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| The Indianapolis Star is one of just nine sites relaunched. |
The new designs, which are meant to boost advertising revenue and readership, have been in the works since summer 2011, and were to be modeled after the look first adopted by USA Today more than a year ago. Among many changes, the USAT relaunch created a more tablet-like appearance that placed advertising more directly in front of readers.
As recently as July, Corporate said it expected the relaunch would be largely completed by year's end in the company's top 35 U.S. markets. Indeed, at one point, Corporate had said the rollout could be finished as early as January 2013.
But today, the first business day of the new year, the new look is in place at only two newspapers and seven stations, according to my review, which included 81 community dailies plus 23 stations. (I did not include any of the 20 stations from the just-closed takeover of Dallas TV company Belo.)
Since initially predicting installations in the top 35 markets, Corporate hasn't said anything publicly about possible changes to the timetable, so it's unclear why the new look has reached only nine sites so far.
Without any additional information from Corporate, it's also unclear whether the delay will have any immediate impact on revenue projections. The new design was to create more uniform advertising positions across Gannett, especially for prerolls that were to run before the many more videos now being produced by local sites in anticipation of the site redesigns.
The first to relaunch was WBIR in Knoxville, Tenn., in early September. The first newspaper to come on board was New York's Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, later that same month.
The unexplained delay comes amid a raft of other evidence that Gannett's digital growth is stumbling, according to regulatory documents, as competition across the Web and electronic networks only grows more intense.
Related: This spreadsheet shows the status of site and app relaunches at all 104 U.S. properties.
Love the portentous overkill that any editor would take out:
ReplyDelete"In the latest blow..."
Oh please. It's a rollout. It's not Obamacare, and it will evolve when it evolves.Is it behind schedule? Sure, but it is hardly the end of the world. Or of Gannett.
Don't overwrite, OK? Just the facts please.
You're whistling past the graveyard. This project has now been in the works for more than 2½ years -- eons in the digital age, even if either of the two interim goals had been met.
DeleteI am sure this won't impact the bonuses of our Chief Digital Officer and his lackeys.
ReplyDeleteIt's a pretty shitty looking website. Not pretty. User unfriendly. If this is the template, they can delay it some more.
ReplyDeleteLooking at your screen shot, I was gonna say "Henry Lee Summer? Holy crap, 1988 called." But, I read the story, and it's actually a very well-done piece about a forgotten Hoosier musician.
ReplyDeleteI don't find it hard to navigate the new site design with one exception: It's hard to see the comments on stories. The comment button is somewhat hidden on the left rail of the pop-up story screen and is easy to miss. Comments are an important part of the online experience.
ReplyDeleteJim still uses the same canned blogging software as he did when he started the blog.
ReplyDeleteWhen is your rollout planned, Jim? Oh, right -- never.
Considering Jim's Blog isn't for national consumption I don't expect him to have to keep up digitally like I do our Gannett paper. I gave up on that possibility long ago. I check in on the blog every so often to see if anything has changed. Sadly, it hasn't over the past two years. A digital company? Ha ha ha.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure he keeps up mentally. But how can someone still have the same canned blogging software and not expect backlash? Answer that intelligently, if you can.
DeleteYou are so missing the point here. You are doing what readers used to do when I was a sports editor and we'd publish a story that was critical of their favorite team or player or pointed out that a star player on their favorite team was arrested. You are killing the messenger instead of objectively analyzing the messenger's content. You are deflecting. Gannett is now light years behind in rolling out the new websites. That's the news. What software Jim uses is irrelevant to this topic.
DeleteSeriously 6:50 pm and 7:11pm ? Not for national consumption? How is it that Jim is sought out for comment by national media when ever there is major new involving Gannett? The fact that you two are paid by the company to post attacks on Jim is proof positive that this blog hits home and the buffoons in the Palace aren't happy about it!
DeleteKeep up the good work Jim! (For the record this is not Jim or any member of his family, since that will be the obvious corporate mandated response to any positive comment about the blog.
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DeleteExcellent comparison 6:50. A single-owner company blog being compared to a multi-billion dollar corporation. No wonder this company is in the shitter with knuckleheads like you.
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DeleteJim continues with his brilliant moderation, as he allows the negative attacks he claims to filter.
DeleteAnd typical of Gannett: highlight fluff, bury important news. This is proof that the Star isn't the only Indianapolis fixture struggling with public acceptance.
ReplyDelete[If you're not aware of it already, the Colts' playoff game on Saturday has not sold out and is in danger of being blacked out.]
No blackout. Too bad you didn't have the integrity to come back and admit that.
DeleteAt least he's not throwing you under the Gannett Bus for his bonus like all other supervisors. 2.5 years ago WOW and think i get wrote up for being 35 min. late printing usat. Piss on all these corporate swines with their negativity Jim, your site works you can tell by corporate backlash
ReplyDeleteYou can't tell from the quality of your writing, though. Do you have a Shift key? Do you know how to use it?
DeleteShift this, just a incompatant pressman printing your sad excuse for a Paper. Come on, seriously Front Page Coverage of Harding blasting Kerrigan 20 yrs. ago. You know how to write stories?
DeleteCan anyone weigh in on WHY there have been problems. I keep hearing how much money their spending.
ReplyDeleteThe template or format for the sites is quite limiting in how stories and images can be presented. No surprise there is pushback.
ReplyDeleteThere are many reasons for the delays in rolling out all of the USCP and broadcast sites to the new look. Chief among them was that the team in charge of the development of the USAT redesign was the USAT developers, none of whom had experience working in or creating a platform expected to be used by multiple properties. The application was created to support USA Today and USA Today only. It took a year to clean up the application to resemble something that could support multiple sites, and even then, there was a lot of duct tape holding items together. Work is still being done to make it a true enterprise application that supports all the sites without any hard-coded USA Today settings.
ReplyDeleteIt's a powerful, dynamic application, though. It's a pleasure to use usatoday.com and indystar.com now, a marked improvement from the ancient and slow behemoths they were.
It's Gannett Digital's hubris that is responsible for failure of the project. They're trying to do this with developers and managers who don't understand how a company works. Figuratively speaking, the NewsGate team launched a man to the moon and returned him safely compared with what Digital has done: launched a dog and a couple of monkeys.
DeleteThey are behind schedule, but it should be noted the process has been started at several other sites. Des Moines, Wilmington, Lousville and Palm Springs have all launched the new iPad apps, which has been the first step for other USCP sites.
ReplyDeleteThis is a joke. A relaunch that is over 18 months behind. Who the heck is managing this project on the USCP side? I cannot believe Gracia is putting up with this. Screw Butterfly get the digital piece fixed now! Dickey should be shot, our sites are embarassing and they are attaching revenes for digital that we can sell.
DeleteA "true enterprise application." Good thing Gannett knows how to do those. How's Newsgate working these days?
ReplyDeleteAll these sites will not be completely "relaunched" until the end of 2015.
ReplyDeleteThose highly paid coders at the Crystal Palace need to put away the hackey sack and get back to work.
ReplyDeleteHow can Gannett successfully sell its G/O digital marketing services to other businesses if it can't relaunch its own digital products on time?
ReplyDeleteapples and oranges
DeleteHow can you get revenue when you can't break news or update your site?
DeleteAs short as 6 months ago they still had no idea how they were going to share stories between sites. This was a major selling point of the new system
ReplyDelete