Mike Reed Sets Goals for New Gannett

With the deadline crunch, newspapers should really focus their print effort on semi-deep dives on local issues. Covering two-day old fires and car crashes is pointless. TEGNA (the tv Gannett) has actually had some success devoting a 30-minute block to persistant issues like housing and homelessness, the covid impact on elementary education, businesses needing workers etc. Its pretty good for local TV.

 

Our local Gannett paper has reportedly told its preps writer not to cover games anymore and focus on recruiting stories. I'm a dinosaur who thinks it helps to cover some games just to know what the hell you're talking about, but to each their own.

There are definitely ways to deal with earlier deadlines and still provide effective coverage, though.
Once COVID hit we cut back from seven days a week to three, and our deadlines moved up from 8 p.m. to 5 p.m. because of printing schedules. It hurts breaking news for the print edition, but you can still roll with features and look-aheads. It's much easier during football season, of course, but during the winter and spring seasons I'll still run game stories from Tuesday night for the Friday print edition. I'll write a traditional version for the web, then recast it slightly (or just do it this way in the first place) so that a second version looks at the bigger picture, or featurizes, or serves as a preview for their next game.
It's basically a weekly or magazine approach.

 

I realize space is a problem - but hand out copies of SI from 20 years ago - show your prep writers how SI covered games and wrote about them five days after they happened. Of course, if they also have to live tweet, get video etc. might be hard to squeeze in the pre-game and post-game reporting that made those SI reads so great.

 

I've been told numerous times I shouldn't care about the print product.
I'm almost there

 

We don't run football gamers in print. We do "Game Balls" for preps and takeaways for college games. For other sports we run quickie gamers for the web and do features for print. We still do agate.
For playoff games we are probably going to do charticles, 200-word intro and 5 or keys to the game

 

This maybe deserves its own thread, but wouldn't hurt here ...



The 401k would piss me right the fuck off. The others are not surprising in the least.

 

Local Journalism Matters

 

Message to this young woman: Get. Out. Now. Pray that you get laid off and get severance.

 

I missed the live meeting. I read the followup email at about 2:10 and by 2:15 had signed up for the voluntary buyout

 

Details emerge.

 

The second quarter was brutal for Gannett financially. These measures, acted as quickly as they have been, indicate the third quarter was a disaster. I believe these measures indicate that top management is a panic mode.

Last year Gannett announced third quarter financial results on the first Friday in November. The company will report financial results on roughly the same schedule this year. If an employee signs up for the voluntary buy=out Gannett wants you out the door the first Friday in November. I don't think the timing of employee departure dates and the release of financial results is a coincidence. Managements wants bones to throw out when they report results.

My guess is the third quarter revenue number is terrible. I think print subscription revenue, in particular, is going to continue to drop. Again, guessing, but I don't think the company will generate enough cash to cover the interest on the debt in the third quarter. Hence, panic.

 

I don't know how anyone could be surprised at this point. This is just the latest chapter of the horror story.