Mike Reed Sets Goals for New Gannett

With deep familiarity on both sides of this digital comparison, I think it's fairly basic at this point. I look at Gannett home pages or the apps and get my fill -- no need to click once I've seen the headline and summary. On The Times' site, I see a headline and summary and am intrigued to learn more.

 

I don't even know if the Boston Globe has "worked." They're still trying to kill the guild, which has been without a contract for two years. Doesn't sound like a joint where things are "working."

 

Most things in life are graded on a curve. I read the Globe has 220,000 digital subscribers, many of whom pay $30 a month. Compare that to Gannett or any other large chain. The Globe stands way above virtually every other local paper in the country (I consider the WaPo and the NYT national papers).

Killing the union is a behavior all publishers fantasize about. The smarter publishers often fulfill their fantasies.

 

What do you mean by this? Educate us please.

 

Oh man, this really hits home. Much of the older ones (except for things like Real Life, Real News, First Five Grafs, and the target reader each site had to ID, with some stupid name like Susan Homemaker) have been scrubbed from my memory.

But the ones just before my departure were just as stupid, like when video was to be our savior (like we were supposed to "beat" TV news with our iPhone videos), and Facebook/Twitter was the winning strategy, and the ridiculous catch phrases like "Do fewer things better" and "Work smarter, not harder"

I knew my time was short when during a meeting, I referenced the "METRICS!" obsession and ran down a list of the things I am expected to do that are not measured at all in metrics, and if I could drop those in the spirit of "Do fewer things better" and "Work smarter, not harder"

Of course, I could not, so I asked for specifics on what are the things I could drop in the name of those catch phrases. Never did get an answer.

 

I wouldn’t trust Gannett to fetch me a coffee from the gas station. This is such loser talk from such a loser company. You can’t even figure out how to keep half your buildings open and you’re talking about wanting 10 million subscribers? This is like blowing off your physics class all semester and then showing up for the final exam and declaring yourself the next Stephen Hawking

 

It's 2021, what do we really need buildings for?

 

Fredrick How many business owners like unions? Unions cost them money and power. So owners of businesses frequently try to eliminate their unions. Clever people would be more adept at union busting than dumb people.

 

We don’t.

 

Point stands. You can’t trust Gannett any more than you can trust Hunter Biden with a Ukrainian hedge fund

 

Gannett just paid Fortress, the company that had been "managing" them, over $30 million to terminate the contract one year early.

Fredrick should be along shortly.

 

Lancey, what is the benefit of that?