In an e-mail, a reader says he stopped reading the weekly News Watch newsletter sent to Gannett's newspaper newsrooms for the same reason I (mostly) stopped reading. Under chief honcho Phil Currie (left), the News Department spiked two features we liked -- an easy-to-shop list of job openings at the 85 newsrooms, and a rundown of new hires. "When they were listed," the reader says, "it was a weekly must-read to get a bit of a feel for the company, for other sites -- maybe think about other opportunities. Now, as you say, it's just Kool-Aid for the executives."
I noticed the change when Gannett substituted its CareerBuilder employment website for the old list of jobs that, at a glance, once showed openings companywide. I suppose that move was designed to promote CareerBuilder, while also reducing costs associated with creating the special list for News Watch. I don't know why the newly-hired feature was dumped, though.
Hello, Gander? It's Goose calling
News Watch desperately needs a revamp to make it more, well, 21st century. I'm thinking of digital improvements like those we recommended last week for the Daily News Summary. Interactive tools so readers can offer feedback. Video showing how, say, an artist created a graphic. How about a team News Watch Blog edited by the News Department? In other words: How about the News Department using the very digital tools it insists the community newspapers adopt? (Don't have time for all that time-consuming Internets stuff? Well, tough shit! And welcome to our work-off-the-time-clock world.)
Consider last Thursday's edition: The top editor at the Pensacola News Journal, Dick Schneider, writes about his paper's asking readers for money-saving ideas to help them through rocky economic times in Florida's poorest urban county. Schneider's content is OK; it's the one-dimensional presentation that's nuts. His piece is basically a text document; I count one embedded link, to a three-week old Schneider column, inviting readers to participate.
His News Watch piece doesn't even include an e-mail address, so readers can contact him with feedback and follow-up questions. What's more, the article is illustrated with what I finally realized is a screen shot (inset, above) of a Gannett News Service story -- "Coupon clipping makes a comeback" -- which the Pensacola paper published as part of its new money coverage plan. Want to read it? Don't look for the easy-to-add link in Schneider's piece; the News Department didn't include it. I guess adding that story link would have taken too much time. (Once more, here is the link -- just in case you still don't get it.)
Do you read News Watch? Got any other examples of ways the News Department and Currie could improve their digital support? Leave a note, in the comments section, below. Or use this link to e-mail feedback; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green sidebar, upper right.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Lost readers: Why we gave up on News Watch
Monday, May 19, 2008
April operating revenue falls 7.7% from year ago
Hurt again by classified advertising losses, Gannett said operating revenue totaled $639.6 million in April vs. $693.3 million in April 2007. Classified revenue plunged 15.8%, with these categories the weakest:
- Real estate: down 23.8%
- Employment: down 20.0%
- Automotive: down 13.2%
Reader: Downward spiral vs. 'whiney butts'
Regarding Gannett's new round of job cuts, a reader says big investors will keep pushing for more: "It's about Wall Street believing the product is on its deathbed and driving down the value of media companies. As they keep driving down the stock price, the company has to keep writing down its value, which causes investors to continue to devalue the product. It's a downward spiral that won't stop until some of you get off your whiney butts and protect the fourth estate."
Join the debate, here -- and in the original post.
Pop quiz: Pick the board's first choice for CEO
Your thoughts, in the comments section, below. Use this link to e-mail feedback, tips, snarky letters, etc. See Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green sidebar, upper right.
Cutlines Only: Florida Today
NASA's Phoenix spacecraft will hit the Martian atmosphere on Sunday at 12,600 mph, then start a plunge through frictional heat that will build to 2,600 degrees, Florida Today says this morning, in a story about the special challenges of a Mars mission. Photo illustration, Florida Today/NASA via Newseum.
Cutlines Only showcases Gannett website art. E-mail suggested links here; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green sidebar, upper right. Or leave a note in the comments section, below.
Monday Recap: Transformation now = you're fired
Posts you might have missed, while an Arizona Republic blogger argued that Journalisticus Newspaperus Americanus is in more trouble than polar bears.
- Less is more 1.0: USA Today reorganized circulation accounting operations in what a Gannett Blog reader called one of GCI's best-kept secrets in years.
