With Fort Myers, estimated layoffs now top 300; Florida daily launched 'mojos,' Information Centers

[Updated at 6:45 p.m. ET with latest figures.]

Word came overnight that The News-Press in Fort Myers has just laid off six in its newsroom, bringing total jobs cut at the Florida daily to 10, according to Facebook postings and Gannett Blog readers.

Today's Page One, Newseum

Gannett-wide, that means an estimated 314 newspaper jobs have been eliminated through layoffs or other means across at least 50 worksites over the past week, as the company enters what may be the final stage of this latest round of cost-cutting.

Fort Myers is noteworthy in Gannett's transition to digital journalism. There, the company fine tuned the concept of mobile journalists -- dubbed "mojos" -- showcased in a glowing Washington Post story in December 2006. By then, the concept had spread across the U.S. newspaper division, as newsrooms were renamed Information Centers.

The Post's Frank Ahrens wrote:

"The mojos have high-tech tools -- ThinkPads, digital audio recorders, digital still and video cameras -- but no desk, no chair, no nameplate, no land line, no office. They spend their time on the road looking for stories, filing several a day for the newspaper's Website, and often for the print edition, too. Their guiding principle: A constantly updated stream of intensely local, fresh Web content -- regardless of its traditional news value -- is key to building online and newspaper readership."

Back then, the News-Press' weekday circulation was about 88,000. Following the path of the overall newspaper industry, sales plunged to 61,000 by the end of last year.

Earlier: Gannett collects $105,000 from Lee County to create 35 jobs at News-Press, TV station says.

Is your site here?
Gannett's U.S. Community Publishing newspaper division employed about 18,000 workers at the beginning of the year.

In the current round of layoffs, all in response to continued declines in advertising revenue, a large swath of the East Group newspapers remains uncounted. Notably missing are most of the dailies in New York and New Jersey. To be sure, it's possible publishers there have been able to cut costs through other means, such as reducing page counts or eliminating travel. But that seems unlikely.

Please check this read-only spreadsheet, then post your latest information in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

Utica | Publisher gives credit where credit's due

"Son of a gun, those Corporate folks were right."

-- Donna Donovan, publisher of the Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y., in a column today saying the 2006 Information Center concept had been, in retrospect, the right move. A year after Corporate renamed its newsrooms, Gannett sold the paper and three others to GateHouse Media for $410 million. Post-sale, Utica reverted to the original "newsroom" name.

Earlier: In 2008, Donovan said consolidating customer service didn't work.

USAT | Stop me if you've heard this one before

If the theme of new USA Today Publisher Larry Kramer's memo to the newsroom yesterday sounded familiar across Gannett, here's why.

Moon

December 2005
"There no longer is going to be a dot-com newsroom. There no longer is going to be a print newsroom. There is one newsroom,'' says USAT Publisher Craig Moon, announcing the merger of the online and print news staffs.

November 2006
"Formerly we would cover sports to fill a once-a-day sports section in print. Now we concentrate on getting game scores posted online and mobile as fast as possible," says CEO Craig Dubow, announcing a digital-first reorganization of Gannett's more than 80 U.S. community newsrooms.

Hunke

August 2010
“This significant restructuring reflects USA Today’s evolution from a newspaper company to a multi-platform media company,” says Publisher Dave Hunke, in announcing plans for a "newsroom of tomorrow."

May 14, 2012
"I am honored and excited to have the opportunity to work with this talented team to reinvigorate USA Today’s mission and lay the groundwork for its next 30 years as a leading, multi-platform media brand and content powerhouse,'' says Kramer, in a news release announcing his appointment as the paper's publisher.

Yesterday
"We can no longer operate with a print-first mentality. Stories move 24-7 and we need to move at that same rapid pace,'' Kramer says, in a memo endorsing a Tom Beusse-led Sports Department reorganization, where several veteran reporters were laid off.

Earlier: Beusse, $300 million -- and a big challenge to the "founders."

GCI debuts new business model for its newsrooms

"It will be platform agnostic: News and information will be delivered to the right media -- be it newspapers, online, mobile, video or ones not yet invented -- at the right time."

