gannett plans to layoff 3,000 by december.

Has any other prided itself on being the industry leader? The only innovations now it would seem is how to creatively cheapen the product and send journalists to soup lines.

 

Here's my two cents:

Gannett deserves a healthy share of bad feelings because it is the industry leader, so to speak, in ways to destroy the industry. I've never worked at a Gannett, but if you are in this business for any length of time, you'll run into people in positions of power who learned their trade at Gannetts and that is what they know. People are creatures of habit. I've seen many an ex-Gannetter move to another company, complain about their ex-company, all while bringing in ideas that REEK of Gannett thinking (doing more with less, increasing the editor-to-reporter, newsholes, etc., etc.). I worked at a place with an ex-Gannetter as publisher and although the guy would bad-mouth Gannett, it didn't take long before I felt like I was working at one.

So when you see Lafayette, La. going to one 16-page section on Mondays and Tuesdays or the idea of making workers work a week for free (you must be kidding) it DESERVES the bile it gets on this board. The fact remains, there are a disproportionate number of folks in the newspaper industry now who are LEARNING their trade the Gannett way. And that's a big reason why the industry is in so much trouble.

People, competent industries adjust and survive. This one is struggling to do so because of lack of competence, period. I have no sympathy for those who throw up their arms and say "it's the times we're in." Bullshit.

 

Good points. And, as others have said, Gannett put itself out there with that holier-than-thou, "we're the future" sort of posturing -- mostly internally, but not always. Other chains may have done that to some extent, but not to the level Gannett did. And as BrianGriffin said, Gannett did set the pace for a lot of "cutting-edge" B.S.

Now a different type of cutting is going on in the biz, at Gannett and not at Gannett. That particular corporation was quick to strut and try to take credit for blazing a trail for the future, so it should not feel persecuted now when it's front and center for criticism of where that future has taken it and its people.

 

The idea of one week of unpaid vacation reeks. At the very least I would have hoped that they would have just deferred the week's pay until the employee left the company. I've heard of other companies doing that, and it's still unfair to employees but not a total rip-off.

The culture inside a lot of Gannett shops is such that hardly anyone taking a paid week of vacation isn't still checking voicemail/email or making calls to beat contacts/customers. It's bad enough doing that while on a paid vacation; it's brutal having to do that when the meter isn't running.

 

By the way, for any of you still doubting the value of unions, those of us at Gannett papers that still have them don't have to worry about this little unpaid "vacation" because the contract wouldn't allow it.

 

I wouldn't mind having an extra week of vacation and not getting paid for it. Maybe this is an option they should give employees. That way the one's who want to take it, could.

I don't have a family so one week of pay won't kill me. However, if I did, I wouldn't want a week of unpaid vacation.

Of course, at my shop, another week off would mean someone doing my work, just like I would do theirs if they were out. Plus, the vacation would never get approved for a good time so I'd be getting of like Tuesdays in September or something and not a straight week.

 

Mustang I'm with you. I'd like a week even unpaid. Definitely preferable to seeing anyone else fired, set free, laid off -- whatever you want to call it.

 

Has anyone else heard that some Gannett shops are going to get more bad news tomorrow (Tuesday)?*
Supposedly more layoffs.

*I haven't looked at the other 29 pages, so this might have already been posted.

 

today i picked up a copy of the monday mansfield news journal, a (for now) gannett daily. there were no classifieds, no national news and apparently no news wires, a few ads, one section, 14 pages.

the times, they are a changin', and it sends a chill and a tremble through these old bones.

 

I had not seen anything about this at the Gannett Blog; but the February layoffs rumor has been circling lately.

What do you hear Mizzou?

 

Our local paper did something unheard of (not Gannett, tho) on Sunday.
Jobs and Cars classifieds were in the B section in Sunday's paper -- right behind the op-ed pages...

 

It's possible, though unlikely, that there was some computer system meltdown and so they had to put out a scaled-down version.

I doubt it, though.