For Memorial Day Weekend, a NewsGate memo

NewsGate Director Stacey Martin sent the following memo last night about problems with the CCI NewsGate software that the U.S. newspapers use to process story and photo files.

All,

We are experiencing heavy page output and proof volume this evening. I know that it is tough but please be patient. Right now the backlog is up to 30 minutes.

PLEASE don't resend files if you don't see them immediately. If you send something and you don't have it within 30 minutes, resend at that time.

As much as is feasible and reasonable, please proof pages on the screen rather than on paper.

We are working on expansion of our output farm to allow us avoid this kind of delay.
For tonight, I beg your patience. Nothing is offline or stopped, just lots of files as we all try to hit daily and advance section print deadlines heading into the holiday weekend.

If you are working on a product that you know doesn't go on press until after your daily product -- PLEASE hold off on output until later this evening, once your daily product is out.

Thanks,
Stacey
____________
Stacey Martin
Director, Enterprise NewsGate Practice

Earlier: In crash probe, a NewsGate upgrade is delayed.

Memo: In crash probe, NewsGate upgrade delayed

Anonymous@7:21 has just posted what appears to be a memo addressing yesterday's NewsGate publishing software outage:

All,

Today we are focused on figuring out what happened last night and ensuring it doesn’t happen again.

I know a lot of you saw the new functionality coming in the NewsGate upgrade and many of you were excited by new features.

As much as we would like to get those new features out to you in order to improve your NewsGate experience, we need to focus on the issue and find out what caused that event.

We are delaying the upgrade until further notice.

I’ll update you as we know more about the incident and as we look to reschedule the upgrade.

Thank you all for your hard work last night; it was a tough night and everyone performed exceptionally.

Thanks,
Stacey

_________________
Stacey Martin
Director, Enterprise NewsGate Practice

Here are the latest reports of a NewsGate crash

Anonymous@5:45 wrote moments ago: "We are in the midst of another lengthy crash -- almost four hours. That's four hours of lost production time and four hours of late pages. That's four hours of people standing around doing nothing."

Earlier, we heard from Anonymous@5:15, who said: "Our NewsGate system has been down almost the entire day. Now we're being informed those who were logged on when it conked out may be kicked off. This is so unbelievable."

With these latest reports, I've now created a NewsGate tag to more closely follow this ongoing problem in what should be a mission-critical system.

Earlier: Big computer outage draws 79 comments last month. Plus: Reader says sites "scramble" after NewsGate fails in January.

Tech 101 | Big computer, e-mail outage today

In an e-mail, a reader says: "Big computer trouble including e-mail and NewsGate across Big G today, Easter Sunday. A mess."

At 10:15 p.m. ET, The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., told readers at the top of its homepage: "Due to production difficulties, the Courier-Journal will publish a combined one-edition newspaper Monday." 

Discuss reports of last night's CCI NewsGate outage

In a comment, Anonymous@12:04 a.m. wrote: "Speakin' of rocking new technology, was the NewsGate outage Tuesday evening a national issue or just a local one at my site? How again is NG going to make our papers better? Anyone?"

Responding at 9:45 this morning, Tommy Edison wrote: "NewsGate was running like crap yesterday and had to be taken down for 'emergency repairs' around 7:25 p.m. Eastern last night. Please tell me which one of the five overpaid failures gets a bonus for that decision. Typing a word and waiting, waiting, waiting for it to appear on the screen is so 1988."

Note: CCI NewsGate is the estimated $15 million front-end system Corporate installed beginning in 2010 to help unite all word processing across U.S. newspapers. It's part of the establishment of five central hubs that will design and build pages for most of the 80 community papers.

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

Tech 101 | Take my CCI NewsGate -- please!

Youngman

The editor of The Arizona Republic's Mesa edition lands some pretty good one-liners in a column yesterday about the paper's recent experience with CCI NewsGate, the new multimillion-dollar software publishing system rolling out across Gannett's U.S. newspapers. John D'Anna said the Republic made the switch this week. And?

