Gannett-anigans

He was full-time when I worked with him. Now, no one at that paper made dick. But Omaha pays OK. And it wouldn't surprise me if it was $40,000-$45,000. For someone his age, that's not bad.

 

One editor thought his press release was offensive enough to fire him.

Another editor will think it's the greatest thing in the world and it will get him his next job.

 

From today's HuffPo item, I don't think it was the editor's call to fire him. Sounds like it came from the publisher/corporate level.

 

For what it's worth, in 2008 at a Gannett paper with not even half that circulation, I started at $35K as a sports writer. So more than that would seem entirely reasonable to me.

 

OK, Shifty, maybe the place I am thinking of is just really low-paying.

Do you think your Gannett paper would pay that for the position today or would it be lower?

Yeah. I think I am coming around to that possibility.

Maybe I am just in a region of extremely low-paying dailies. (Northeast/Upstate NY)

Every writing position I have run into lately (20,000 to 40,000 circulation papers) has been in the low $20s.

I got nearly a third more going weekly rather than daily.

 

I once hired a guy, who's doing very well in his career, because he designed a resume like a front page of a newspaper with a lead end-the-world headline that said:

HIRE JOE JONES!

It probably went into the trash for some editors. For me and my boss, an excellent judge of talent who gave a lot of good people their starts, it induced us to read his clips. And we hired him shortly after.

You never know what gimmicks will work for what people.

And I'm with BillyT on the civility business, but what are you going to do at this point?

 

In 5 years, he'll look back on these couple of days and realize it was the best thing that ever happened to him. He'll end up in a much-better place, at a much-better paper and with better leadership than Wilmington. And probably sooner rather than later.

 

Thanks, SF.

Oddly, I have considered that kind of resume (or at least something similar).

The one I am using now (and which I use for the folks I do resumes for on the side), is not the typical chronological one anyway.

That makes sense for me, because I have had a couple careers (newspapers and teaching). I use bullets for skills/strengths to start it, and I can customize it for whatever the job is.

 

More Gannett-related news: According to a facebook post by veteran Courier-Journal writer/columnist Eric Crawford, "Today at The Courier-Journal, we said goodbye to 26 veteran employees, 15 of whom had 35 years or more of service at the paper, five of those with 40 or more. Today, we lost a combined 890 years of experience at the same newspaper."

 

From what I've heard at my former shop, this "early retirement" offer is slamming everyplace big-time. Offered to people ages 56 and over with 20 or more years with the company, and my friends still there said they expected half to take it and half to say no.

But it sounds like the percentage of people (smartly) taking it is much, much higher, and corporate is telling the individual sites they cannot replace the departing people because of age-discrimination fears. So there are places losing columnists, sports editors, news editors, opinion editors, photo editors, etc., and they are scrambling to figure out how to get the work done without replacing that exact position.

Last one out, turn out the lights ...

 

I think this is a situation where the people offered the buyouts took the time to think about it and realized that if they didn't take this "sweet" offer now, they could find themselves without a job in 3-6 months anyway. I don't think Gannett was expecting to get that many to accept it. But it's pretty clear they were targeting the higher-paid employees in an effort to drastically cut payroll.

I personally know eight people who were offered the buyout and seven of them took it. All of them who took it said they felt like if they didn't take it now, they'd regret it a year from now. I think they'll all be better off.

And as far as I know, the shop I'm at is replacing at least three of the retirees. I guess because it was an "optional" early retirement, they've avoided the whole age discrimination lawsuit thing.