Rumors and questions are inevitable when a company is restructuring.
Sometimes the rumors are quicker and more accurate than news reports. Sometimes they are wishful thinking or fears from friends or critics. Sometimes they are grounded in fact but grow in the retelling.
The restructuring of The Gazette is feeding the rumor mill. When I wrote about the restructuring last week, I didn’t address the rumors and that might have given them extra life. Or maybe they just picked up steam because that’s how rumors work.
As I mentioned last week, the restructuring affects many, if not all, parts of our company. I have been concentrating primarily on the changes involving the newsroom, so that’s what I will address here. Perhaps it’s tunnel vision, but I haven’t been hearing the rumors and questions about other aspects of our operation.
The first question to address is whether we plan to stop publishing The Gazette. Absolutely not. We have several teams right now working on plans to keep our core print product healthy long into the future.
As I noted last week, this product has been around for 126 years. We’re not sure that print newspapers will last another 126 years and we want this company to last that much longer and more. So we are reorganizing to manage products differently, cover news differently and develop content differently. But we are reorganizing in the full recognition that our flagship product is The Gazette and with every intention to keep that product strong and continue serving its audience.
Do you want to know how big that audience is and how valuable it is to our advertisers? On Feb. 1, crowds across our community will gather around their television sets to watch the Super Bowl. The crowds will include some non-football fans who just want to watch the new commercials trotted out on the biggest television advertising day of the year. That same day and every Sunday, more people in our community will read The Gazette than will watch the Super Bowl.
The Gazette faces some financial challenges: Beyond the challenges of the digital age, which I have written about extensively, newsprint and ink prices have been rising as the national economy tanks and the local economy struggles in flood recovery. But a product that regularly reaches as much of the community as the Super Bowl won’t be folding any time soon.
Whether we would actually stop publishing The Gazette was more a question than a rumor. I presume it was prompted by my noting last week that products come and go and that lots of newspapers were closing, going bankrupt or cutting editions. Not this one. We know that our growth opportunities lie in other areas, but The Gazette remains our flagship.
We believe The Gazette has been a force for strengthening this community throughout our history and the changes we make will be focused on strengthening the community.
More than once in the past week, I heard a rumor that we had laid off the entire news staff and forced people to reapply for their jobs. This rumor is false, but it has its roots in confusion over what we are actually doing.
No one on the news staff has been laid off. Even with the addition of news web sites more than a decade ago, virtually every newsroom in our industry remains heavily focused on producing the print edition or on dually producing the newspaper and the news web site. As I explained last week, we have decided to develop separate operations focused on developing content and on publishing packaged print and digital products.
In explaining this new operation to the news staff, I explained that all of our jobs, including mine, would fundamentally change. No one is being “forced to reapply for their jobs.” Their current jobs won’t exist.
In such a thorough reorganization, it would be unfair to slot people into particular jobs without giving everyone the opportunity to apply for the jobs that most fit their skills and interests. That would doom the reorganization in two ways: It would entitle people to think their jobs hadn’t really changed (so they wouldn’t really have to work differently) and it would deprive us of some of their creativity.
Our newsroom is an anxious, uneasy place during this change. But I’m getting a lot of great ideas from staff members applying for new jobs and I am convinced that creativity will help us succeed.
Well put Steve. I look forward to helping any way I can. I find it all to be very exciting.
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[…] rename files on import and convert to universal Digital Negative (DNG) format • Manage photos Uncertainty fuels rumors and questions – stevebuttry.wordpress.com 01/24/2009 Rumors and questions are inevitable when a company is […]
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Oh, silly us. It’s just a matter of current jobs not existing anymore. Well if you put it that way, how comforting.
Your post is gibberish and b.s. Staffers are having to apply to keep working for the company. Let’s call this restructuring thing like it really is. If you can’t be honest, then there’s no reason for us to bother reading anything you publish in any form.
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Another thing you could do to help your paper would be to lose commentators like Limbaugh. We can easily find all of that kind B. S. on the radio. People like the Limbaughs is why this country in in the mess its in. They laugh all the way to the bank while giving people really bad advice. Really Bad. Its time for the Gazette to realize that when you put an A whole like Limbaugh in the paper, you will loss lots of subscribers, just like you lost me. I will not pay to read right wing talking points. They are free on Clear Channel and Fox.
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I still think it is great that the Gazette is not going out of business,but is looking to the future!
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I have to say, Steve, that all reads like a big dodge.
No one on the news staff has been laid off. (No, but they’re going to be, right? Or, to play along, some will not be “re-hired”?)
