long-discarded because of their sprawling "huh?" factor.

    They zoomed around the nation to do it, but we haven't heard much since. Maybe they all went home and went "Huh?" -- as we are, again.

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  12. i am so glad i no longer work at this dump..

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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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