• "You know it's worth it because now twice as many stories disappear twice as fast." Bada-bing!
• "The system is so complicated that we now have to be nice to the interns because they're the only ones who understand it." Bada-bing!
• "Instead of clicking on a little icon to create a story, there's now a 13-step 'process.' Forget just one step and you're hosed." Bada-bing!
• "The system is called NewsGate -- and not to be cynical or anything -- but you would think people who bought it would know that nothing good ever ends in the suffix 'gate.'" Bada-bing!

For months now, Gannett Bloggers have said the software is still very buggy, and seems cumbersome compared to the array of different software it's replacing.

In an efficiency move, GCI spent at least $15 million on NewsGate so newspapers could seamlessly share stories online and in print. It's crucial to operations of the five News Design Studios building pages for virtually all the 82 newspapers.

[Photo: Henny Youngman, the master of one-liners]

Hubs | Delays said in Jackson, Miss., and Brevard

The rollout of the five newspaper page production Design Studios was inevitably going to experience some hiccups, given the complexity of a software and staffing project as ambitious as this, and that's exactly what I'm hearing from readers.

They say the problem is centered at the hub at Nashville, Tenn., the first to go online. Any delays would jeopardize cost-savings built into the project -- and into Gannett's quarterly earnings forecasts.

The reported delays are at:

• The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, a reader says in an e-mail: "We were scheduled to go online with the Nashville hub in March. It's now September. Word I'm getting is the CCI NewsGate system is not as promised."
• Florida Today, where another reader says: "Brevard's transition to the Design Studio in Nashville has been delayed until after Labor Day. We were supposed to start with the studio in mid-June." About half of the 20 staffers on the copy desk eventually will lose their jobs, the reader says.

Some newsroom staffers at USA Today told me earlier that they, too, have had big problems with the CCI installation. Corporate spent as much as $15 million on the software, according to federal regulatory filings.

The original plan was for the hubs to be phased in over two years, starting last summer. Assuming the situation at Nashville is true for all the dozen papers that hub is to serve, a six-month delay would be a significant dent in the timetable. (Spreadsheet shows hubs and their assigned papers.)

Nearly all of GCI's 81 U.S. dailies are to shift page design and production to five hubs. With Nashville, the other four are at Asbury Park, N.J.; Des Moines; Louisville, Ky., and Phoenix.

The hubs are part of GCI's work consolidation drive meant to reduce costs. Corporate has never revealed expected savings -- one reason why I was especially interested to read about the reported 50% staffing reduction at Florida Today.

Asbury Park | Page templates are said to be 'final'

Anonymous@4:53 p.m. says Asbury Park Press Executive Editor Hollis Towns distributed the following memo to staffers this afternoon. The paper is one of five production hubs under development to design and produce pages for most of Gannett's 80 U.S. community dailies.

From: Towns, Hollis
Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2011 1:12 PM
To: ASB-APPNEWSROOM
Subject: Template memo

Folks,

Templated pages in CCI NewsGate are intended as final designs, not starting points. They are a key tool for efficiency and productivity.

All of the templates we designed and built are based on a careful study of a month’s worth of our pages. They look the way they do because this is how we build our pages day in and day out.

Of course we can adjust if we really, really need to. But assume that you don’t really need to.

As we go through all the challenges of rolling out CCI in the next couple of months, stick to the templates.

Hollis

Hub history
Towns' purported memo follows an earlier disclosure that the community papers will all use the same typefaces for body text and headlines.

Also, from News Department Vice President Kate Marymont's July 13, 2009 memo and FAQ about the hubs:

Q. Will all of our newspapers begin to look alike?
A. No. Flatly, no. That is not the intent at all. The individuality of a newspaper is important. We will preserve that.

Nashville's Martin said in broad new IT position

Anonymous@9:32 a.m. today writes the following:

"Stacey Martin, currently our VP of Operations and IT Director for the South Group [based at Nashville, Tenn.], has been named Director/Enterprise NewsGate Practice for the Gannett Information Technology Department. She will form, lead and manage the technology team that will provide Enterprise NewsGate application management and support for all customers across the Gannett organization. This is a key leadership role needed for the overall success of this significant project. Stacey and her family will be relocating to the D.C. area."

