Update: Gannett world — USA Today for sale?

In other words, it's a Gannett Blog rumor (to be fair, not propagated by Jim, but by his commenters) that contradicts every other Gannett Blog rumor.

So one way or another, they're bound to be right. Bravo, Gannett Blog!

 

I feel like the people responsible for this random comment on a blog getting spread around need to read Shanoff's take on the Brett Favre/DWTS story.

 

Frankly, I don't see what relevance a national paper like USA Today has anymore.

 

Saw a Tweet today from someone I know that the Cincinnati Enquirer laid off people from their newsroom. Don't have any other info (who, how many, etc.).

 

Following up on my own post - 20 laid off.

http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2011/02/18/cincinnati-enquirer-lays-off-20.html

 

Any details or names?

 

Just what they need. Another slogan.

Shit against the wall.

 

Re: Update: Gannett world — USA Today for sale?

How about "It's all sh!t" for a real slogan. No slap at the dwindling number of journalists, but the dummys running Gannett and other companies like it that have killed the quality of their newspapers.

 

Gannett's papers are all going to CCI, same system that Tribune and a bunch of other papers around the country are on.

The system kind of fits that "it's all within reach" slogan.

 

So ... how much was spent on this branding/marketing strategy? And how many jobs and/or furloughs could have been spared with better use of funds?

 

Sam: No support for Gannett here, no support for this particular strategy, or what they've done to people. Just noting that it's two different financial buckets, and companies can't stop doing promotion or marketing, no matter how tight things get elsewhere. It might seem dumb on a small scale -- but it has to continue, no matter the company.

 

Normally, I'd agree.

Except that Gannett has this ridiculous habit of coming up with a new initiative, announcing it to great fanfare, browbeating their employees into following the initiative, and then forgetting about it 6 months down the road.

And a lot of those inititatives did little, except create heartache among the employees. Now, this is coming from the journalism side, but the list of inititatives was pretty big:

* News2000
* Diversity and Mainstreaming (which I think was a part of News2000, but continued afterward).
* Real Life, Real News (which featured the always definable "Moments of Life", which could be anything from a high school graduation or covering a state playoff game. Shit that the paper had been already doing for, oh, 100 years or so)
* Targeting younger readers, which was great and all, until they decided we had to target older readers a year later.
* The Local Information Center.
* ContentOne (which you don't hear about too much nowadays)
* We rolled out an expanded paper. Boasting it, touting it, talked about all new features. Lasted about a month before the beancounters decided it cost too much.

In other words, Gannett's credibility when it comes to initiatives is shot to hell.