No one is being “forced to reapply for their jobs.” Their current jobs won’t exist. (OK, but they are being forced to reapply for new jobs, right? And if their current jobs don’t exist, then, by definition, at some point, they will have been laid off, correct? Orwell is dancing a jig, about now.)
And I must say, I don’t think it’s really kosher to play linguistic games when discussing people’s jobs and lives.
Especially under the guise of trying to clear up murky waters.
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Good luck.
My thoughts and prayers are with your staff.
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Josh and Joe, when people are laid off, they are out of work. We acknowledge this is a trying time for our staff. But our jobs are all changing and the staff would be no happier about arbitrary assignments to new jobs than they are about our application process. And in the current economic environment for the newsroom situation, standing pat would be irresponsible.
No dodge, no dance. No newsroom staff have been laid off and people are not reapplying for their jobs. The rumor is wrong and I don’t apologize for correcting it.
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I’m always amused when comments like George’s pop up in a serious discussion about disruption in the newspaper business. George is as entitled to his views as the people who accuse us of being part of the supposed liberal media. But politics have nothing to do with the economic challenges facing newspaper companies.
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Buttry says politics doesnt enter into the Gazzetts problems. I disagree. I quit buying the paper because they keep endorsing republicans , and run commentary by Limbaugh and people like him. Limbaugh like his radio brother is insulting and promotes disinformation. If the leadership of the paper promotes that sort of discourse , people then doubt many other things they see in the paper and will look elswhere. They make little attempt to balance the opinions out. As for some people calling the gazzett liberal thats more b. s. . Anytime somebody disagrees with a repub, they immediate play the liberal media card. I havent seen any liberal media around here. Just look who the gazzett editorial staff has endorsed for public office the last twenty years or more. Maybe you would do well to be less political. Or as Joe Friday used to say, “just the facts please”.
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If more people started listening to Rush we’d be in better shape.
Tell me this, why is Obama using Rush by name 4 days in to his presidency? He’s the chosen one and shouldn’t have to worry about a talk radio host should he?
One more thing George, Rush makes $38 MILLION/year. If he provided disinformation, was a racist, any crap you want to reply with the MARKET(listeners) wouldn’t allow him to earn that as people wouldn’t listen.
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The challenges that the Gazette faces were felt by most other papers a few years ago. It’s been insulated somewhat by its status as a family/employee owned paper not beholden to a corporate master on the coasts or on Wall Street.
That being said, I think it’s funny that some commenters criticize the Gazette for being pro-GOP, because most other people say they’ve abandoned a particular newspaper because it was too liberal. Which proves this point: I think newspapers face issues not because of their political bent but because gone are the days that a newspaper could be all things to all people. People can get news – and views – everywhere, for free. While papers such as the Gazette can serve as a collection point for news that day, that
No newspaper has “found the right way” to get out of this. And I don’t think many will. They’ll still be around, but with a sharply different mission. Big newspaper companies and publishers are chided for not adapting to what people want, but, really, they have. They gave them free news years ago. But free news (forget about the banner ads few people actually click on) doesn’t pay the bills.
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Hit the button too soon:
While papers such as the Gazette can serve as a collection point for news that day, people can get news on a lot of other sites, as well. The best papers such as the Gazette can do is to cover local news as best as possible, but they’re going to have to start to pick and choose what truly matters.
There seems to be a common theme to what people want from newspapers on the Internet: Crime. Sex. Sports (their favorite local, state or pro team). Waste of their money. Death and destruction. Sad, but true.
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George, one more thing. Why are the big left leaning papers the ones in this country that are going bankrupt?
Just curious.
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I usually don’t approve comments with factual errors. In the case of EP’s latest comment, I will approve but correct: The Chicago Tribune is widely known as a conservative newspaper and Tribune Company was the first newspaper company to file Chapter 11. Of course, most newspapers just try to report the news without regard to their editorial positions. I should stop trying to correct this notion because the people who cling to it on both the left and the right are not interested in facts. But the economic challenges facing newspapers have nothing to do with political ideology.
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Keep on telling yourselves that you are politically neutral long enough and you will begin to believe it . In the mean time have a good time congratulating each other into total oblivian. I notice that one fellow dumped the Gazette because they endorsed one or two minor Republicans.I wish some of you could have been around when Frank Nigh(SP ?)was the political editor ,> He was a registered Republican but got trashed ,and respected, on an equal opportunity basis.( You could check with Tom Riley about that matter) (Realize you won’t let this get posted but one of you might have read it)
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Would be interested in a follow up on the Chicago Tribune thing , I was reading someplace on the internet that the Chapter 11 thing was involved in the Cubs stadium ownership and dealings and with the City Government, not the newspaper itself >> Would sure be interested in the facts in the matter.