Questions: Who said this? When did they say it? And how will the business model introduced next week be significantly different?

Memo: GCI to reveal new model for weak USCP; plan could be biggest news revamp in five years

Corporate is poised to announce a revamping of its U.S. community newspapers next week, the latest since the launch of the digital-first Information Center model in 2006, according to a company memo.

Marymont

Confirming a report that appeared here earlier, the head of Corporate's News Department, Vice President Kate Marymont, has scheduled a newsroom web conference for Feb. 2 that will include remarks by CEO Gracia Martore and the head of the U.S. Community Publishing division, Bob Dickey. That still-weak division includes the bulk of GCI's business: 80 mostly small U.S. newspapers that account for nearly 70% of GCI's overall revenue.

In a memo yesterday, Marymont said she would "talk about our journalism priorities and explain a new training program to support the many initiatives underway -- the CCI installation, Design Studio implementations, Content Evolution and the new business model rollout."

Martore

The new business model would be the first announced since Martore became CEO in October, and would be the latest one since GCI moved to the web-focused Information Center model begun in November 2006 under Martore's predecessor, Craig Dubow.

Marymont's memo is the first official public acknowledgement that GCI plans a shake-up of the USCP's model.

It comes as GCI continues to battle declines in its chief source of revenue, newspaper advertising -- a falloff that will be evident again when Corporate is set to announce fourth-quarter and full-year financial results Monday morning. During a telephone conference with media stock analysts that day, Martore could discuss some details of the new business model.

Meanwhile, many newspaper publishers and editors are expected to travel to Corporate's headquarters in McLean, Va., next week, according to one of my readers -- presumably for presentations on the new business model before the Feb. 2 web conference.

Apparently anticipating better news, investors have been bidding up GCI's shares for the past two weeks. They recently traded this morning for $15.25, down 6 cents -- but up more than 11% over the past 14 trading sessions, according to Google Finance.

Shrinking newsroom numbers
Marymont's "Content Evolution'' reference's a year-long study by editors of the larger papers that resulted in the introduction last summer of so-called Passion Topics, another quality control effort focused on subjects of presumably high interest to readers.

Dickey

The content changes are meant to help editors focus priorities as the newsroom's shrink through layoffs that have cost 20,000 jobs company-wide since 2005. More layoffs are expected through the creation of remote newspaper page production hubs at five dailies for most of the 80 dailies. Those Design Studio hubs were originally to be online by this coming summer, but delays have been reported over major software bugs in the CCI NewsGate front-end system.

Adding a new wrinkle to ongoing payroll cost reduction, a growing number of Gannett Bloggers are speculating that Corporate could announce buyouts for senior employees as early as next week -- workers in their mid-50s and up. Readers here have claimed eligible employees could be offered two weeks' pay for every year of service, perhaps for up to 52 weeks. Those buyout offers would likely include threats of layoffs if an insufficient number of employees apply.

I have confirmed that buyouts are set to be offered at at least one worksite as early as next week. But I have not confirmed any of the other particulars.

Text of Marymont memo

Editors: 
Please make time on your calendars at 3:30 PM ET Thursday, Feb. 2, for a special webinar for USCP journalists.
Gracia Martore will share her vision of the year ahead in Gannett.  Bob Dickey will share thoughts about what he expects in USCP in 2012.



I will talk about our journalism priorities and explain a new training program to support the many initiatives underway -- the CCI installation, Design Studio implementations, Content Evolution and the new business model rollout.


Thanks.



Kate

Phrases only a highly-paid consultant could love

First in a series of posts highlighting passages from the annual 10-K report, which Gannett filed yesterday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

1. "While the focus is on customer centricity, Information Center initiatives also fulfill the company’s responsibilities under the First Amendment."

2. "At the same time, the company continues its focus on creating a customer-centric world class sales organization in its local community publishing markets."

3. "Employed a customer-centric approach to developing and selling integrated marketing campaigns through a newly created national, cross-divisional sales organization called CustomerOne Solutions."

