by slavewidget » Thu Jul 09, 2009 11:45 pm
I have never seen anything so badly handled. Ever. And so revealing of what geniuses, what stewards these captains of industry aren't. Not a shred of humanity, they're that removed. Layoffs are layoffs -- but layoffs at Gannett? Crass beyond belief. These people aren't fit to be the chief executives of anything. Corporate has muzzled every site, mandating even how local news is presented. The content of the product is pablum and cliche, and they think that's good. They think it's "branding." Brand this: Readership plummets across the demographic. Advertisers take what little money they have in tight times elsewhere. It's simple math. They had some good people out there, some good publishers still, reporters and sales staff still. All are either toeing the line to save their own derrier or are now unemployed. I'm so tired of the reporting now produced as "professional" that my journalism prof would have thrown me out the third-floor window of his class if I had written what I read too often in a Gannett product. I'm tired of looking at this monument to stupidity that Gannett has become, sucking the life out of the local autonomy of its papers in a kind of cannibalistic frenzy. I'm tired of wondering when Gannett is going to be a bad memory (2011? 2012?) and not the nightmare that visits every day those who, by daily happenstance as the only standard, are or are not without a job.
I have never seen anything so badly handled. Ever. And so revealing of what geniuses, what stewards these captains of industry aren't. Not a shred of humanity, they're that removed. Layoffs are layoffs -- but layoffs at Gannett? Crass beyond belief. These people aren't fit to be the chief executives of anything. Corporate has muzzled every site, mandating even how local news is presented. The content of the product is pablum and cliche, and they think that's good. They think it's "branding." Brand this: Readership plummets across the demographic. Advertisers take what little money they have in tight times elsewhere. It's simple math. They had some good people out there, some good publishers still, reporters and sales staff still. All are either toeing the line to save their own derrier or are now unemployed. I'm so tired of the reporting now produced as "professional" that my journalism prof would have thrown me out the third-floor window of his class if I had written what I read too often in a Gannett product. I'm tired of looking at this monument to stupidity that Gannett has become, sucking the life out of the local autonomy of its papers in a kind of cannibalistic frenzy. I'm tired of wondering when Gannett is going to be a bad memory (2011? 2012?) and not the nightmare that visits every day those who, by daily happenstance as the only standard, are or are not without a job.