Mike Reed Sets Goals for New Gannett

They canceled his favorite comic strip.

 

Small town newspapers, or medium town ones, don't work weekends anymore.

 

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I would have thought the Jackson Clarion-Ledger would have been the go-to paper in Mississippi for Ole Miss and Mississippi State sports. But their Men's SEC Basketball Tournament coverage appears to be written by an Auburn beat writer who works for the chain. I wonder what the paper does cover.

 

Gannett should use this for good PR. Good thing we have a bare bones staff, we saved lives by cutting so many! The car crash would have resulted in likely employee deaths if we had any! For more great news like this contact us at thesuits@gannett.com or subscribe for 5 cents for the first three months!!

 

Gannett recently shut down about 30 weeklies in Mass. — many of them had been the product of nonsensical mergers made in the last year or two. Like three random papers in non-bordering towns that have no logical connection, their high schools don’t even play in the same leagues, made into one title. They’re still going to exist as digital-only outlets. Right.

 

If CherryRoad wouldn't buy them, that should make folks feel a little better about CherryRoad.

 

Don’t know if it’s relevant here. Gannett owns the “second-tier” local news market (eg online/weeklies) in suburban Boston and probably doesn’t want to invite any form of competition into the area. In those other spots I believe G was entirely pulling out of markets. Here they’re keeping publications alive in surrounding communities.

 

Can you define alive? Seriously. Does Gannett still print or is it on-line only. Do they have reporters assigned to the communities and a distinct edition is being produced or is it basically one product under different mastheads?

 

I haven't looked at any of their print products in a long time. For the most part G is keeping alive its weeklies in bigger suburban cities. In the smaller towns surrounding those cities, they're dropping print completely and claim they will keep the local news sites for that town alive — however, they're redoing their beat structure and they're going to have reporters cover issues regionally (public safety, education, etc.). So any institutional knowledge of a town's inner workings is out the window.

One of the print editions they're eliminating entirely was one of my first stops, many years ago, in sports. I was in way over my head, but the people in that town were very good to me. I had an ace stringer who was the former editor of the paper, and he was my crutch. I'm never shocked by the biz anymore, but I was saddened when I saw that rag was on their closure list.

 

did you hack Frederick's contacts for that email?

 

I can't out a source...

 

It sounds to me that Gannett is moving towards a regional paper. The are going to have articles from the regional beat reporters and use that material in all their markets.

If anyone is left to cover a specific town I think they will be a dead man walking. The articles of a regional reporter can be used to fill a lot more space than of a one paper guy. So when the rounds of cutbacks occur the remaining local reporters will go first.

I think it is sad. I also think it is going to happen all over North America.