Is Gannett really that bad?

To answer the thread title:

Yes. And more.

 

(Thread resuscitated.)

I recently vacated my Gannett post. It was my choice. Gannett was vindictive and aggressive toward me after I turned in a two-week notice, which prompted me to refresh this thread with new information. I am just one guy, granted, and the argument could be made that what happens to one guy isn't predictive.

I'm just relating my experience. Gannett 2008 was a much different place than Gannett 2012. It's regressing.

Have a nice day.

 

I'd be shocked if it was corporate policy to be vindictive and aggressive toward people who turn in their 2 week's notice.

 

Having worked for at least one Gannett shop years ago, I can sum up the churning stomach bile of a company that is G A N N E T T: High school talent, skeleton crews, bumbling (and untalented) management, and holy-mother-fuck-can-journalism-be-this-vomit-coated.

You know that beer and egg fart that hovers in the corner a little too long? And then swoops down on an unsuspecting nose breather? Well, that's Big Brother G -- the company that ruined thousands of families.

Yet a certain someone made off with a cool $34 MIL (or sumpin like that) because he was so gosh darn good at running a company. ... into the ground (re: my 401k)

May the broken-backed former CEO's puckering anus accept the shattered end of a Black Label tall boy. Again and again and again.

And now the world's ugliest femme is at the controls. Glad to have dropped that company -- like the world-record-long turd I just dropped in the crapper.

All, have a poop-tastic day! ('cept those running G A N N E T T)

Harry K. Parker
First post ...
It gets better

 

Someone else noted that all the G A N N E T T apologists who added to the thread up until 2008 -- poof! -- went byebye. Got kind of stinky in '08 and '09 and beyond.

No more apologies for the USAToday-ifying and fecal-ifying of a great number of papers in this country.

To answer your question, oh, initial poster: Yes -- yes, mother fucking dammit -- Gannett really is that bad!

Though, have to admit. I haven't seen a Gannett print paper in about two years. Seen the Web Sites but not the dead trees. Are they still crappers?

 

I would also like to amend my 2008 post to reflect a complete change of opinion on the matter.

Avoid Gannett. Unless you are a CEO with back problems. Then it is a cash cow.

 

Gannett is changing a lot right now, especially in digital. The company is investing resources, rather than cutting them. Two months into this new job and I love it, but it's always going to deal with your local shop. Our new ME and publisher are brilliant. Before they came on board, circulation looked like it was going to drop below 20K, now up above 27K and growing. Our newsroom is extremely young. I'm 25 and feel somewhat old for our reporting staff, but it's working. Ad sales continue to increase and social media is booming. I can't really find a reason to complain about Gannett right now, but like I said, my experience is centralized to Fort Collins. Could easily be different elsewhere.

 

My only experience with Gannet was when a former colleague of mine took a job at Gannet, survived a quick and sudden layoff and when one of the top dogs (if not THE top dog) in the company came for a pep talk, my former colleague asked said dog, in front of several witnesses, if he'd be willing to sacrifice his bonus to save jobs. The answer was no.

 

Bumped up to put this item in here. In fairness this could be any chain's paper, but since it happened with Gannett I inserted this item about a MAJOR meltdown in New York.

http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/central-ny-missing-sports-news-blamed.html

 

Jeff Glick and Javier Torres, who ran the nearly two-year-old Design Studio in Nashville producing The Tennessean and other Southeast dailies, were axed "in a move designed to cut costs from the group," Nashville Scene is now reporting.

Perhaps the most damning and entirely plausible paragraph in Scene's story is this:

"Glick and others were given a near impossible task: Produce the papers without enough people or resources, without the control necessary to be efficient, and without the clear backing of Corporate in squabbles with local editors. Sources [say] Glick was a vocal advocate to his bosses about the problems with the system. And when the studio's budget -- comprised almost entirely of payroll and machines -- was cut an estimated 10% for 2013, the higher-salaried managers were gone."

http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/hubs-two-big-staff-changes-at-nashville.html

The reader comments, as usual, have insiders' views.

 

I walked away from Gannett, under my own power, in 1991.

Any regrets I had in a couple of years after that have more than been washed away.