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Just read two more Bush hate letters to the editor in todays paper >>> What in the world are you thinking about contiueing to print those when you are an non partisan news organization.?
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Steve, you’re right about the Trib. My bad.
Are you saying the NYT reports the news without editing in it’s positions? Really?
And I don’t “cling” to anything, except clothes when we didn’t use fabric softener!
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(disclosure – I am an employee with the Gazette. Not newsroom, but different department)
I like the post Steve – and I will say, decisions like this are hard and important.
If the Gazette doesn’t restructure the newsroom (and dang near every other department) then we would end up with obsolete jobs. It’s like old jobs of icemen and lamplighters. Steve is pointing out it is time to evolve.
The way that departments like Human Resources work, in modern corporations, is if a job name changes – people have to be notified and people have to “apply”. It’s part of the legalities and policies that exist.
To me – I think sticking to 2 facts, it is a move in the correct direction.
Fact: We have to change – the way we do business today is not working.
Fact: To change we have to do things differently. These “new” jobs are part of a theory of this new business model – will it work? Who knows, but it is the best guess moving in the general direction of what the Gazette thinks is correct.
Change is uncomfortable and does involve difficult decisions – but to maintain a viable business , we have to change and this is a move into that direction.
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The Gazette’s problems — and newspapers’ problems in general — are not a matter of which political columns are published (and I’d point out that The Gazette offers a pretty good balance to Limbaugh and Goldberg with Robyn Blumner, Susan Estrich, Garrison Keillor and others.) Opinions and endorsements have always contributed to minor circulation ebb and flow.
But the problems for newspapers now are dwindling advertising and circulation caused by widespread availability of content — much of it free or disguised as free. People want information when they want it and where they want it. On their doorsteps once a day doesn’t have the mass appeal it once did. The Gazette and other media companies are learning to compete in a different marketplace.
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Everyone at the Gazette is very anxious about the impending changes that have been discussed in earnest for over a year now. However, as even the French understand across the pond, time is running out on evolving our business to meet the growing demands of new ways people want to obtain their information.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently announced the state will inject a ninefold rise in newspaper & magazine delivery support ($90 million total) and a doubling ($20 million increase) of its annual print advertising budget.
The initiative is designed to help the sector over three years “to modernize and invest in the print media sector in exchange for
important structural reforms,” Sarkozy said. The measures largely came from recommendations in a three month study into the industry’s health. The study also recommends that newspapers restructure their finances and that journalists be better trained for multiple forms of media, including online.
“None of the proposed measures … will be useful in the end if the profession doesn’t meet its challenges,” he said. “The industry has a future to reinvent. … Time is running out.”
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Supposed Liberal biases? By journalist own admission, it runs something like 80% liberal. And yes Steve, that is the problem!! Trust!! Nobody trusts journalists anymore. Take a look at the last election. Newspapers were cheerleaders, not journalists.
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[…] Markway Shaw under Journalism | Tags: education, innovation, newspapers | One of the local newspapers is restructuring. (The other one isn’t doing so hot either, but I haven’t seen many […]
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Steve,
I believe that your blogs and columns about the change at the Gazette are very well written. I did not find them misleading or confusing at all. Many people are confused by the words “change”, “reorganization” and “restructuring”. These people have grown accustom to the products that you currently have without factoring in the changing world around them. Many aspects of our day to day lives have now gone digital. There are many ways of gathering data and information that are not the same as they were in the 60’s 70’s, 80’s or 90’s. For these purposes the Gazette needs to change to stay ahead of the times.
Many other companies have or are in the process of a dramatic change to predict and be aligned with the future. For example, Yellow Book USA saw the internet as a huge threat to their phone book publishing. In seeing this early enough they adapted to the change, and launched a huge online phone book, they set up mobile phone books, and made combination buys for their customers using both. They did not stop printing phonebooks however. Instead made an attempt to keep the revenue they would be losing because of the internet and the other service out there, and they have had a lot of success. They predicted that some people would be switching over to use these faster and more convenient online tools, and that others found that simply picking up the print product was faster and easier for them. Some people today cannot accept change, so they will keep using the print product. The reason you have not heard about companies making these changes is because they didn’t print it on the inside of their phone books, they aren’t in your day to day life, and they don’t affect you directly.
It sounds to me like there will be similar changes at the Gazette. There will still be a print product, several other special sections that the community has grown to love, and great online products too.
I don’t understand some of the comments on here. They say they don’t want to see change with the newspaper, however they have logged on to the newspapers website and participated in a blog. Sounds hypocritical.