Note: NewsGate is the new front-end system uniting virtually all of the 82 U.S. newspapers for the five page design and pagination hubs. Those hubs are at Asbury Park, N.J., Louisville, Ky., Des Moines; Nashville, Tenn., and Phoenix. The regional South Group is based in Nashville. Martin was one of 35 winners last year of President's Rings in the U.S. newspapers division.

Hubs | Memo is said to detail typography rules

Regarding the rollout of five Design Studios to produce pages for most of the 81 U.S. community newspapers, Anonymous@8:56 said last night: "Even after telling us that we would still look unique and retain our 'look' using Monotype fonts, a user's guide to Gannett Typography with a memo was sent out Jan. 17." In their comment, 8:56 posted what they say is the memo's text, as follows:

Gannett's U.S. Community Publishing group will move to a common Monotype typography in early 2011. Most sites will introduce this change before they move to the CCI NewsGate 3.2 system. A number of strategic reasons drive this move. A common typography will maximize our ability to share content. A common typography will streamline the work done in the Design Studio initiative. A common typography will provide our designers with a typography structure that will support their design work.

Our typography standards underpin strong visual design. And strong visual design starts with strong content. As we transition to the Design Studios, it is essential that we focus on the best possible content to create the best possible publications.

We turned to the four members of the Design Studio design team to help us define these standards. And they have outlined the guides for a wide range of uses.

Our typography standards include very specific instructions for many uses and flexibility to maintain and enhance the individual personality of each newspaper. As with most designs, the pecking order to achieve a newspaper's individual personality starts with page flags, moves to headlines, then to "everything else." To accomplish all that we need to do strategically, we will have uniformity in the "everything else" area.

This guide provides specific instructions on all type that is less than 12 points. In a few cases, a site can make choices based on the newspaper's overall design. For example, bylines can be centered or flush-left; subheads can be centered or flush-left. What's critical is that the type specs and spacing be uniform.

This guide also will provide direction in using the headline typography available to you. Finally, it includes examples of the specialty type available to you for developing page flags, with some examples of flags designed with the type.

Most Information Centers will be putting these specs into place before we begin using the new CCI system that we all will share. Making the transition beforehand will ensure that the system change will be visually transparent as possible to our readers. And it will simplify the process of setting up each of our products for the new system.

Our design team has developed and tested these typography standards. We thank them for their tremendous commitment to this project.

A project in flux?
From News Department Vice President Kate Marymont's original July 13 FAQ, discussing the new hubs:

Q. Will all of our newspapers begin to look alike?
A. No. Flatly, no. That is not the intent at all. The individuality of a newspaper is important. We will preserve that.

From her July 26 Q&A with the Society for News Design:

Q. Will the publications served by the Centers go through redesigns to align typography? Image area?
A. Our goal is to preserve the individuality of newspapers. Gannett has long stressed the importance of a newspaper reflecting the personality of the community it serves. A newspaper for Palm Springs, Calif., should be very different from a newspaper for Salem, Ore., or Rochester, N.Y.

We will examine efficiencies that won’t hurt that individuality. For example, can cutline styles be standardized? Can sports agate be produced in a single font? We will study things like this.

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.

[Images: today's Desert Sun of Palm Springs, and the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, Newseum]

Hubs | Nashville now set for March-April launch; Brevard would be first 'remote' daily to go online

Following Wednesday's web-based conference on the planned page design and production hubs, more details have emerged about the timetable, operations, and hiring, according to an internal memo and one of my readers.

As expected, Nashville, Tenn., is the first of the five hubs scheduled to launch. The executive editor of The Tennessean there, Mark Silverman, sent a memo to staff clarifying how "wire" stories will be edited. Silverman also discussed how and when the first hires will be made for the hubs, called "Design Studios." (Memo text, below.)

