Digital First pursuing Gannett

An event planner is a pretty common job at Gannett outlets, though the exact title could vary. Fort Collins previously had two people focusing their efforts in that area. Now they have none, it'll likely just be piled on to the responsibilities of an editor who is already stretched too thin.

Ultimately, decisions came down to the top editors about who to let go. But a lot of these editors (I'm speaking from my experience, and not just in Fort Collins) are really great and care deeply about their staffs. Mandate came down from corporate in early December saying, "next month, you have to make cuts. You're leading the company in revenue? Congrats, but that doesn't make you immune. Figure out which of your hands you want to cut off and we'll see you after Christmas."

 

So an event planner is really an editor? If so, excuse my previous sarcasm. Guess I'm just old school.

 

No, he was strictly events. I was saying now editors are going to do it. Gannett has invested a lot in events and I know at least in Fort Collins the who year had already been scheduled with events. I'd be surprised to see those go away.

 

Not insinuating anything. The idea that a newspaper would have an event planner just struck me as odd. It's sad when anybody loses a job. I certainly understand how you feel. I've seen too many good people over the years loses their jobs.

 

Matt, what kind of events? Do they help the paper's bottom line? Just curious.

 

Their quarterly (I think it's quarterly, can't remember) "Storyteller" events are one of their staples, bringing the community to share their stories in an intimate setting. They always have a theme, and they're usually pretty good. Kind of like a TEDx, I guess you could say. I can't say for sure if there are sponsorship dollars tied to it anymore. In Fort Collins, they do food truck festivals during the summer at the office in the parking lot that are a huge draw. Vendors make bank (relative "making bank" for food trucks) and they usually add a handful of subscriptions during it. Enough to offset the cost of hosting? I don't know. Depends on the churn of subscriptions.

Their biggest event was the high school sports award show. Gannett did these across the country a few years ago. In our first year doing it, Peyton Manning was the speaker and the paper turned a profit from the event of more well WELL into six figures (Four title sponsors at $250,000 a piece, plus table sponsors). Even after Manning's fee (Manning spoke at at least four Gannett high school sports award shows), renting out the arena, etc., it was a nice profit. In Year 2, they scaled back the operation (because not all sites had the same revenue success and it had to be cookie cutter across the board). Von Miller spoke in Fort Collins that year, I'm told they still did well with revenue, but didn't reach nearly the same level as the previous year. Scaled way back on costs to host, too, and didn't serve a multi-course meal like Year 1. And now they're not doing it at all anymore.

 

It’s a 2 and a half hour drive East to West (thanks to the time zone switch). Assuming no snow around Ozone or Monterey.

 

Btw, Storytellers made Gannett just short of $1 million last year.

 

I hate cookie cutter decisions. Makes no sense and given that event planners create revenue why cut them? Corporate decisions make me SMH so many times.

 

I had something I needed to get in the paper a couple of months ago and the best I could tell he was the one who did the type of stuff I needed (he had published similar lists in the past, even a few days before I contacted him). Took him more than two weeks to get back to me. Said he was sorry and to post it on some online calendar they had. Funny thing is my request got published in the paper and online by someone else about a week before he got back to me. And he didn't realize it. I don't know how much of a journalist he is or what his duties with actually dealing with the public were, but it was just something I recalled when I saw that he got let go. And I by no means celebrate it. I'm sure he was good at what he did.

If Gannett does prioritize events and the Coloradoan had been successful at it it really doesn't make sense unless they are going away from events. To think an editor who is not trained in such things can just handle it when someone had a full-time job to do it makes a lot of sense. But I know Gannett doesn't necessarily care about that.

 

Looks like a Spring 2019 launch for New Jersey Today, the homogenous-ization of the Gannett dailies. The editor of the Courier-News and Home News Tribune (same editor for both dailies) took early retirement and is not being replaced.

 

So that’ll be it for the Asbury Park Press and Bergen Record?