There is no doubt in my mind that the Gazette has been and will still be the great information source this community has counted on for decades.
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We’re planning for the future, proactively, before we become part of the past. Sounds pretty progressive to me.
News, as content, is a commodity. Gazette Communications will continue to generate it, as we always have. For the foreseeable future, it’ll continue to be packaged in a newspaper, along with many other products. And perhaps, one day, our content will no longer be produced as a newspaper, but may be part of a whole new product — one we haven’t even imagined yet.
It’s a brave new world. Those who fail to learn from history are, indeed, doomed to repeat it.
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Steve,
Please note that it is not uncertainty that fuels rumors, it is a lack of information.
When people are aware of a life changing event without supporting
information, people cling to anything that might be valid information.
For instance, when The Gazette or KCRG-TV lays people off, does that
get published? I would think if they do lay people off, it should be
treated as news like any other Eastern Iowa company.
When your employees are laid off, are they told specifically why they
were selected over others? Are they told who approved the decision?
Do you tell them who is taking over their now vacated responsibilities?
If not, you can continue to see misinformation spread as truth.
It makes sense that The Gazette is looking for new ways to continue
business, but how is that being approached? Is new media being created
by carving vital pieces out of existing journalism? Are you making change for change’s sake? Does your core product suffer from loss
of morale and staff?
And also consider, once everything has been “restructured”, how will
these new toys pay the bills? How much time and resources will need
to be shifted to Twitter, Blogs and Blackberry media to make a profit,
since none of those make money in a Google-centric world?
Having personally been a victim of downsizing, I see all these symptoms
evident at Gazette Communications, a company that needs to evaluate
how they communicate to employees who are waiting for the other shoe to drop and the public who is losing faith in good local journalism.
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OK, the news paper game is changing. for the most part it has been doing a terrible job for far to long at what newspapers were intended to do, inform. I grew up using a newspaper as a learning tool. People who wrote understood correct english, could construct sentances and use words intelligently. Those who wrote, were defensive of their english, but would except critical review when they made mistakes. That doesn’t happen anymore. Content of the paper has become less and less important and more and more condensed to the point it doesn’t inform, and in some cases is leading the reader. This gives credence to those who say the paper is political, especially when you leave out important details. Not reporting is also a common fault, there are things happening in our neighborhoods that need some investigation. This certainly isn’t done. I understand investigative reporting is expensive, but much of what could be looked at here would not even be considered investigative and likely just good reporting. Looking at simple expenses and comparing those expenses to similar projects is hardly investigative reporting. Take a look at the low income Brown Apartments rehab expenses and compare it to what other construction companies that aren’t as large would charge for a similar project. You will have a story in short order! The question remains, who is looking for a story? Assignments are such they are milk toast, and the reporting is neccessary but hardly the thing that attracts readership. Ocassionally not supporting the status quo in this city would be a breath of fresh air. Many of us don’t believe the Chamber of Commerce represents the entire view of this city, nor do the council. The paper could have an important part in getting the rest of us involved with the government here without making us feel like the sheep we are considered to be.
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I’m in agreement with Steve to some extent. I think the newspapers fail to look at a potential boon to readership, because they see metro as the have all to end all. Look at how many people still subscribe to, or buy the small town papers. Reason? “news”…but it’s news that interests them, and is about them. There are an awful lot of small communities within the Gazette’s DMA…with all the risk taking and change, why not test the waters by ADDING to the NEWS, expanding coverage…help the little people get their stories out there…I no longer subscribe to the print paper, but I do BUY it, when there is something of signifigance in it that is about my community…and if I knew that would be a regular event, like a few times a week, and maybe I’d see them covering our council meeting disasters, and asking questions of leaders, and scrutinizing events…I’d subscribe. Since that happens rarely, if ever, and I don’t need the paper for anything national or even regional that I can get on TV or online, I’m not going to spend [recious dollars on it.
I understand the need to change, but I’d like to see some outside the box change, instead of status quo change.
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If any other business in Cedar Rapids did what the Gazette is doing to its employees, your paper would be running front page stories galore and there’d be plenty of ‘Gomers’ to go around.
Your employees have plenty of reason be be apprehensive and no creative wordsmithing can change that.
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[…] frequently about the changes we were making and considering. We cut the staff and reorganized the newsroom. My title changed twice, starting the year as editor and ending as C3 innovation coach. I […]
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[…] of the local newspapers is restructuring. (The other one isn’t doing so hot either, but I haven’t seen many public statements about […]
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[…] with the newsroom, in public appearances and private discussions in the community, and in this blog, which launched in late 2008, I was candid about what we were doing and disclosed as much as I […]
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