Memphis Commercial Appeal layoffs

Anyone speaking in third person is always the voice of reason.

 

Thank you very much. I appreciate the words. I truly do.

 

You two might wanna get a room for this.

 

cjericho thanks you.

 

I work at Gannett in Wisconsin and the sports coverage has gotten sad. There is only a sports B section 3 days per week. It is Outdoors, Wellness and two other things I don't even recall right now. Calls came in aplenty. But higher-ups don't care. They are trying to kill the print subscribers to say that not enough people subscribe to validate having a print product anymore. We are still a daily paper but I expect with the lack of manpower that goes down to 3 days per week in the near future. I am wondering what is going to happen with the Milwaukee folks here soon. Have to think Packers beat guys will be canned at least cut in half.

Can confirm the earlier post as well about deadlines. For us the printing press got moved to GB so our deadlines are 7 p.m. and publisher and managing editor have said that deadline won't be changed for the Packers. Own mobile, online he said. Deadlines of games won't be changed will just be online and paper will be 'in depth post-game stories' on Tuesday etc. and the gamer/notebook will be online. Roundups for preps are now just online. Older folks which still get the paper in our area at least are up in arms about it. Can't blame them. Big wigs don't care about locals' feelings on the print product or if they have a computer. They just want the baby boomers to die already so they can go online. We all know that's what is coming.

 

Pretty much the same thing is happening in Texas.

Also, heard Memphis couldn't even get the Grizzlies playoff game in, WTF? If this is true, there's no chance any of the small papers have a fighting chance

 

No, the small papers still can go later. It's the bigger papers that cut deadlines down to twilight.

 

Smaller papers near cities with professional teams might be able to make some headway with print product if they go with deadlines that allow them to get night game in. However, most smaller papers are owned by bigger chains that have pushed their deadlines up so early they themselves can't get anything decent into the print product.

 

This is exactly right. The small papers don't answer to such huge printing runs and have such massive staffs that they have to cut back so far. I work at a midsize daily and our deadlines are 11 p.m. some nights and midnight the others. We get almost everything in, even the late West Coast MLB and NBA. The last place I would want to be employed right now is at a metro where the slashing has only begun. Smaller and mid-size papers are not trying to kill the print product, just trying to stay profitable. There's not enough online readers to sustain much profit in these markets, some but not much.

 

Exactly. The business as Fredrick has been saying on here forever has finally been totally overcome by non Journalists, non traditional newspaper people. These people are bound and determined to kill the print product completely. We're 4/5s there.

 

Are you guys still talking about Gannett papers? I was under the impression all the non-metro Gannett papers got this brilliant 7pm deadline?
We had 11pm-midnight deadlines before this cluster and were getting everything in we needed

 

All signs point toward EVERY Gannett print product (major metro, small-town rag and in between) going to a 7 p.m. deadline (give or take a few minutes -- not hours, minutes) by early 2018.