“Furlough House Swap? Sounds like a new reality show. But it’s the brainchild of two Gannett employees who are among thousands in the company facing two furloughs so far this year,” reports the Editor & Publisher.
Furloughhouseswap.com has been launched by two Gannett employees. The idea is that employees on enforced unpaid holidays, or furloghs (or ‘furcation’) can swap houses for the week.
The Twitter tag is #furloughhouseswap.
As Gannett’s US and UK staff at Newsquest prepare to take a week’s unpaid leave, executives at the parent company have been asked to justify bonuses of nearly $2 million in a statement to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
According to the HuffPo report, CEO Craig Dubow will receive $875,000, while four other executives will pocket $300,000, $270,000, $245,000, and $260,000.
UPDATE: A video intro from the petition’s creator TJ Sullivan calling for drastic action by the industry and Journalism.co.uk finds out more from Sullivan himself.
An online petition has been set up calling on US newspapers and the Associated Press to shutdown their websites to non-paying subscribers for a week (July 4-10) and make original news content .
The petition, which currently has 120 signatures, wants to highlight ‘the threat posed to democracy by the loss of professionally staffed and ethically bound American newspapers’.
It is not, the blurb points out, an endorsement of any paid-for access model.
The likelihood of any newspapers heeding this call….? We’ll be speaking to the petition’s organiser to find out their motivation. One signature comes from ‘Ostrich with head in sand’, an unusual moniker.
(Though perhaps Gannett might not be so against it – the publisher could organise its week of unpaid work to fit these dates)
Over at a US-based local media site, an article from the Independent Weekly. It argues that newspaper owner Gannett has ‘ransacked’ the Daily Advertiser, the daily paper in Lafayette, Louisiana. Here, the the site’s looks at a ‘chain reaction’ impacting on the paper. Full story…
US newspaper publisher giant Gannett is to make all non-unionised staff take a one-week unpaid break in the first quarter of this year, in an attempt to minimise redundancies. Full story…
Gannett has begun its trial of ContentOne – a single website for all its US newspaper titles that can be sold to national and local advertisers.
Most content on the site will be generated by USA Today, while local titles will add the site to their own and rebrand it with local news and info.
Having set up a timeline dedicated to reporting on the sweeping job cuts affecting both senior and junior journalists alike, a trend is emerging for laid-off staff to use blogs, Twitter and other online sites and tools to capture their redundancy.
Reports such as Martin Gee’s set of Flickr images from his last day at the San Jose Mercury give a highly individual picture of how these cuts are being felt on a personal level beyond the redundancy figures and prediction stats.
In the summer, the Columbia Journalism Review started its ‘Parting Thoughts’ series, posting responses from journalists leaving the industry or facing redundancy.
At the Gannett Blog, former Gannett editor Jim Hopkins crowdsourced a blogpost of lay-offs by the publisher, listed by newspaper area – at time of writing redundancies at 72 of Gannett’s 85 US titles affected by the company’s latest round of job cuts were accounted for in Hopkins’ post.
In an open blog post last week, Ryan Carson, co-founder of web application design and events agency Carsonified, used the company’s blog to share his thoughts about staff cuts and give the reasons for making them.
Carson went on to give tips for companies looking to recession-proof their business (points that some commenters on the post argue are common sense no matter what the economic situation).
The Spokesman-Review has used its Daily Briefing blog to cover staff leaving in an equally personal and open way. News of senior staff exiting the paper, such as editor Steve Smith and assistant managing editor Carla Savalli, was broken on the blog and posts have also been penned by outgoing journalists, including Thuy Dzuong:
“Folks, it’s been fun but The layoff list for non-managers has been finalized, and I’m on it.”
Last week Silicon Alley Insider built a ‘real time’-style page to cover lay-offs at parent company Yahoo, updating it as new info came in.
(UPDATE – The Rocky Mountain News has launched iwantmyrocky.com to canvas support for the newspaper)
Despite the sad circumstances, the way in which journalists and media workers are facing redundancy in these examples shows a real engagement with online tools. A personal picture of what is happening to the industry is being documented for future reference by these staff members expressing themselves so openly (and perhaps significantly being ‘allowed’ to express themselves by their past/present employers).