4. "Recent trends include the shift towards audience-centric, exchange-based media buying, entry of dynamic ad generation specialists, the move towards automated creative design tools, and the shift of video content online with associated in-stream advertising opportunities."

5. "The company’s goal is to be the leading source of news and information in the markets it serves, and be customer centric by delivering quality products and results for readers, viewers, advertisers and other customers. Gannett believes that well-managed newspapers, television stations, electronic media including Internet and mobile products and services, magazine/specialty publications and programming efforts will maximize profits for the company’s shareholders as will our customer-centric solutions approach to advertising."

A.P. study: Many U.S. papers cutting back on video

The Associated Press' U.S. broadcast news director says papers are cutting back primarily for financial reasons -- even though video could be a cornerstone of social media and new publishing devices, notably tablets. Kevin Roach didn't share specific findings of the study, which comprised 100 U.S. newspapers.

Gannett, like many publishers, began pushing video four years ago amid the reorganization of newsrooms into Local Information Centers. Video was meant to keep papers competitive with new digital ventures while also attracting more lucrative advertising in the form of web-style commercials.

Compared to a year ago, is your paper producing more video? Less? The same? What's the impact on ad revenue? 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.

Memo reveals N.J. newsroom reorg timetable

Following is text of a memo from Asbury Park Press Publisher Tom Donovan regarding the just-announced reorganization of three of the other N.J. newspaper newsrooms. The plan reportedly would reduce the combined 99 editorial positions to just 53. (The reference to "LICs" is to Local Information Centers, the name Gannett uses for its newsrooms.)

What's striking in Donovan's memo is the complete absence of any reference to cost savings, which I imagine is the real driver here; Donovan instead presents this solely as a move to improve editorial content.

Restructuring of the Organization
The restructuring of our LICs is designed to create an organization that can advance our breaking news capabilities, watchdog reporting, enterprise content and depth of local news and information across a diverse set of media platforms to best serve our readers and advertisers. To achieve this goal, we will begin the procedure of restructuring the organization and have created this Employee SharePoint site to assist you in preparing for the process.

As you begin the process of reviewing the new job opportunities in the East Brunswick, Somerville and Morristown information centers, which are outlined on this site, read the directions carefully before you begin.

We understand the concerns that many of you have regarding future employment with Gannett’s Northern three New Jersey Newspapers (N3). This site is designed to assist you with navigating through the position selection, application and interview process. You will find position descriptions, the revised organizational charts and a link to submit your name for consideration for up to two positions. Again, we encourage you to carefully review the job opportunities in preparation for an upcoming interview. 

After you apply for a position, a human resources representative will contact you to schedule an interview time. The first round of interviews will be for the managerial positions and will be conducted on Monday, Jan. 17, in Neptune. The first round of interviews for all other positions is on Tuesday, Jan. 25, also in Neptune. In some cases you may be asked to do a follow up interview. The deadline for applying for managerial positions is noon on Friday, Jan. 14. The deadline to apply for all other positions is Friday, Jan. 21.

You will be interviewed by HR Managers from other Gannett sites who are familiar with our business and our new job requirements. They will provide local management with feedback based on their interviews and local managers and executives will make the final candidate selections.

Questions: If you have questions regarding the application process or any of the positions, please contact the Human Resources Department at the Asbury Park Press. They can be reached by e-mail at hr@njpressmedia.com.

Thank you

Tom Donovan
Vice President
Gannett East Group

How GCI uses salaried workers to limit OT costs; fired sports editor's lawsuit illustrates technique

One way Gannett limits overtime pay expenses is by shifting work to salaried managers -- who don't get OT -- from hourly workers, who ordinarily do receive it. Indeed, a frequent complaint among Gannett Blog readers: Gannett promotes hourly workers to such exempt-from-OT positions, with little change in responsibilities, so the company can get more work from them, without increasing payroll costs.

"The people I feel sorry for,'' Anonymous@11:03 a.m. wrote today, "are the so-called 'exempt' employees who put in a ton more time than they get compensated for."

