gannett plans to layoff 3,000 by december.

Just fyi, everyone _ never, ever give a USAT editor a story idea that you want to do in your region because it's truly up your alley and you won't charge much, or even anything. They steal like cat burglars. I know, I know, I was a Mr. Stupid Head, but USAT editors will give it to you up, sideways, with a meat hook. You won't sit properly for months afterward.
Nasty, conniving thieves. And then, the big tragedy, their writers can't match the artisty of the work on the ingredients label of a peanut butter jar. Try finding anyone there who doesn't write like a sixth-grader. It's Opie City with thieving hearts, I tell you!

_ FF

 

Terrible news to hear. Several of the Gannett papers look like crap already because of the reductions.

 

Well, it's a couple of months in and it's still very much a work in progress. Monroe is still doing most of its section in-house, and Alexandria is doing all of its section in-house. Opelousas and its 8-16 pages are fully in the regional copy desk now, but that paper is very, very basic. Lafayette has most of its pages being done in Monroe, but there are many nights where Lafayette sports ends up doing two of the six pages because Monroe doesn't have enough people to do it.

Shreveport has been on-line for a couple of weeks and I think they're almost fully into the consolidation. I think they may still be doing agate in-house, but so is Lafayette. Apparently, none of the copy editors there have ever done agate and it could just as soon be Mandarin Chinese to them.

Alexandria was scheduled to debut Sept. 1, but that's been backed up to late Sept. now. They're hoping by the time Alexandria gets on-board that the kinks will be worked out, but the reality is that unless they hire more people, the kinks will just get bigger.

The problem seems to be staffing. There just aren't enough people. Most nights, one person is assigned to each sports section. It's just too much for one person and inevitably it gets to be 10 minutes before deadline and Page 4D hasn't even been started, or whatever. So what happens is either the paper gets thrown together really quickly and it looks like shit, or someone else jumps on it and they miss deadline.

I guess, like anything, it's going to get better.

As for your question about other locales joining that consolidated desk, I think that's the plan. I think Louisiana was probably the guinea pig, which is why they haven't scrapped the whole damn thing yet, despite the clusterfuck it's been since day one.

 

It's not the economy per se. It's the greed of Gannett. The economy has been an easy scapegoat for a lot of the bullshit companies such as Gannett are doing.

 

I debated starting a new thread. Maybe the person who started the original can change it to "Official Gannett layoff thread" or something like that.

 

Overqualified is a huge issue at a lot of Gannett papers. They want kids straight out of school so they can pay them in the low 20s, treat them like shit and get them to drink the Gannett kool-aid.

The same editor friend of mine had an opening recently and wanted to bring in someone with a lot of good experience who had been let go from another Gannett paper. He was told not to do it and had to hire a kid straight out of college.

 

And let me guess, the kid was a minority. Or a woman. You know, they've got to keep up the diversity initiative.

 

Johnny, how long would you stay at the job?

 

Drip, how much longer until I'm offered a job?

 

Gannettoid has been discussing a planned ad production consolidation, bringing people into Des Moines and Indy -- with corresponding layoffs at newspapers across the country. If the numbers on Gannettoid are correct, that will impact about 750 people in the first quarter of 2010.

 

I hope not long. But seriously, how long would you stay at that gig before beginning a search?

 

What fucking difference does it make?