gannett plans to layoff 3,000 by december.

Getting rid of the word "news" from the newsroom was incredibly ironic in many ways. I joke that now we just work in a room because there's not much news getting reported (outside sports).

 

Any word on when Gannett might deliver its Fourth of July "present"?

 

Everyone is saying layoffs will come July 8, but the Evil G hasn't announced anything. In fact, most of their brass are denying reports of layoffs. Of course, they denied them back in October of last year also.

 

I suppose if you got bought out by, say, CHNI or Lee or whomever, things might go from bad to worse. Assuming there is a worse.

 

Just intercepted this:

Dear Gannett:
Hurry up with those layoffs! We're waiting to follow suit but need justification!

Sincerely,
CNHI

 

Sorry if this is a d_b but I didn't see it anywhere:

www.thedeal.com/newsweekly/features/gannet-default-option.php

Gannett needs $400 million between now and 2011? Where? How? From whom?

 

This line was pretty telling from the link, SixToe put up, and gets to the nature of how the big G would handle getting the money they would need.

The correct answer is you roll over your debt, but the question becomes why a lender would do that.

Then you have this...

I'm really glad that I don't work for Gannett right about now.

 

Well, since we all know they aren't getting it, I can make a good guess.

Cuts, cuts, cuts. Every few months. Until papers become so cheap they are bought for pennis, or so meaningless they fold and liquidate.

Save on salaries, rent. Sell buildings, sell furniture. No more utilities, no more travel.

When only a few profitable papers remain, then they will be back in the green.

I figure most of us thought this would be happening in 2025 or something. Just like we thought this past year's death blow was at least five years away. But I can see this now, things are happening a lot quicker.

It's negative, it's scary but I don't care. I'm going to lose my job one of these days, but I'll be better off without Gannett. I'd rather work at Taco Bell and be treated with respect.

 

Newspapers bought for pennis? Now I'm really concerned!!!

 

Giggitty-giggitty?

Yeah, I read this the other day. I'm not nearly smart enough about this stuff to understand everything in there, but my reading of it was that Gannett's creditors have basically bought a sort of insurance against more money than they loaned to Gannett. Thus, where creditors and debtors used to be hand in hand in these situations (creditors didn't really benefit from their debtors' insolvency), the creditor now has good reason to actually want its debtor (GCI) to default, so there's no real incentive for the creditor to work on restructuring the debt.

It's an interesting scenario and one that could mercifully kill Gannett because of the company's massive debt load. Of course, I could just have the whole damn thing wrong. Nobody ever said I knew anything about debt consolidation.

 

What I took from the article was, not only did Gannett screw the pooch by taking on such an enormous debtload by purchasing things at high prices - such as papers, and crappy technologies, they also didn't stretch the debt out. So instead of owing 400 million by 2020 --- now they need it by 2011 --- mostly because of bad business decisions.

Fancy that.

 

Was Craig Dubow's medical leave unpaid?