Gannett's newest "innovation"

The thing is, there's such a wide gulf in treatment by corporate between the favorite-son Gannett papers and the rest. That will determine whether your Gannett experience is tolerable or major-league suckass.

 

I worked at a mid-major and the experience was plenty suckass. But I agree with your overall statement. We were beaten over the heads with mainstreaming while my buddies at the Detroit News - then the Gannett paper - didn't have to worry about it. My paper basically made a bunchafucking money so Detroit and the other biggies could function. But overall, every Gannett paper has some stupid mandate they follow more than others that will just bug the shit out of you.

 

Cool as a cucumber, Elliotte.

Don't appreciate anyone implying I'm lying, be it serious or some lame attempt at humor, but I've said my piece.

 

As somebody who knows Jay IRL, I'd lay serious money that you're correct.

 

Obviously that was a sarcastic post, Write-brained. No one doubts your story.
Real Life/Real News, Mainstreaming, Diversity, Information Center it's all Flavor of the Month corporate stuff. I know of several smaller Gannett shops that have gutted their sports staffs, canned or reassigned the sports editors and gone dramatically to reader-submitted youth sports to dominate the section 2 days per week, convinced this will inspire off-the-charts web traffic. It will for a little while, but it won't help the print product. There's also a local content quota reaching anywhere from 65 to 85 percent of the print product at some shops. Perhaps this triggered your byline count.
It's a fad. The wheel will turn to something else next month when the profit margin isn't hitting 30 percent and the ax falls on the corporate big wig that offered this idiocy as the cure all, and watched it fail miserably yet again.

 

Wouldn't be the first time I missed the sarcasm on this board ... I'm becoming notorious for it ... still don't see the humor ...

Anyway, flavor of the month is right. That's the only reason I wasn't fired for not following the newest trend. By the time they were at their wit's end with me for something it was no longer a priority.

 

Tell me where big boy. I think it willl help you relax. Something that I think you need to do. Everyone who has or currently worked for Gannett has horror stories. Most of them seem to fall around mainstreaming or the All-American contest.
Or as I put it, the day we put black people in the paper.

In all seriousness, we had to put the mugs on the covers and rewrite the stories so that the quote from the African-American authority figure at least started on the front. It sucked beyond suck. Then we had to walk five miles up hill, in the snow to school and then the Earth somehow flipped and it was an uphill walk home.

They were shit. I know they sucked then, and I still know they suck now.

And Dooley has it right. Some Gannett papers get left alone, some are constant experiments. It destroys morale because it usually has no rhyme or reason.
Now back to Murci's problem, which inspired this all, start covertly looking, maybe in the Gannett system, and ride it out. Unless it becomes a company-wide contest, it won't likely stick around.

 

Mainstreaming is gone now. Real Life Real News is gone. I haven't heard anything about First Five Grafs in years.

So a flavor-of-the-month argument makes sense. I hope the cycle changes before next summer, though the ideas seem to be getting worse.

I'm definitely at an experiment paper. We try to out-Gannett Gannett. Our top managers get President's Rings, so we obviously embody everything that's good about CGI, Inc.

 

Just wait till they get your "MOJO" working.

 

Speaking of Gannett, I heard a couple of days ago that Gannett reporters are no longer "reporters" but "content providers."

Is that true?

If it is, it would explain by-line counting. It almost says their just interested in quantity while not caring about sacrificing quality.