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Mike Reed Sets Goals for New Gannett

I can think of two incidents, neither even approaching the Chubbock story. I saw one and heard about one.

The one I saw, a guy in the newsroom was told to do something he never did as part of his job. And it was needed immediately. He protested, saying he was just going on his break. He asked why the usual guy didn't do it. He was told the usual guy was on a break. He stood up, threw an ink pen across the room and hit the clock. He said "EFF THIS PLACE" and walked out, never to be seen again.

The one I heard about is a legendary SoCal newspaper story. A veteran sports writer who had covered everything, was in the office. The sports editor approached and told him he was being reassigned to agate. The guy popped the SE right in the nose, dropped him in his tracks.

Yes, the second one is quite legendary.
 
If Gannett was run with the genius of Gannett's accountants, the company would be worth more than Apple.

The company made a 16.3 million dollar profit in Q1 on the sale of a "domestic production facility" but still reported a loss before taxes of more than seven million dollars. But the company swung to a profit by reporting a 17 million dollar "benefit from income taxes". How could income taxes become a benefit, you ask? Beats the heck out of me. I read the explanation in the 10-K and did not understand it.

But one part of the explanation jumped out at me. In tax law there is concept known as a taxable base. For example, you make 80K and it is taxed at an effective rate of 25% and owe 20K. the 80K is your taxable base. In order to get to the 17.7 million dollar "benefit" the Gannett accountants assumed an effective rate of 273.3%. I have no idea of how an effective rate can be more than 100%. I suppose I could try to learn but I am lazy and will try to learn something simpler, like how to speak Urdu.

Briefly, in Q1 revenues per paper were down nine per cent. Digital revenues were down marginally. The ship continues to sink.
 
Honestly, Gannett will have no shortage of white employees to shoot this down. Yes, like most companies, it's always strived to have a more diverse workforce - which I respect - but they really never could compete with other employers who would pay people of color more - whether in journalism or another field. And let's be real, a person of color DOES bring more to a news outlets table, especially in a diverse community. I don't think there were ever more than three POCs in the Gannett newsroom I worked at. So I'm not buying into the lawsuit.
 
White guys have been at the top of the pile in this country for 400 years. It's ok if we occasionally fall to the middle of the pack.
 
Saw this floating around Facebook. Is it real?

View attachment 15728

Yeah, it's real. I got one.

I never really felt discriminated against. Yes, my Gannett paper had some big diversity pushes and a few of them were eye-rolling, but nothing that I'd really be inclined to sue over.

For my paper, the most blatant thing was one minority journalist in the newsroom, er, Local Information Center who not only had very poor ability to do the job, but also behaved unprofessionally multiple times. They finally fired this journalist, but only after a very long time because they would have to do a lot to explain to corporate why they let a minority journalist go.
 

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