Update: Gannett world — USA Today for sale?

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

They were doomed either way.

Drowning in debt (taken on during the salad days), they had two options:

--- Keep things as they are, and go into bankruptcy when creditors demand payments that their dwindling revenues cannot pay.

OR

--- Slash expenses and hope that the reduced expenses will keep pace with reduced revenues and buy time until the economy begins to turn around.

There was no option No. 3, which we would all like to believe was "keep full staffing, put out a good product, and consumers and advertisers will appreciate it and reward you for it."

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

The journalists' perspective is that we could have done oh-so-much more if only we'd given more money and resources to the journalists. I wouldn't have minded trying that over the executives' idea of "let's slash everything but executive compensation," but nothing was going to help. These businesses aren't trying to save the sinking ship, they are just trying to get what they can as the business winds down.

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

We don't know about option No. 3 because the suits never gave it a chance.

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

We don't know for sure, but I think we can take a good guess from the fact that the only people who think it'd work are the people with the most to gain from it being tried. Businessmen who have to put their own money on the line to try it don't seem to be interested.

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

Or Option 4, which is "Don't make stupid decisions."

The Internet has been prominent since around 1997 or so. Yet, it took Gannett until 2006 to decide to emphasize it.

Meanwhile, in those nine years, they took on more debt, they made money in buckets and didn't invest it in anything other than executive bonuses and wasted their journalists' time with News 2000 and Real Life, Real News and other crap.

There may not be a solution to the Internet conundrum. But Gannett sure didn't help the situation.

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

Hard to feel sorry for a company when they're constantly giving the CEO and execs raises for having the foresight to lay people off. You want to impress me and make me think you're doing all you can to save this Godforsaken company? Refuse to accept the bonuses. Say you're putting the bonuses back into the company. Take that bonus and try to find ways to increase revenue, not just cut expenses.

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

I've said it before but I guess it bears repeating.

For these execs, "bonus" pretty much means "salary." It's not "megamoney added to your megasalary."

You're basically asking some of these people to work 52 weeks and pretty much not take their salary. Many of whom had no hand in slashing other jobs.

If our publisher makes printing deals with USA Today, the NYT and others that net the company, say, $5 million, who am I to ask him to forfeit his salary for that work?

We sure are quick to demand the dismissal of people in other professions sometimes ("that high school coach or teacher should be fired!!!") . . . or demand that people refuse their salaries.

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

@BTE

Are you kidding me? Works 52 weeks a year? Show me the suit that does that and let's all indeed reward him/her handsomely.

As for bonuses being salary, let's not shed many tears here. I, and I assume most other workers, get paid to produce positive results. If I don't, I'm fired at the worst and certainly don't get a raise at the least. My reviews included all sorts of goals with metrics -- even those that everyone knew could not be achieved, still they were there in black and white.

Folk are not even getting cost of living raises, are taking pay cuts or being laid off to meet financial bottom lines and they should be more understanding of execs getting bonuses on top of their base salaries that are most often many multiples of even mid-level management salaries? Don't tell me on a day-today basis their workload and responsibilities are just so crushing.

The travesty is the false justification of "If we don't pay this exec X gazillions, somebody else will scoop 'em up." They aren't doing anything unique. Grad schools are churning out MBA by the boatload every year. Your exec can be replaced as quickly as apparently the reporters/editors can.

Tie bonuses into real performance. It isn't that difficult a concept to grasp.

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

The execs are already receiving a salary just for showing up.

Dubow received $942K in 2009 in salary. That's more than plenty for a guy who's basically run the company into the ground.

But oh yeah, he also got $1.45 million in bonuses and another $1.255 in stock awards, plus other compensation.

http://www.gannett.com/investor/2010proxymaterials/proxystatement10.htm#toc20271_25

Reading through the proxy statement, their base salaries seem fair enough for their job. If they make more money for the company, and keep people employed and paid well enough, then sure, they deserve to be rewarded.

But this whole, "Oh no, if we don't give them bonuses, they'll leave" spiel is just BS. For one thing, there are only so many CEO and higher executive jobs around.

And a company that has shed thousands of workers while seeing their stock price freefall from $90 a share to $3 a share before rebounding to $15 doesn't need to be rewarding their CEO with bonuses. They need to be firing his ass, without any golden parachutes, just like the rest of us.

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

On the topic of finances and executive greed, Baron nailed it right on the head.

On the topic of shrinking content/shared pages, etc., it all seems ass backwards to me. Over the holidays I returned to the area where I used to work and picked up a copy of the paper I used to write for. I was appalled when I found the sports section. The FRONT PAGE had a 3/4 ad. Inside was mostly national stuff such as NBA, NFL and the like. Local sports news was few and far between. And this is a small community paper with a circulation of under 20,000.

It seems to me that if you need to cut space, it should be the national stuff that gets cut, not the local. People don't need/use a newspaper to get their NBA stuff anymore. But they do need the paper to get their Podunk High stuff. I'm seeing a lot of papers slash their Podunk stuff while keeping their national news. The shared pages of national stuff churned out at regional puppy mills just doesn't make sense. Most people aren't looking at it anyway because they have other options. But with the paper being their only option for Podunk scores and news you would think they wouldn't dare slash that.

I remember at my previous paper I had a feature story on a local athlete all ready to go but we had to hold it for about 3 days because we couldn't fit it in anywhere among all the NASCAR points races, baseball stats leaders and golf results.

Ass backwards.

Then again, I didn't receive a million-dollar bonus last year so what the hell do I know?

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

That's why they're where they area, and the rest of us are where we are. Power is privilege. As sick as that sounds.

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

Exactly.