A federal court lawsuit against a Gannett newspaper in Alabama illustrates this issue. Former Sports Editor David "L.C." Johnson sued The Montgomery Advertiser last October, complaining he was fired for warning Executive Editor Wanda Lloyd that his reporters weren't being paid OT they had earned -- a violation of federal law.

Gannett denies the allegations, and says Johnson was fired for poor performance.

Editor claims 80-hour weeks
Johnson claims he sometimes worked as many as 80 hours a week after his department lost at least two assistant sports editor positions when the newsroom was restructured in 2007. This came with the adoption of the Local Information Center business model.

In her 119-page sworn deposition, Lloyd was questioned on this point by Johnson's attorney, Heather Leonard of Birmingham, Ala. Following is a key passage from Page 59:

Leonard: The sports editor is salaried, correct?

Lloyd: Yes.

Q: So sometimes the sports editor can do a lot of the work that a reporter would do in order to manage time and hours?

A: Yes.

Q: Is it possible that some of the time that Mr. Johnson was working he was actually doing jobs of reporters to help manage that 40 hours?

A: He was doing his job if he was doing that.

Q: But he might be doing duties that could have been assigned to a reporter?

A: That's possible.

Exempt from overtime pay? Please post your experiences in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

Recommended weekend reading for Dubow & Co.

"I loved reporting; I hated the law breaking.''

-- Hilary Funk, a reporter for Alabama's Montgomery Advertiser from August 2007 until she was laid off in December 2008.

Funk was speaking about signing timecards saying she had worked 40 hours a week, when she actually worked more. Funk underreported her hours because a newsroom culture discouraged putting in for overtime, she says, in some cases because employees feared losing their jobs.

Her remarks appear in a sworn deposition she gave in a federal court lawsuit filed against the paper last October by a former sports editor, David "L.C." Johnson, who claims he was fired after complaining that Advertiser employees weren't getting paid OT.

Gannett denies Johnson's allegations, and says he was fired for poor performance.

Funk's deposition numbers 64 pages, but is well worth reading -- every single word. She paints a vivid and often sympathetic portrait of employees and local management, squeezed by Corporate's shifting demands during the upheaval that followed Gannett's reorganization of newsrooms and advertising sales departments in 2007.

Funk learned about Johnson's lawsuit on Gannett Blog, then e-mailed his attorney to describe her own experience at the Advertiser.

"I feel for all the people at that paper," she wrote, "whenever I remember the hours, the lack of compensation, and the constantly changing Corporate line that upper management would be expected to fulfill in days, even if it were a 180-degree turn in direction."

Reading guide
A deposition is a type of sworn testimony, given by potential witnesses to attorneys gathering information outside of court.

In Funk's 64-page deposition, she references several other Advertiser employees. Two of the most important ones to keep in mind are Executive Editor Wanda Lloyd, and former Managing Editor Mel Gray.

Funk is initially questioned by Johnson's attorney, Heather Leonard of Birmingham, Ala. Then, starting on the very bottom of Page 19, Gannett's attorney -- Lynlee Palmer, also of Birmingham -- takes her turn. It goes back and forth from there.

[Image: today's paper, Newseum]

Hubs | Print's future, new site designs, USAT's role?

The following questions relate to the just-announced News Design Center page production hubs, and the CCI NewsGate computer system to be installed at all Gannett's U.S. newspapers:

Print's future. Corporate sees printed papers for at least another two years, based on the timetable set for introducing the hubs. But I wonder: Is part of this consolidation in anticipation of eventually eliminating or severely scaling back advertising-weak editions, like Mondays and Tuesdays? With fewer editions, you need fewer people to design and produce those printed pages, after all.

New website designs. CCI NewsGate sounds like software tailor-made for integrating multiple publishing platforms, including the soon-to-launch new website templates for the 81 dailies in U.S. Community Publishing. Those redesigned sites are supposed to be live by the end of this year. Today is July 14. We're already past the year's mid-point. Can anyone supply a current timetable on when the papers switch over to the new templates?

