Comments on: Disintermediation in Reverse – Can online Newspapers be commoditized?

By: Ryan Trask

Ryan Trask — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 06:05:14 +0000

Hilarious! I about laughed when I saw all the layoffs. I dont’ feel good for the people in local markets that lost their jobs, but Gannett as a whole.

Look at my previous post about Publicus (their CMS system). That CMS system was made to do one thing. Eliminate jobs in local markets in the online departments as they wanted to keep all the tech jobs at corporate and getting the news departement to use the CMS system. Hence why I quit. I should have a website about it. Gannett is a interesting company.

By: Eric Blackwell

Eric Blackwell — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:34:32 +0000

Yep. Just saw this post on it…

http://www.nppa.org/news_and_events/news/2008/10/gannett_layoffs.html

looks like another big Gannett cut right after previous cuts in August. Seems to me that this is a growing trend as dead tree media circles the drain. (at least in its present form.

By: Ryan Trask

Ryan Trask — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:27:15 +0000

And today... My old company eliminates 18 Argus Leader online media employees. Ganett just has to slash across the board.

By: Eric Blackwell

Eric Blackwell — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 19:10:18 +0000

Hey Ryan!

I think you are spot on. I have a few local online news blogs as well as one industry related one that I am currently working / joint venturing on. Down the road a bit, feel free to contact me if you want to work together on some projects, collaborate , do some benchmarking or even stuff a little bigger than that.

Good to have you drop by my site!

best

Eric

By: Ryan Trask

Ryan Trask — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 08:19:26 +0000

Eric, Interesting post. I see your in Southern Indiana… close to Louisville. I used to work for Gannett Inc. You probably have the privilege (or not) of getting a distribution of the Courier Journal. The publisher Arnold Garson came from the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, also a Gannett product. I used to work under Arnold Garson at the Argus Leader. Locals call it the Argus “Mis-Leader” or the Argus “Liar”. Not too many Sioux Falls people cared much for the Gannett beast. I really didn’t care too much at the time since it was my first job out of college. I was with the company for about 4 years and I left when the stock price was at about $90 a share.

Before I left Gannett, I visited corporate and I saw their new online cms global technology rollout called Publicus that was supposed to revolutionalize Gannett, online media, publishing, social networking, 2.0, blah blah blah. Pretty bad product if you ask me.

I could see the writing on the wall and with ad revenue shrinking and costs rising, it was only a matter of time before the empire fell.

It will be interesting to see where the newspaper industry ends up. I see a huge potential in small town online media, regions, niche pubs, industry related, etc. Local news is still a big thing for these smaller communities.

By: Eric Blackwell

Eric Blackwell — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:45:30 +0000

I would agree with that…I think the traffic numbers speak to that. The bottom line is though, that even if they get their writers focused on blogs, the cost structure that is inherently there is prohibitively high…at the same time bloggers who are skilled and can pull in traffic will likely try to monetize their investments of time.

Net result? Online papers and Blogger/Journalists will wind up meeting somewhere in the middle.

Solid writing skills are the key to success in this environment…that an copious quantities of Mt. Dew. (grin)

By: Bob Sokoler

Bob Sokoler — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 20:54:29 +0000

Eric,
It is my understanding that in several major markets around the U.S. newspaper reporters are now being told to write for the website, the newspaper comes in 2nd. I think the Newspaper as we know is dead. It’s just a matter of time.