gannett plans to layoff 3,000 by december.

It's stated as seven days to include the two weekend days attached to that work week---Gannett, citing wage and hour labor laws, won't allow someone taking a day's furlough and then coming in on a weekend or regularly scheduled off day to make up the difference.

Here's the deal, even if you still put 32 hours insetad of 40 for that week's time card, they will not allow you to work beyond that 32 "off the books" to catch up, or cover that key bb game or whatever. You are not to log into office email during each furlough period at any time, send or receive work emails, or make or receive work phone calls.

Extensive information via very specific memos, FAQ's, staff meetings have been the rule of the last three days to make sure everyone knows this.

 

Just watch, they'll try to catch somebody logging on, and use it as a pretext to fire them.

 

The question remains: How is this germane to anything?

 

Glad to see somebody besides the "radical" Fredrick is talking about the crap world of the future -- citizen journalists!!!!

 

Just stopping by to share my small, yet pleasant "fuck you" to Gannett -- I freelanced for a Gannett paper and received my check promptly for the agreed-upon rate. A week later, I got another unscheduled check for the same story for the same amount. I'm not hurting for money, and I'm the type of guy who returns the money to the cashier who gave me extra change. This time? I cashed the second check with a smile on my face.

Good luck to everyone still holding on with Gannett and any other newspaper in the biz, and best of luck who have fallen victim to cutbacks and layoffs. My heart goes out to you.

 

That's somewhat along the lines of my concern. These 'citizen journalists' are supposed to carry the editorial load for a newspaper while managing the rest of their lives and holding down a day job? Where will they find the time?

Treating journalism as an aside carries with it the risk of your CJs doing likewise. Lots of luck getting one of these noble freelancers to cover breaking news in the middle of the day or go to a critical city council meeting when Little Janey has her school play that night.

 

Right. Again it reiterates how incredibly little the suits understand just the kind of sacrifices the really smart, really talented people have given up to be in this business. Don't they think that these so-called citizen journalists would have gone to journalism school if they could cut it there? At the journalism school I went to, they cut at least 50% who tried with the first two classes: J110 and J111. Beginning reporting and beginning editing. It's called weeding out those who won't make it in the biz. But as we all gradually get out and go to jobs that pay more with fewer hours and no holidays, I'm sure they'll have no trouble getting freelancers to come in and work those. Freelancers who when I have questions on their stories I can't even find for hours and hours at a time!

 

It's a good point, Trooper. And it's why I don't think any serious newspaper will go all freelance/part-time. Almost all? Absolutely. But not entirely.

What I see is a staff with an assigning editor for each main umbrella topic of the paper/site (local news, sports ... hell, that might be it, depending upon the paper), and that editor's job is to plan stories and mostly manage a group of freelancers.

There will be a small number of FT writers, the number obviously dependent upon the size of the paper. But there will be FT guy on whatever the paper's brass determines to be the essential beats: education, local government, maybe state govt if you're in a capital city, NFL, NBA, MLB, major college football/basketball. Then, you'll have a very small number of GA guys. Again, the number depends on how much there is to cover. They'll be there for breaking news and whatever needs to be covered but falls outside those essential beats.

The FT staffs won't be eliminated, but they'll be knocked down to about 5% of the levels they once had. The rest will be freelance or PT.

 

Same as ours, and I assume almost every good one.

A young lass in our editing class couldn't hack it. She tried valliantly and I was trying to help her, going as far as talking with the instructor with her.

The instructor looked at her and said, "You can't do it. You need to change majors now."

I shrugged, wished her well and she changed majors. Some can do it, some can't.

Shifty's probably right in the skeleton staff of editors and FTers would, presumably, handle the major events and supervise the CJers. But there still will come a time when the CJ quits in a huff or doesn't show up because of Jimmy's baseball game.

 

There's also some CJ'ers who just don't want to be bothered. That's why they're working as a freelancer. I worked with one on a project recently who was really, really good. She used to work on a daily. But she quit once she had her kid and really just wanted to dabble. This is not the kind of person you're getting to come in there and do cop calls or be a GA on a holiday. That's why I keep saying to these management types, once you get rid of the lifers and want to "depend" on these CJ dabblers, GOOD LUCK!

 

Good call, from someone who fits that description. The schedule at my full-time job is set a year in advance; when I'm working 4-12s, any games scheduled for those nights get "covered" over the phone at the end of the week. I did burn a couple of vacation days to cover football games last fall, and snuck out of work early one afternoon to get to a soccer playoff game an hour away, but my employer's patience with such things is not limitless.

For a tiny rural weekly that didn't HAVE a sportswriter for a good chunk of the last 10 years, this is still an improvement, and we've gotten away with it so far. But to run a daily newspaper like that? Yeah, probably not a good business plan.

 

So this may not fit into the furlough discussion, but it amazes me how clueless this company can be.
I was laid off in December from Gannett, around the same time I signed up for, and received my benefits. Insurance, dental, vision, ect. ect. I was eligible for benefits after my 90 days working for the company were up in mid November.
I realize it can be confusing since I just signed up for, and had my benefits taken away in the matter of weeks, but still it appears that Gannett's left hand has no clue what the right hand is doing.
I was released at the end of 2008 in the first massive downsizing. Last week, though, I looked in my checking account and find that an entire paycheck had been deposited into my account. Two days later, I find out it was withdrawn.
No one calls me, tells me "I'm sorry, but we've made a mistake and deposited money into your account that isn't yours."
So I call the HR woman at the paper I was let go from and she says it appears to have been a mistake and she'll call corporate and call me back if it wasn't.
She never called, so apparently the corporate people didn't know I was laid off when the paychecks went out, even though it happened more than a month ago.
I'm not upset about losing money that in reality wasn't mine to begin with, but you would think someone would have told me instead of my finding out that my checking account had grown, and then shrunk, by a large chunk in a matter of three days.

In the mean time my mailbox has been flooded with information about my "benefits" from gannett and my 401k that I'm no longer eligible for, although everything I've received is telling me I am eligible for it.
Sorta hard, though, when I'm not paying anything into it.
So in a way yes, I am sorry I lost my job, but I'm relieved, too, that I'm not working for a company that, at least it seems to me, doesn't know what the hell it's doing.