USA Today. The company's marquee title also will adopt CCI NewsGate, according to the hubs FAQ distributed yesterday. That suggests USAT is being drawn ever more closely into the orbit of the community papers, even as USAT top management plans what is sounding like a major reorganization. USAT is already building national and world news pages for the smaller papers. Will its move onto the same software mean more merging of its content into the smaller papers?

ContentOne. The former Gannett News Service was restructured and renamed last year, in one of the earliest examples of the productivity push across news. In late 2008, CEO Craig Dubow famously described ContentOne as a vehicle for producing "information much more efficiently by eliminating duplication and allowing our local entities to focus on what's important -- a deep, rich local report. It is the logical next step from our local Information Center initiatives, creating a national head to the local content gathering bodies."

Naturally, ContentOne will work off the new CCI NewsGate system. How might it work with USA Today, the smaller dailies, and their new websites as more company-wide news gathering and page production gets further centralized?

Gannett Production Centers. These are the still-developing operations at Des Moines and Indianapolis, where advertising artwork is to be produced for all the community dailies by early 2011. How will that artwork be shipped back and forth between ad salespeople, advertisers, and the page producers at the five new hubs?

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.

Indy | In reverse, papers now push print exclusives

Gannett's new drive to boost Sunday print circulation is standing the company's web strategy on its head. Rather than emphasizing web exclusives such as video and blogs, some papers are taking the opposite tact. Today's example: The Indianapolis Star, which is promoting on this morning's Page One a "print exclusive" story in Sunday's edition. (See detail, above. Bigger view of entire front page.) That story is a follow-up to the paper's recent tale about Brent Jones, the teen-age "kid who doesn't exist."

Earlier: In Phoenix, Sunday subscription push intensifies

Do print exclusives conflict with Gannett's digital-first strategy, as established with the Information Center business model? 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.

'Freedom begins at home' vs. 'content as product'

[An eloquent 1982 ad cherishes local editorial freedom]

Dropping USA Today's national and world news pages into Gannett's community papers is the next step in the elimination of local editorial control -- one many readers will greet with suspicion and justifible alarm. Working in the field for 20 years, I often heard residents speak about fears giant Gannett Co. was consolidating media power at the expense of local interests.

Their biggest fear focused on opinion: that Corporate would dictate editorials favoring hot-button issues like candidate endorsements, gun control and abortion. That doesn't yet appear to be part of the mission of ContentOne, the news gathering and distribution system launched in late 2008, and now run by former chief publicist Tara Connell.

But it's certainly a risk as ContentOne consolidates editing decisions over news at a small number of hubs, including the biggest of all: Corporate in McLean, Va. As I wrote last year, it's an ominous shift in a century-old policy laid down by co-founder Frank Gannett (left). He mandated local autonomy over news coverage, from school boards to presidential inaugurations, the company's history on Corporate's website says: "It was his belief that a newspaper best serves its city if its publisher, editor and all its employees are locally oriented and understand the city and its people."

His view was expressed eloquently in 1982, when Gannett published a full-page advertisement in Black Enterprise magazine under the headline, "Freedom Begins at Home." It says: "As a matter of principle, Gannett has no single voice. That principle is freedom. And that freedom is rooted in the First Amendment. Each Gannett voice is free to express its own opinions, free to serve its own community, free to meet its own professional responsibilities, free to speak as its own local professional managers see fit."

Now, contrast that with Corporate's ContentOne promise in the slick new annual shareholders report. In the cold language of an enterprise that's now an international media and marketing solutions company, top management says it will:

"continue the development and enhancement of the ContentOne initiative, through which it expects to fundamentally change the way content is gathered, shared and sold. ContentOne's focus is to reduce duplication of effort in developing and gathering content and enhancing the sharing of content across the company. A key objective is to view content as a product, with usefulness and value beyond its inclusion in the company's newspapers, television broadcasts and websites. ContentOne builds on the Information Center initiative by creating a national focal point that will serve all of the company's businesses."

Frank Gannett was a shrewd, scowling businessman, to be sure, a political animal who once sought to occupy the White House. But even Gannett sounded like he had a heart.

