Gannett trainwreck in the works?

Heard from a friend in the biz today that Gannett is in the process of consolidating the copy desks of something like 17 newspapers in the Northeast to one central location in New Jersey. That's right ... copy editors in New Jersey will be expected to catch mistakes about towns located hundreds of miles away written by reporters they've never met and likely won't be able to contact.

Is it just me, or does this sound like a colossally bad idea?

 

It sounds like typical Gannett to me. To hell with quality if they can save a few pennies.

 

I've been a reporter, designer and copy editor, and one thing I've learned at all the places I've worked is that it's nearly impossible to pick up on certain errors until you know your coverage area. And it's also sometimes absolutely necessary to know the reporter or at least be able to talk to him or her.

 

It's much easier to move one central design/edit desk from New Jersey to Bangalore than it is to move 20 of them.

 

That's what Media General is doing. 20-something papers being designed in either North Carolina or Virginia, even papers in Alabama

 

Not really news. The plan has been discussed for weeks on the board.

 

The Hopkins Gannettblog had info on this a couple of weeks ago. Gannett is planning on five design hubs (Phoenix, Indy, Louisville, and I don't recall the other two), where all the papers are going to be done at.

 

This has been in the works for a while.
The primary function of the copy desk has become layout, which makes this a good idea.
This will increase the number of errors as copy editors continue to lose any real status as editors, which will further lower people's opinions of newspapers, making this a bad idea.

 

We have a river running through town that has an old Indian name. Naturally, there are a hundred different streets, clubs, businesses, schools, golf courses, etc. named after it. There are three different spellings. We have cheat sheets to verify which spelling to use at which time. In one case - the most nuts of them all - there is an elementary school named after the river located on a road named after the river. They use two different spellings.

I was born and raised here and can't keep it straight. How the heck would someone 500 miles away that's never been here know?

 

Next bright idea: Let's pool reporters into one central location and do all reporting via the telephone.

 

Forget "in the works." Some would say Gannett has been a trainwreck in progress for years.