Louisiana Gannett papers to implement regional copy desk

You just proved the problem with this "plan."

No one has answered the important questions how this is going to work. You, LeeStagger and I don't have the answers either.

It's one of two things: Either management truly has no clue how it's going to work or management knows and doesn't want us to know the truth.

Either way, Gannett workers and readers lose in the end.

 

Gannett managers don't take a shit without a plan that's been vetted at the local, group and corporate levels.

Been there. Done that. We all fucking die(d) in the end.

 

Well, writing is my passion and what I do best. The paginating is a secondary skill that I've pretty much acquired out of necessity. I'm not a bad paginator, but I consider myself a far better writer than designer. The problem is that because we've been so shorthanded for about four years now, I've been paginating more than writing. Our SE has tried a couple of times to get me out of the office writing more, because I think he also recognizes that my writing skills go to waste on the desk. But we keep losing people who he grooms to be our desk guy, and ultimately I end up back on the desk.

Trust me, I've been doing a lot of soul-searching and it's not so much about whether I want to write or paginate, it's whether I want to remain loyal to my career or if I should start all over in life from the ground floor in another career.

 

My last shop we had farmed out customer service calls to some place in the Phillipines. Then there was a series of floods in the midwest and we had to take all the calls ourselves for a while. Being the lone ranger on Sundays, some of these wound up with me.

I never did develop a really good explanation why flooding in Iowa affected a phone line in the Phillippines for a newspaper in Oregon. One reader thought we were insane. Frankly, I couldn't disagree.

 

Here's the problem ...

You can quit.

But you're probably not going to find a job right now.

So you pretty much have to gut out whatever Gannett's doing to you.

Good luck finding alternate employment. Sounds like it's about to get terrible down there.

 

I know you had more to that sentence, but I had to stop there.
Obviously you guys are strapped and will continue to be strapped, but the higher-ups will
say you have no excuses now because of the desk responsibilities being gone.
You explained your position well. Your paper sounds like it is going downhill fast.

 

The sad thing is the workload at these shops will never be relieved. The suits will continue to drain the life from you and your co-workers.

If Gannett is good at anything, it's cutting its workforce to save a few pennies to bolster the profit margin to please the shareholders.