[Image: today's USAT, Newseum]

To Bob Dickey: We're 'looking for a true visionary'

Frustrated by readers who only want to "crucify the executives,'' Anonymous@7:04 a.m. raises a question that's noteworthy for what it says about the quality of employee communication from Corporate.

"Let's get back to reporting on things that matter to an editor like me in a large-market newspaper,'' @7:04 says. "I would really like to find out from my divisional president, Bob Dickey (left), what he believes a newspaper looks like in three years. Do we all go the way of Detroit? Should we all start writing for the web and then reverse-publish for print? What is the role of a newspaper publisher in a changing media environment? . . . We are all in the same boat and we are looking for a true visionary."

Anonymous@11:20 a.m. seconds that request: "Mr. Dickey," they write. "We know you read this blog. Please send a response or an e-mail to your employees and tell us what the newspaper looks like in 3-5 years. What grand plan are you putting together with your corporate strategists around e-readers, mobile phones -- and where does that place the newspaper? We await your answers. Please provide explicit details and not 'corporate-speak' answers."

As a Gannett employee, I had the same question: What was top management's vision for the company in a rapidly-changing media landscape? CEO Craig Dubow's first big initiative -- emphasizing news on the web first, followed by print -- wasn't ground-breaking when it was unveiled in 2006. Dubow was simply pulling Gannett into a 21st century model ignored by his predecessor. And Dubow's repeated admonition that Gannett would remain the No. 1 news source in its markets was only a restatement of the company's long-held goal.

2007: vision interruptus
Whatever big vision might have emerged was lost starting in mid-2007, when the company began an alarming slide toward bankruptcy. Truth be told, that's been the Dubow-Dickey vision for newspapers ever since: Keep Gannett out of the hands of creditors long enough for the economy to rebound.

The immediate threat of Chapter 11 bankruptcy now seems past. That means it's time for Dubow & Co. to articulate the vision sought by many employees. What should be worrisome, though, is readers like @7:04 are still asking whether newsrooms should "start writing for the web" and then update for print. More than three years after that very goal was built into the Information Center reorganization, why is anyone still posing such basic questions? What's that say about the effectiveness of communication from Corporate down to the trenches?

What's your vision for the company? What do you hear from the Corporate office? 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.

[Image: today's Detroit Free Press, Newseum. Last spring, the paper dropped home delivery for all but three advertising-rich days; the rest of the week, it produces an abbreviated edition for newstand sales]

Fort Myers | After Hudler, News-Press angst

The e-mail came in not long ago, a plaintive plea from someone near one of Gannett's financially challenged Florida papers: "If you hear anymore about Fort Myers's pressroom, please let me know.''

Their worries are understandable. Gannett is eyeing at least eight press and production facilities, looking for ways to reduce costs by outsourcing printing to other papers. U.S. newspaper division President Bob Dickey didn't identify likely candidates when he spoke to Wall Streeters last month. But The News-Press at Fort Myers has floated to the speculative surface; two Gannett Blog tipsters say printing could be shifted, possibly to the Naples Daily News, an E.W. Scripps paper 43 miles south on the Gulf Coast.

That the News-Press could be in the crosshairs isn't surprising. Fort Myers became a poster child for the real estate meltdown, especially in Florida -- setting it up as a candidate for especially deep budget cuts amid a lowered profile. Its strategic importance in Gannett was downgraded in November, when the South Group's headquarters got moved to Nashville, after the paper's publisher, Carol Hudler, was named chief executive of The Tennessean. Two months later, as near as I can tell, Corporate still hasn't named a News-Press replacement publisher.

Meanwhile, Gannett moved the Pensacola paper's printing 58 miles away, to Mobile, Ala., last summer; that cut 84 high-paying production jobs. "Pensacola was just an appetizer (some said it wouldn't work),'' Anonymous@10:56 p.m. wrote Jan. 8. "Shooting Ft. Myers will be filet mignon."

To be sure, the News-Press has already taken it on the chin: By my count, the paper has eliminated at least 20% of its jobs in two rounds of layoffs last July and in 2008. I suspect the number is higher; Corporate doesn't disclose paper-by-paper job cuts, so we don't know.