What is more, while they may not hold the answers to the problems currently faced by the media industry, they shed light on how these issues are perceived and felt on the frontline. Something which employers should read and learn from.
US newspaper group Gannett is to reorganise its community publishing division.
As part of the reorganisation its current five regional groups will become four groups: East, South, Interstate and West.
“This reorganisation both refines our structure and puts our top people in key jobs with expanded responsibilities around the country,” said Robert Dickey, president of the US Community Publishing division.
“This will allow us to realign our strategic objectives and focus on top line growth as we go forward.
“In particular, I would like to welcome Laura Hollingsworth to the rank of group president. In a relatively brief time at the helm of the Des Moines paper, she has demonstrated great skill, leadership and savvy. She’s a fine example of the great up and coming management talent we have at Gannett.
“However, we will be saying good-bye to two outstanding executives who have been instrumental in the accomplishments of our division for several years. Barbara Henry and Denise Ivey will be sorely missed, but we wish them well as they move into the next phase of their lives,” Dickey said.
“We deeply appreciate all they have done for Gannett.”
The rejig also involves several executive appointments and two retirements.
Several newspaper networks surpassed Google News and achieved more unique traffic in May, according to new data from Nielsen Online.
Editor and Publisher reported that NYTimes.com stood out with 21.3 million unique visitors while Google News gleaned 11.3 million monthly visitors.
Tribune Newspapers and Gannett Newspapers, taken as groups, beat the online behemoth as well.
Yahoo News was the number one current events and global news destination in May with a unique audience of 35.8 million.
Top 50 US news sites for February 2008, according to Nielsen Online.
(Also, have a look at: February Worries Boost News Traffic)
Brand Uniques (000) Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss)
All Events & Global News 101,336 127:01
CNN Digital Network 37,181 0:40:11
Yahoo! News 35,274 0:23:10
MSNBC Digital Network 34,013 0:29:50
AOL News 21,119 0:36:14
NYTimes.com 18,975 0:33:29
Tribune Newspapers 14,716 0:10:09
Gannett Newspapers 13,998 0:21:28
ABCNEWS Digital Network 12,324 0:09:54
Google News 12,050 0:10:14
WorldNow 10,588 0:13:16
USATODAY.com 10,571 0:14:16
Washingtonpost.com 10,441 0:17:30
Fox News Digital Network 10,177 0:41:10
CBS News Digital Network 9,970 0:09:09
Hearst Newspapers Digital 8,349 0:17:38
McClatchy Network 8,343 0:11:41
IB Websites 7,565 0:11:00
Advance Internet 6,791 0:13:08
BBC News 6,437 0:10:42
Slate 6,261 0:07:29
Gannett Broadcasting 6,174 0:09:18
Topix 6,121 0:06:30
MediaNews Group 5,850 0:12:41
Associated Press 5,353 0:07:03
Cox Newspapers 5,197 0:20:08
Boston.com 4,904 0:07:47
Belo Television 4,827 0:05:58
Fox Television Stations 4,758 0:06:06
New York Post Holdings 4,605 0:09:12
NewsMax.com 4,054 0:10:35
TheHuffingtonPost.com 3,749 0:08:04
Freedom Interactive 3,613 0:07:51
Daily News Online Edition 3,563 0:06:46
Belo Newspapers 3,476 0:05:52
Drudgereport.com 3,445 0:59:49
Guardian.co.uk 3,391 0:02:49
Daily Mail 3,364 0:09:11
Telegraph 2,990 0:03:39
Times Online 2,852 0:06:37
Community News Network 2,846 0:10:40
Swift Newspapers 2,750 0:05:42
Scripps News Group 2,713 0:18:00
Netscape 2,709 0:11:03
Breitbart.com 2,674 0:09:20
Int Herald Tribune 2,598 0:02:02
Fisher Interactive Network 2,526 0:05:08
Seattle Times Network 2,245 0:11:03
Philly.com 2,204 0:04:52
Chicago Sun-Times 2,203 0:08:29
Star Tribune 2,108 0:25:08