Gannett's regional toning center

Sadly, this is exactly what they want. eventually, they can drop the toning center alltogether and you'll be doing even more work.

 

The thing is, we can tone our photos ourselves in five minutes.

Yeah, I was watching a webcast similar to goodgolly's experience. The person running it needed two tries to even open the website, it requires versions of Macs that the people who use it don't have, etc. Our IT people gradually took on a look of fear once they realized what was going on, with five days to prepare. We were all shocked when things worked well, despite not having all the hardware necessary, on Monday. Tuesday, and the days since, were as bad as we feared.

I'm sure the yahoo in charge DID get a bonus.

 

The first three days at our place was an absolute clusterfuck. The fourth day, Thursday, went pretty smooth.

 

The future has already arrived in SW Ontario.

http://www.jeffgaulin.com/jobs/JobDetails.asp?id=3549

The Observer, a daily newspaper in Sarnia, Ontario, requires a full-time Regional Editor/Paginator.

Responsibilities include copy editing and paginating all editorial content for two dailies and three weeklies in Osprey Media LP's southwest region.

 

The sad thing, Frank, is the publisher of whom you speak (if you're speaking of whom I believe you're speaking) has allowed his second-in-command to turn that paper into the biggest flavor-chaser going. Every possible permutation of Gannett foolishness has been tried there -- in most cases with disastrous results. Niche publications and special sections have come and gone faster than the swallows at Capistrano; only two of the publisher's initial special sections still exist in anything that resembles how they were when they were first introduced. The second-in-command's psychotic behavior has driven away so many people in the last two years -- even the young, cheaply hired ones realize he's nuts within weeks now -- they are actually filling jobs once in a while.

The regional toning center has been going on here for a while -- our Image Desk is toning photos for at least three of the papers in the local group, but I think it might be the entire group of 7 -- and the biggest problem we have is photos coming back at the wrong size. Copy editors here can't tone their own photos -- we don't have access to Photoshop. Some of the artists/designers do have it and a couple tone their own photos, but we still have the problem of photos not being done in a timely fashion. This tends to affect the special sections more than the daily paper, but it's a pain in the butt either way. That said, our situation is going to get worse because they just laid off some part-timers here, including some of those doing the toning. I want to see what happens when we start blowing deadline significantly.

bydesign, I don't get the comment by your crew about photos "too big" being a problem for the system to handle. That sounds very odd, but maybe it's an issue of computer memory or whatever. Here, I've been yelled at for sending photos in too small and then stretching them -- which they only noticed because one pixelated on me. So now I send a photo for a 2-column hole as 4 columns and they never say a word. They just complain about the special sections that require 20 photos to be done on top of the daily photos.

 

Why don't the local photogs tone their own pics?
The toning center could catch photos as they come off the wire and tone them as they roll in.
It cuts down on choices, but if you need a special request, they could still take care of it.
But if Gannett makes the toning center work, coming next will be paginated wire pages, that can be adjusted to deal with ad stacks.

 

Because here they're too busy editing video for the web and the reporters are shooting their own photos.

 

We have the munkee as well and he sucks munkee balls. I heard it cost $15,000 for the software.

 

I didn't understand that either. I'm thinking it had something to do with the production computers not able to handle too large of pages. Doesn't matter. I don't work for the evil empire anymore.


But I think it was hit on here when someone said that designers didn't have access to photoshop. I didn't think about that, that means less licenses which means less money. Fuckers.

 

Well, we had a local photog who loved blue. The blue ice at hockey games was the best part, not to mention the bluish white jerseys in basketball and football. There were the blurry football photos, too. Naturally, we didn't know what we were talking about. We, in this case, included the other photographer, who was his boss, who shook his head, sympathized, and did nothing.

 

Sounds like we're going to be joining in the fun.

Any updates on how this is working?

 

BluMunkee -- what a bitch.