The newspaper's strategic downgrade illustrates another truism in Gannett: Financial considerations nearly always trump editorial success. Recall that the News-Press was a leader in developing the Information Center model prior to its late-2006 companywide rollout. Indeed, then-top editor Kate Marymont rode that success to a promotion as vice president of Corporate's News Department, which oversees editorial for all the U.S.

Got a news tip? 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.

[Image: this morning's News-Press, Newseum]

$$$ | Why the real job cut number isn't 1,400

I believe Corporate is actually focused on a payroll savings target -- perhaps $300 million to $400 million -- rather than a set number of jobs, in the layoffs that may kick into higher gear on Monday. I said that in my layoff FAQ, originally posted June 23. But I didn't emphasize it enough, and then it got lost in the news. Here's where I'm coming from.

This round is built around the July 15 analysts' teleconference call, when Chief Financial Officer Gracia Martore will discuss that morning's release of second-quarter results, and give a glimpse of the near-term outlook. Wall Street wants to know about cost savings. Telling analysts Gannett is trimming some number of jobs is meaningless to them.

It's very meaningful to you, of course: If that memo from Bob Dickey had set only a dollar figure, you would have been justifiably angry, because it wouldn't give you a sense of the chances you might lose your job.

So, much of the debate has been about two numbers: 1,400 jobs vs. 4,500 jobs. The former is the number given by Dickey for the 83 dailies in the community newspaper division. The latter is one supplied by a source, My Boss, who's been very reliable in the past. (Note: I'm still counting the Tucson Citizen because, I think, it has a skeleton staff maintaining what remains of that Arizona daily, a website.)

What if they nuke Newsquest?
The community papers do not include the Detroit Free Press and USA Today. And they certainly don't include the U.K. division, Newsquest, which has received almost zero attention in our discussion.

Newsquest is important to this debate. At Dec. 31, its 17 dailies and hundreds of weeklies employed 6,600, down more than 18% from 2007. Recall that Corporate's nearly $3 billion writedown last summer was almost exclusively for the U.K. division, once a reliable hedge against the U.S. dollar.

But as the pound sterling has fallen, Newsquest is no longer delivering those goods. CEO Paul Davidson (left) has been cutting jobs there like crazy; Newsquest recorded the biggest percentage decline in jobs among Gannett's divisions last year vs. 2007.

It has adopted the Information Center business model first rolled out for the domestic papers in late 2006. But that may have not been enough, given the meltdown in real estate prices there. London might have been hurt less, because it's the economic engine. But Newsquest's papers are outside the city. It's conceivable that Gannett may sell some or all of Newsquest for pennies on the pound. Corporate paid $1.5 billion cash for the chain in 1999.

(A year later, in an even bigger deal, Gannett paid $2.6 billion cash for The Arizona Republic, The Indianapolis Star and other papers owned by Central Newspapers. Also in 2000, Gannett paid a bit over $1 billion for Thomson papers in Wisconsin, Ohio, and three other states. In all, Gannett was buying at or near the top of the market, just before the dot-com crash that sent values skidding.)

Some of those 6,600 Newsquest jobs could more than make up the difference between Dickey's 1,400 and the reported 4,500.

I posted the 4,500 jobs figure, and attributed it to the original source. (Later, a poster identified only as Anonymous@9:41 p.m. wrote June 22: "The magic number is 4,623 on July 15." But I give far less credence to that, even though its specificity is intriguing.)

Has anyone grilled Dickey?
My critics have tried to knock down the 4,500 number, apparently based on one source: Dickey. Now, has anyone spoken to him, and asked to see how he arrived at that number? Has anyone here seen the payroll savings goal set by Martore, and been shown how that translated into Dickey's 1,400 jobs? Why do you trust Dickey over a source here, who has been so accurate in the past?

Now, let me anticipate your response: Hopkins is naive; no business -- let alone Gannett -- would produce that sort documentation. "That's not the way business is done,'' they'd say.