The project, first disclosed in July, will consolidate page production for all of Gannett's 81 community dailies at the five hubs. The other four are at papers in Asbury Park, N.J.; Des Moines; Louisville, Ky., and Phoenix. A new CCI-brand front-end computer system will be installed at the 81 papers, to unify word processing, and make possible online page design over great distances. The project is set to roll out over two years.

Nashville gets CCI first
The goal is to cut costs while simultaneously improving page design. Savings are to come through efficiencies: The hubs will employ fewer people doing work remotely -- sometimes, hundreds of miles from assigned papers -- that is now performed by many more locally at each of the 81 sites. Some designers will be transferred to the hubs; others will be laid off; exact figures haven't been made public.

Nashville is expected to gets its CCI NewsGate installation by early December, according to one of my readers. Training is set for late February or March, "and the paper should be up and running by the end of March or beginning of April," the reader says in an e-mail.

"Florida Today will be the first paper scheduled for sometime in June,'' the reader says. "Then one paper or group every other month until [Nashville is] up and running fully. [Nashville will have] all of Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and possibly Staunton, Va."

(Spreadsheet shows five hubs and their assigned papers, as of July.)

Text of Silverman's memo
Folks,

Please let me clarify something that may have been unclear during the Design Studios webinars this week.

The plan is to have a group of wire copy editors in each studio  -- not two as the table of organization at the webinar seemed to suggest. The exact number will be determined by the amount of wire content used by the newspapers using each studio. As newspapers are added to the studios, more wire copy editors will be hired.

They will work as a team, in the same way that teams of designers are envisioned as working on a particular newspaper or groups of newspapers. In hiring the wire copy editors, we will look for knowledge of various subject areas -- sports, entertainment, business, etc.

One more thing: In December we will post the Tennessean producer jobs -- positions that will include local copy editing and headline writing as well as Web work. Interested people can apply for both positions -- those local producer jobs as well as wire copy editor jobs. You don't have to pick one or the other. There will be conversations between staffers, the Design Studio managers (and me) and appropriate Tennessean editors to go through the needs of each job and the interests of staffers. No decisions will be made before January.

I'll be away for a week, but please see me when I return if you have additional questions about the copy editor and producer positions. We will have another staff meeting in early December, and we'll spend a portion of that on the Design Studio issues as well.

Thanks.

-- Mark

[Image: today's Tennessean, Newseum]

Tech 101| How's CCI NewsGate working so far?

University of Montana undergraduate student Kristen Theiler asked me to post the following author's query about the new computer system Gannett is installing across the U.S. newspaper division. CCI NewsGate is part of the two-year-long rollout of five newspaper page design and production hubs. She writes:

I am very interested in knowing how Gannett's CCI NewsGate system has worked since it was launched, and if you would share with me any information regarding the switch.

Also, if you could put me in contact with people who work with the system on a regular basis, it would be very helpful.

I'm a senior at the University of Montana, and not only is my senior thesis on the future of newspaper design, but so is the career that i have been training for since high school.

Please post your replies to her query in the comments section, below. Or you mail e-mail jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com], and I'll forward your notes to her -- without identifying you, if you choose. See my Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

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.

Urgent: GCI confirms five new page design hubs at Asbury, Des Moines, Louisville, Nashville, Phoenix; new CMS system, too, with rollout starting in 2011

Following is a note Executive Editor Tom Callinan sent to employees at The Cincinnati Enquirer about an hour ago. In it, Callinan confirms recent speculation that Gannett is on the verge of launching a nationwide network of newspaper page production hubs. Here's the full text of his note:

There was a conference call this morning in which Gannett announced plans to move to a single content management system to be used by all of its newspapers. The new system will be CCI NewsGate and represents a $15 [million] investment by the company.

Now that the announcement has been made (it has not been talked about much openly while the contract was being signed) there will be an open discussion about what that means to Cincinnati.

The biggest news is that we will be part of a regional design center approach that will see news content paginated in Louisville (there will be four other "hubs" -- Asbury Park, Nashville, Des Moines and Phoenix.)

The CCI NewsGate rollout will start in 2011 and the design centers will be set up over the next two years. We will find out where we fit in the schedule soon.

