Mike Reed Sets Goals for New Gannett

Great context. Appreciate you sharing all this.

That being said, however, what's the difference between having one story make the section and not a column filed at the buzzer or a notebook that could be filed by the beginning of the fourth?

 

I was still at our Gannett shitshow when the earlier deadlines first were being floated - thank God I was gone before it went into effect.

The rationale behind it was soon followed with, "If we have a huge sports story, or an election night, and things like that, we can absolutely push the deadlines way back to get it into print. We are not going to put out a print edition without a Presidential election, or the Super Bowl, or World Series, or our D-I college team's big game in it."

From what I can tell, and from talking with friends who are still there, that has happened exactly zero times.

 

Yeah, when the press is 3 hours away, there’s no “holding.”

 

This started when they still printed on site, and the early deadlines with on-site printing were in place for probably 3 years.

 

I can't speak for another market, or editor. What I can tell you is we are told 1 story past the content deadline. I had a noon kickoff a couple of weeks ago; we got some shots from tailgating about 90 minutes before our content deadline and did a photo package with a refer to our online coverage. That was for our market with a 12:30 p.m. content deadline. And I had to get permission to do that.
In my experience, there is a grace period of about 15 minutes. If a story isn't ready for print at the deadline the designer will send out a message; if it's not ready they'll fill with wire.
Also, the deadline for Monday print budgets is Friday at 5 p.m. and as an editor, I can't make any changes after Saturday.

 

Ugh, can’t “like” this, but have to acknowledge it. Very much into “why bother?” territory.

 

I’m amazed how many people in the business still care about print.
Get over it. If people aren’t flocking to your website to read your content, I’ve got real bad news for you - less people are reading you in print. If that’s the case, who are you writing for? Yourself?
Gannett and the rest of old media doesn’t see where the money is. Everyone likes to trash talk social media influencers, but if I’m getting 5x the eyeballs on my IG or TikTok reports than stories I write, shouldn’t selling ads - and compensating reporters justly - in that space be the focus? Yes.
You can do journalism and be profitable. It’s just finding out what your audience - and not just yourself - is after.

 

The deadlines still make me do a double take, but that's just my old way of thinking. I actually have a Gannett subscription to see local content. I can't remember the last time I looked at the print product. For events that have mattered, they are covered live and put online in a pretty reasonable amount of time. So it really doesn't matter what the deadlines for print are.

 

Yeah, they're online quickly — often it's just 15 photos that a photog took in 20 minutes before he had to drive another hour across the coverage area to shoot 15 more photos at an event where he could stick around for maybe a half hour. When I view the "story"/photo gallery, I'll get bombarded with a ton of ads that load agonizingly slow and it will turn what should be a two-minute experience into a five-minute one. That's one way to boost your time spent on page, I suppose. Eventually I give up and X out of the window and Google the topic to see if there's coverage elsewhere.

 

The e-edition is legit a great product and a really good way to consume a lot of news quickly. But it’s poorly marketed and the fact it’s tied to a print deadline is laughable.

I wish old media companies had the cojones to take some business risks in order to make real money.

 

FWIW Murdoch tried with The Daily and that fell flat, too.

 

My experience running a Patch site with access to those numbers - Wins for local sports teams got a good amount of hits, with football leading the way. Nobody gave a shit about a loss, unless it was season-ending, and even then a season-ending loss was still below the levels of a regular season generic win. And yeah, nobody gave a shit about out-of-area coverage, i.e. a gamer on the HS football Super Bowl champion.