Far too many journalists, on and off the business-news beat, don't ask important questions, and demand answers, because "that's the way business is done.'' The problem with that in Gannett's case: Doing business the way it's done is what's gotten the company staggering under mountains of debt, and threatening any number of 41,500 employees with job loss as early as Monday.

You all will see the final result on July 15. I won't, because I'm out of here on Friday.

Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write gannettblog[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green rail, upper right.

Pop quiz: What's inside the Cuomo documents?

That's what several readers have asked about the cache of records I obtained unexpectedly from the office of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. Answer: In yet another example of my shameless hyping -- err, valuable insight into how one obtains public documents, I'm asking readers to provide the answer -- via the following quiz.

At last, the documents reveal:

1. A long-suppressed academic white paper, Myths about Mulligans: How Golf Tournament Entry Fees Maximize Shareholder Value.

2. Something else.

After choosing the correct response (1), please return quietly (if not a little dazed) to your nearest local Information Center.

How ContentOne threatens local editorial control

The new web-based news service is more than just another way to save bucks by consolidating. ContentOne could further concentrate editorial control over all the company's 85 U.S. newspaper websites.

That would be a big shift in a century-old policy laid down by co-founder Frank Gannett (left). He mandated local autonomy over news coverage, from school boards to presidential inaugurations, the company's history says: "It was his belief that a newspaper best serves its city if its publisher, editor and all its employees are locally oriented and understand the city and its people."

Today, Gannett's newspapers and websites are still produced by people who live and work in the communities they serve: from Rochester, N.Y., to Louisville, Ky., to Salinas, Calif. Importantly, this has meant local folks choose the stories, photos and other content appearing in print and online.

But that is now changing under ContentOne -- a fact CEO Craig Dubow revealed early last month to a high-profile conference of influential Wall Street stock analysts. The service, Dubow said, creates a "national head" to the "local content-gathering bodies,'' and is the logical next step from the Information Center model adopted two years ago.

Which editors choose news?
Consider ContentOne's debut as news central across all 85 sites for President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration. A week ago, Corporate gave each paper a "turnkey'' microsite -- like The Courier-Journal's, in Louisville, Ky.; here's a partial screenshot:

Readers get to the Obama page via an illustrated link (inset, left) embedded on the Courier's homepage; all the Gannett sites adopted these in the past week. Kentucky readers are encouraged to think the page was created by editors in Louisville -- the same ones who pick stories for the rest of the site, and for the daily print paper.

For example, readers are greeted by the paper's logo in the upper-left corner, and a little bit of local news right below -- just like on all the other sites. All the other stories and features were selected by Corporate, as promised in its planning memo: "It will be delivered to you and your readers under your local branding."

(Broadcasting division employees might compare this to the establishment, now under way, of centralized graphics and master control engineering functions at regional centers.)

Finally, check out the list of stories in the middle of the page, near the bottom in that screenshot -- under the heading that says in red type, "inauguration headlines." This identical list of stories appears on all the Gannett Obama sites I spot-checked. That leads to my:

Pesky questions!

• Which editors choose those national Obama stories on behalf of all 85 websites -- and where do those editors work?
• Many if not all these stories are soft, and lack hard news. Is that a policy? If so, who set the policy -- and why?
• Does Corporate plan to extend this consolidation of editing decision-making to other national news pages on community paper sites -- such as business, sports and popular culture?
• How many copy-editing and webpage-building jobs does Corporate expect to eliminate during 2009 under ContentOne?
• As ContentOne evolves, what steps has the board of directors taken to safeguard the community papers' traditional editorial autonomy?

Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write gannettblog[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green sidebar, upper right.

Another shoe drops: Marymont takes Currie's job

Gannett has finally gotten around to making the announcement, just moments ago, that you read about long ago, here.

WUSA: What's as much fun as watching paint dry?

How about a live feed of construction work on the on-air set for Gannett's flagship TV station? It's being webcast by Mogulus, the video service GCI invested in back in July. Passing along the link, Anonymous@6:05 p.m. says in a comment:

"The newsroom has been torn apart for new furniture and configuration as it transforms into the 'Information Center.' Some question spending money on new furniture, even though it's needed, when you are downsizing staff."