USAT | Beusse marshals team of digital outsiders; after 30 years, ‘founders’ begin losing their hold

To appreciate the jaw-dropping expectations Corporate has set for the USA Today Sports Media Group, answer this question: How many individual Gannett properties generate more than $300 million in annual revenue?

I can think of only three: USA Today itself; The Arizona Republic, and CareerBuilder. (And that’s counting all CareerBuilder’s revenue, even though Gannett only owns 53% of the company.)

Beusse

Gannett now wants to add another one to that list: the Sports Media Group, a start-up launched a year ago that Corporate forecasts will gross more than $300 million annually by 2015, according to a Wall Street presentation this month.

Considering GCI’s overall revenue fell again last year, to $5.2 billion, and amid forecasts of anemic growth at least until 2015, a lot is riding on Group President Tom Beusse and his digital team.

How he'll get there over the next three years isn’t clear. Sports Media’s plan is to combine all of GCI’s sports content -- from USAT, the 80 community dailies, plus newly acquired sites like MMAjunkie -- into a single network that can be marketed to advertisers and sponsors.

But that won't be easy. Beusse will need the cooperation of hundreds of other employees in far-flung divisions that often operate as independent silos: USAT; the community papers, broadcasting's 23 TV stations -- plus Gannett Digital, now planning a relaunch of all the company's news websites.

Beusse, who is about 46, was hired in January 2011 after working in magazine publishing and advertising. His last stint, in radio, was as lucrative as it was short-lived: He walked away with a $2.2 million severance package after just 10 months as CEO of Westwood One.

Outsiders taking charge
Last week, he announced a USAT sports department reorganization that put his own digital team firmly in charge. In doing so, he swept aside existing managers with decades of print experience at the paper, which marks its 30th anniversary this year. Critics pounced.

“When you start a staff meeting by telling us the next 10 minutes are more important than the past 30 years,’’ said Anonymous@1:43, “it makes me think you’ll step over anyone to get ahead.”

Beusse's supporters push back. “Someone tries to change things and you immediately call it a disaster,’’ wrote Anonymous@10:08. “Call it what you want but by doing the exact same thing for 30 years, you've ruined a once great product.”

In fact, Beusse isn’t the only newcomer wresting control from a group of aging USAT employees, a select group of whom are called the “founders,” for having been with the paper since its 1982 launch.

Just three days before Beusse’s sports department meeting, Gannett’s chief marketing officer, Maryam Banikarim, announced she had hired a Rodale magazine ad executive for a new position: president of sales, responsible for all Gannett-wide national advertising. (Beusse, too, once worked at Rodale.)

Murcko

This is a major change for USAT, which relies almost entirely on national brands like Chrysler and Verizon for virtually all its ad revenue. The new sales president, Mary Murcko, reports directly to Banikarim, rather than to the newspaper's publisher, Dave Hunke.

Murcko arrives amid weak ad sales, and after a November shake-up in USAT's top ad sales ranks. Across GCI's domestic publishing segment, which includes USAT and the community dailies, fourth-quarter national advertising sales fell 10.1% from a year before vs. a smaller 7.3% decline in overall ad sales.

Banikarim, 43, joined GCI a year ago this month from NBCUniversal. She’s the youngest member of the 12-person Gannett Management Committee, which oversees all GCI operations.

Payne, Gelman over USAT.com
Meanwhile, David Payne took over USAT’s website technology just five months after he was hired as GCI’s chief technology officer. He’s leading a redesign of the site with Mitch Gelman, his second in command at Gannett Digital. Gelman has a journalism background that will undoubtedly steer some of the site’s content.

Payne

Payne, 49, was hired a year ago, also this month, from a tech start-up. Both he and Gelman, hired in August from Examiner.com, worked together at CNN.com.

In USAT’s site relaunch, they're joined by a third newcomer: Augusta Duffey arrived in November for a new position, executive creative director, after nearly 16 years working in the advertising industry.

Looming ahead is the possibility that USAT’s deputy publisher, Susie Ellwood, could fill an opening for the paper's top editor with someone from outside Gannett. John Hillkirk stepped down from that job in November to run the daily’s investigative team; he’s been with the paper since its 1982 launch. Executive Editor Susan Weiss holds the job on an interim basis; she joined the paper in 1983.

Gelman

Hunke arrived as USAT's publisher in 2009, just as the entire newspaper industry convulsed in the Great Recession. The paper’s print ad revenue alone fell by $90 million in 2009, to around $200 million for the full year.

The paper lost 500,000 in circulation as its bread-and-butter hotel buyers changed gears. USAT is now the industry’s No. 2 paper, with 1.8 million copies sold. Counting online-only subscribers, The Wall Street Journal moved to No. 1 with 2.1 million.

Responding, Hunke ordered a reorganization in summer 2010 that included cutting dozens of jobs through layoffs and attrition, and focusing more on digital and mobile delivery to the web, smartphones, and tablets. On its website, the paper says it has 1,400 employees. But that figure’s outdated; the actual number is almost certainly lower.

To be sure, managers who've come from outside have had problems. Rudd Davis left unexpectedly in January just two months after being promoted to president of a new unit, the Travel Media Group. He had come to the paper four years before when USAT bought his action sports side, BNQT.

Another executive brought in, Heather Frank, led an expansion into specialty websites called verticals. She joined the paper in 2010 from a business consultancy and, earlier, AOL. With the verticals struggling, Ellwood in January replaced her with a long-time USAT journalist, Mindy Fetterman.

Hunke’s reorganization brought one of the most radical changes in the paper’s structure, the creation of a separate business that became the Sports Media Group. With Beusse in charge, Gannett’s board of directors gave the expansion a green light last July.

High as the stakes are, the potential rewards for Beusse are likely even greater if he hits that $300 million-plus target by 2015.

A $1M Westwood paycheck
Under U.S. securities law, GCI must report annual compensation for at least the five highest-paid officers. Figures for last year will be disclosed later this month. It’s unlikely Beusse will land in that group, however.

Hunke

Beusse reports to Hunke, who got paid $2.5 million in 2010, including the estimated future value of stock awards.

In his previous job, at Westwood One, Beusse was paid a $700,000 salary and a guaranteed bonus of $300,000.

His plan for USAT’s reorganization requires all the approximately 90 employees to reapply for jobs, with a deadline for completion in 90 days, according to Gannett Blog readers. It’s unclear how many will make the cut.

Dave Morgan, Sports Media Group’s editor in chief since October, is now already in charge of all content -- a radical switch for a paper that’s been led mainly by print people since its start. Morgan came to the group last fall from Yahoo.

Beusse’s supporters are often vocal on this blog.

“I think Beusse is the only one in senior management that actually know what the hell he's doing,’’ says Anonymous@5:54 p.m. “He's the only one who seems to get the fact that as a digitally focused company we should be hiring digital people. . . . That's just good sense.”

But this supporter is cautious, too: “I hope he handles whatever change is coming with dignity and class. If he does, he will once again separate himself from the management riff-raff currently employed at USAT.”