- Less is more 2.0: A Dave Lougee letter foreshadowed big changes in how Broadcasting's 23 TV stations produce graphics.
- Traffic-goosing link: A blogger, a '500' pace car -- and a penis.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Hot Off the Press: Democrat and Chronicle probe
In an investigation, the Democrat and Chronicle found that the Rochester School District's process for buying, tracking and distributing textbooks has long been plagued by costly mismanagement and miscommunication. "While a few hundred thousand dollars represent only a sliver of the district's $683 million annual budget," reporter David Andreatta reports today, "the school board has wrestled for years with textbook complaints. Board member Van White cast the perpetual dysfunction as symptomatic of a school district in which, as he put it, 'people are operating in silos.'"
"It's beyond the left hand not knowing what the right is doing," White told the paper. "The left hand isn't interested in knowing what the right hand is doing."
The story has already drawn 34 comments; at least one includes a tip from a reader on other possible school mismanagement -- a sign the paper may have a story with legs. Responding, Managing Editor Neill Borowski (left) is urging that tipster to step forward: "We encourage this forum writer and others to contact us with information about the textbook problem happening elsewhere."
Got an investigative project to recommend to Gannett Blog readers? Leave a note, in the comments section, below. Or use this link to e-mail your suggested link; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green sidebar, upper right.
[Image: Newseum]
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Name dropping: My close Kennedy encounters
The hook: Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, 76, was hospitalized today after suffering a seizure.
John F. Kennedy Jr. and I overlapped in the early 1980s at Brown University, in my Providence, R.I., hometown. I often ate lunch at a campus restaurant where a sleepy-eyed JFK Jr. rolled in with a pretty girl many afternoons. He died in July 1999, while I was vacationing on Cape Cod, the Kennedy family's summer retreat; I did a reaction story for The Courier Journal from there. In 1996 at the Idaho Statesman, I chronicled the Boise newspaper's campaign for a press pass to one of the year's biggest pop-culture events: Sotheby's auction of the Jackie Onassis estate. (Got one, and it was a zoo.)
[Photo: A&E Television Networks]
Reader: Here's why N.J. employees took buyouts
Regarding the final tally of employees who applied for buyouts offered to 166 staffers at Gannett's New Jersey papers, a reader says in a comment: "The exact number probably won't be known anywhere until we come back from Memorial Day and start asking, 'Where's [insert name here]?' What is interesting are the various reasons people have had for taking the buyout. I've had a stream of people coming by my desk or sitting with me in the cafeteria or going out for drinks after work to talk it out and get advice or validation."
Why did some employees favor a buyout? Read the rest of the reader's comment, in the original post.
Marrying trends: New wedding mag is green, too
[See DATABASE story tip, at the bottom of this post] Rivals for advertising revenue are launched 24/7: Alternative wedding magazine Bond published its inaugural issue with a "green" theme -- just in time for a bombshell California Supreme Court ruling Thursday, declaring a ban on gay marriage unconstitutional. At $8.95 per issue, San Francisco-based Bond is like a coffee table art book. It offers loads of luxe ads from well-known marketers like Dior (top); noirish fashion shots (cover image, inset); celebrity Q&As (Margaret Cho), and editorial spreads (bottom) on fancy food, like individual princess wedding cakes, $30-$50 each, from local French baker Miette.
I wrote about news photographers becoming wedding paparazzi-for-hire in a 2001 USA Today story, "Wedding photos, hold the cheese." I got the concept while mining an online database of thousands of readers; I built it for my beat, entrepreneurs. These databases are invaluable for newsrooms of all sizes. [More: my News Watch article]
Your thoughts, in the comments section, below. Use this link to e-mail feedback, tips, snarky letters, etc. See Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green sidebar, upper right.
Quotable: Why do publishers need a company car?
Ibiza: With so many distractions, will I blog?
Yikes! It's now T-minus-14 for Sparky and yours truly: Two weeks from today, we leave for the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. We'll be spending the summer studying Spanish, seeing friends and goofing off -- which leads to a reader's question I got today. Here's the answer: I'm definitely planning on Gannett Blogging all summer long.
Ka-ching: I got another severance check today. Thanks, Gracia!
[Photo: dancers last summer at one of the big clubs, Amnesia]
