Gannett trainwreck in the works?

"Hi, this is 'George,' may I help you?"

"Doesn't anyone proofread this dead rag of yours anymore?"

"What did you just call me?"

 

What's this doing in "news and sports?"
Oops, it doesn't belong in journalism because Gannett and other papers have stopped doing journalism.

 

Damn, Dan, that is a very good point. Have they already implemented this strategy some places? I know the Gannett paper 100 miles from here still prints on site. I think they paginate on site, too.

 

One of our competitors is a Ganett paper and it seems like I'm seeing a lot more of the USA Today prepaginated college football and NFL packages in the paper, modeled after the baseball packages. Hard to believe they aren't breaking out the Giants in this pennant race, or is that not allowed??

 

The college football USA Today poll prepackaged page is mandated by Gannett. It's sponsored, so it has to be treated like an ad, meaning it has to run, no matter what kind of space you have. The MLB and NFL packaged pages are strongly encouraged. During the World Cup, we were strongly encouraged to run the USA Today's World Cup page.

I have a feeling this is just the beginning. Eventually all the community dailies will have 70% USA Today pages and 30% their own content. It makes sense, because of the design hubs that are coming. If 80 papers are all using the same MLB page, that's one less thing they have to do.