Update: Gannett world — USA Today for sale?

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

Mizzou, don't be so smug. You have at least two dozen opinions on virtually each thread on this site. You are bound to get one right.

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

If local papers ever lose their distinctiveness, they will quickly and surely die.

Now, I am NOT saying that local papers should not run any wire copy. We run national roundups on NHL, NBA, NFL, MLB and major colleges. But we also have a boatload of local/regional copy that we produce. If that all goes away, we'd be dead.

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

I worked at two Gannett papers for a total of 12 years. As far back as 1995-96, when Gannett introduced its "News2000" initiative, company executives were talking about what would happen if the print industry went in the tank and what they would do. The discussion, some 15-16 years ago, was that there would be an 8-page wrap of the local paper around USA Today.

And why did they have such discussions? Because executives thought that "new technology and new media" would pave the way for how information was delivered, and effectively start tearing down, if not downright dismantle, print media.

And that's Gannett in a nutshell -- they were prescient enough to see it coming almost two decades ago, but did nothing about it to be proactive.

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

Knight-Ridder was in the same boat. They too saw the train coming down the track and did nothing.

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

I have yet to hear a good explanation of what they are/were supposed to "do." You keep sounding like there was this, this, this "idea" out there somewhere and that everyone was too blind to see it. What was the idea? Where was the salvation going to come from?

People get their information a different way. They do not want to pay for it. Online advertising is a weak source of revenue and always will be.

Given the three facts above, what was to be done that wasn't? And please don't give me "Craigslist!!!" . . . which, if all its revenue was turned over to newspapers, would allow each paper to hire ONE person.

Sometimes the disease really is terminal. And it's no one's fault.

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

I think it's somewhere between "saw it coming" and "self-fulfilling prophecy." Newspapers were on their way to being in many ways obsolete, sure, but once that realization was reached, the industry -- with Gannett front and center -- started to do things that seemed to have the goal of making that prediction come true.

I worked at a shop that took new steps every quarter to dismantle the print product. They cut news hole, web size, staff size and travel budgets. They shut down the printing press and outsourced it. But at the same time, the website blew. It was awful. They had no real plan on how to sell it, design it, make it interactive, anything.

I see that with Gannett papers. If you are going to expedite the move to online, you better have one slick piece of work for a website. But to me, without fail, Gannett websites look like just more awkward attempts by newspapers to throw their stuff online.

On the other hand, I've worked at shops that have been resistant to the idea of a future with limited or no print. One shop put everything behind a pay wall. The current shop separates online completely from the news room and the newsroom fights online for turf constantly. Meanwhile, both papers have news holes that look like (if it weren't for the notably smaller web) papers from the mid-90s. My current shop still does a 20-page Sunday sports section (during football season, at least) with mostly wide-open pages. How many major metros still do that? And this is not a major metro. It's a college town of about 750k metro.

The result? Their market penetrations in terms of print circulation DOUBLES that of their Gannett rivals and many other corporate chains. Their print ad revenue is higher. Their financial bottom line is better. They both had layoffs at the height of the financial meltdown (late spring 2009), but nowhere NEAR the levels elsewhere in the industry.

Now, does that mean they have it figured out? By no means. They need to be further along in their online development and they need to be, like all of us, moving away from an "all-in-one" traditional newspaper mentality to a mindset of delivering several niches to separate audiences, something the web lends itself to. Having said that, these papers are in FAR better shape to get there than the places that prematurely stripped their print operation. Some papers have cut to the bone so badly they may never be able to muster what's needed to deliver an effective new model of news reporting.

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

Yeah they did. They got out of the business.

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

What Brian said. I worked at two of those places and have more than a little familiarity with the third.

Like I say all the time: if there is a finite amount of time our print edition will be viable, if it has a maximum life expectancy of five more years, I'd prefer it to be five instead of two.

And maybe that's what Gannett would prefer too -- only, we disagree about how to do it.

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

Oh so true.

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

So in what would be typical Gannett "innovative" action, is the Green Bay Gazette going to cover the Super Bowl with citizen journalists?

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

That would be a great idea (if the paper demanded a kickback of $200 per credential for every citizen journalist).

 

Re: Giant and mostly bad news in Gannett world

Gannett certainly didn't help the effort to save the business.