We'll meet in the conference room at 4:30 to start talking about how we will manage this.

But at this point the above is pretty much all I know.

TC

Earlier: Are you familiar with CCI NewsGate? Plus: What were these $15M in Q1 digital acquisitions?

Callinan's note doesn't say whether any of the 81 U.S. community dailies are exempt from being paginated at these hubs. Do you know? 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.

Urgent: Gannett said creating five 'super hubs'; centers to build pages for U.S. community dailies

In a dramatic escalation of its work consolidation strategy, Gannett now plans to establish five super hubs across the United States, where pages for most of its 81 U.S. community newspapers will be built remotely by teams of designers.

As part of this move, the company is also about to launch a single front-end computer system to be used by all the newsrooms for creating and editing story files, a $15 million CCI NewsGate system that's integral to running the five page production hubs, according to several of my readers.

The plan has been in works for months, and has been the subject of speculation among Gannett Blog's readers. One source told me late today that U.S. newspaper division President Bob Dickey disclosed the five-hub strategy this afternoon, during a meeting with employees of The Tennessean at Nashville.

Key elements have fallen into place relatively recently, however; the $15 million CCI expense, for example, was disclosed just three months ago, in Gannett's first-quarter 10-Q filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on May 4.

Nashville as test site?
Copy editing, which presumably would include writing headlines, will continue to be handled at the local newspaper level, I've been told. So, too, would story assignment and, presumably, decisions about "play" -- which articles and photographs, for example, appear on the front page, and in what order.

Choosing to unveil the plan in Nashville would make sense: One source tells me Nashville, which is headquarters for the newspaper division's South Group, will house one of the five hubs. Indeed, I believe the Tennessee city will be among the first to try out the new CCI NewsGate system.

The roll out of a unified computer system and five regional hubs comes as Gannett searches for new ways to cut labor costs when advertising revenue continues to fall, albeit at slower rates, during the global economy's agonizingly slow recovery.

Ramping up consolidation
It is in step with other consolidation efforts in the U.S. Community Publishing newspaper division that included establishment of regional photo toning centers; three large circulation customer service centers, plus the still-developing Gannett Production Centers in Des Moines and Indianapolis, where advertising artwork is to be created for all the community papers by January 2011.

Gannett has already established pagination hubs on a smaller scale in, for example, Louisiana and Wisconsin; some of those were launched last year. I do not know what will happen to those smaller hubs when the five larger ones are opened.

Many, many other questions remain unanswered. Beyond Nashville, I have not been given locations for the other four super hubs. It would be logical to open them at or near the other regional newspaper group headquarters, which are in in Des Moines; Indianapolis, and Wilmington, Del. Another possible location would be McLean, Va., headquarters for Corporate and USA Today.

Job losses unclear
USAT and the Detroit Free Press are not part of the community newspaper division, so I don't believe they are directly part of the new hub system. However, USA Today, Gannett's biggest paper by circulation, has for many years used CCI NewsGate.

Yet, it's also doubtful that some of the other big newspapers would be drawn into the new hubs; The Arizona Republic and The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., and The Indianapolis Star come to mind.

Another critical question for employees: the number of jobs to be eliminated in this new system. The entire consolidation strategy is about doing more work with fewer people in order to lower costs and boost profits. The new Gannett Production Centers, for example, could eliminate as many as 800 artists' jobs, according to a rough estimate I've been using.

Although Dickey reportedly told Nashville staffers about the plan, a formal announcement has yet to be made. That could come next Friday, when Corporate releases the second-quarter earnings statement, and briefs Wall Street analysts about ongoing initiatives.

Earlier: "Freedom begins at home" vs. "content as product"

What more do you know? 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 Republic, Newseum]

Crowdsource | Are you familiar with CCI NewsGate?

This is what the company's website says: "CCI NewsGate is a feature-rich software solution for cross-media publishing, but it is first and foremost an efficient and flexible platform for business development in a media landscape that seems to be in constant transformation."

Is Gannett testing this software? 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.