gannett plans to layoff 3,000 by december.

In six months, the CEO and advertisers will be writing and editing.

 

And if Gannett (or any paper company) is still this full of fail, the CEOs should resign immediately.

 

damn.

 

can anyone confirm this?

 

No idea about the News but at Freep, they have taken some volunteers to go and union is going to vote Sunday to take 1-week furloughs next year to avoid any layoffs other than the volunteers. It's really unbelievable that at a multibillion corporation where the CEO makes $19 million a year, people who are near the poverty level are voting to take a week without pay in order to save the jobs of their coworkers. This is where we are in this ridiculous business. Honestly, they do not deserve the quality of people who work in their newsrooms.

 

I don't see layoffs ending any time soon. Figure the layoffs are allowing the company to stay profitable while income and profits continue to fall. They will continue to reorganize and layoff, reorganize and layoff at least until income and profits rise.

 

At some point, though, you get to a point where it is impossible to reorganize.


And if layoffs keep coming, content goes down, meaning income and profits continue to go down.

 

Gannett will find a way. The industry has adopted practices - printing the paper off site more than 50 miles away/moving out of downtowns/blurring of advertising and content/furloughs/ etc. that a decade ago would have been unthinkable. The industry is doing the equivalent of someone selling their blood to put food on the table. There isn't a long term strategy - it's living hand to mouth - quarter to quarter. If pay walls don't work, I don't know what would come next.

 

The sad thing is you're right. I've gone from seeing quality being preached in every newsroom to crap being put in a section and having the higher ups say "Well, at least we got it out on deadline."

It is no longer about putting out a quality product. As long as a newspaper is being produced, and they can sell advertisers on buying space in that newspaper, that's all they give a shit about.

 

Any CEO who isn't making a product better and finding new, fresh, innovative ways to make profits should resign immediately. They're more a waste of money that those copy editors losing jobs daily.

 

See Rocky Mountain News

 

I have a friend who thought she was getting the axe yesterday. She had the least seniority in her department so there wasn't much she could do. Haven't talked to her since Saturday.