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Topic: What can you tell me about working for Gannett?
| Author | Message |
| zinny | Posted – 6/20/2006 12:53:14 AM | show profile How are they and how do they compare to the other chains? |
| inkblot | Posted – 6/22/2006 1:28:48 AM | show profile um. they are the devil. There are many more cons than pros working for this company. A business degree would serve you better than a journo degree with a Gannett paper -- er should I say a Gannett "property?" Here's my advice: If this is your first opportunity to break into daily "news" reporting (news is in quotations because much of what Gannett wants on their section fronts is not news -- think pablum) then go for it. You need the clips and you will get the clips covering the 15 towns you will be assigned because they are so understaffed. If you don't mind being expected to churn out two to three stories a day and also satisfy whatever else they throw at you and not go into overtime, then you are their person. Learn how to write damn fast. There is little time for layered reporting. Get in, get out, write your story and file it. Keep your Xanax close by. Bottom line with Gannett: they are rigid and demanding. (And their wages and gas mileage reimbursement rates are shameful.) |
| Suet | Posted – 6/22/2006 10:58:30 PM | show profile I went to a "job expo" type thing and the area Gannett paper was there (I think they were there because they were sponsoring it). People working for them told me that I didn't want to work for them. (I don't think that was the party line....) I've known two other people who worked at Gannett papers and they had nothing good to say. Sorry I can't remember any specifics but the previous post ought to take care of that. |
| overthehillwriter | Posted – 6/22/2006 11:24:47 PM | show profile | email poster I've heard it's good experience for churning out news. There was a longish thread on here about it -- if I recall, major complaints included artificial quotas on "real people." Mind, I hear that at the major daily I regularly contribute to, and it's definitely not Gannett. I worked with a writer who complained Gannett was all about the news -- lite, but I have beefs with the paper I do stuff for and they're not Gannett, as stated. On occasion I miss the old days at a mid-size daily where I could go long, if I felt like it. These days, if I go long, it's for a magazine --- but not all of them welcome long. |
| freelancer13 | Posted – 6/23/2006 2:19:11 AM | show profile not bad on the tv side i'm assuming, from the thread, you're moving into the newspaper div. i don't have any experience with that end of gannett, but they were great on the tv side. they are certainly concerned about what the stockholders think is important, thus creating a very corporate environment, but that's what they are known for. they treated the employees well and, while they didn't give you a ton of money to work with them, they had a decent culture. i enjoyed my years with them. |
| belinda | Posted – 6/23/2006 11:04:12 AM | show profile Gannet's newspaper side is ... interesting. I lasted a little more than two years at a small (49,000) Gannett daily in a supervisory position (not my first job, however). During that time, I didn't know my family or friends; never got to the movies; quit shopping except for drive-bys; etc. There just isn't time with an 8 a.m.-10 p.m. workday five or six days a week. Supervisors pick up where overtime leaves off, unfortunately -- there was no OT budget, so if we had a computer crash or typesetter breakdown that set everything back, I wasn't going home that day. Gannett has good points, too. It cares about training, in the newsroom and by sending reporters and editors to workshops and seminars elsewhere. It puts the spectrum of employees on projects; you can walk out saying you actually helped plan a redesign, not that you went through a redesign, even if you're a reporter or copy editor. The requirements of coverage, such as diversity of sources, are the envy of the industry. Best of all, when you do come out, other papers want you. That was the eye-opener to me -- that I could go directly from that little daily to a top-10 major metro, with only about two months between applying cold and setting up my new desk. |
| cali1296 | Posted – 6/23/2006 7:38:13 PM | show profile Gannett ephasizes quanity over quality My former paper was bought by Gannett a few years ago. Right away we were urged to keep stories 10 to 14 inches in length which isn't a bad rule necessarily, but the editors really wouldn't budge no matter what. If you needed more space, forget it. And like others said, they expect you to churn out three stories a day. There was also an obsession with diversity. Again, not a bad thing. But it was a forced thing. The city where I worked was on the small side, midwestern and 90 percent white. To meet our diversity quota, so to speak, we had to compile a list of non-white community members and include their quotes in stories as much as we could. We did a man-on-the-street thing every week (Question of the Week) and we'd stand outside the library with a photog and grab people. We got four people from outside the library (almost always white people) then for the fifth, Gannett policy said we had to use a minority. A few of the black families in town supplied graduation photos or other personal pictures of themselves for us to use and we'd call them on the phone on a rotationary basis and ask them the question of the week. This practice always struck me as forced and misleading, and nobody at the paper liked it, but those were Gannett's orders. |
| belinda | Posted – 6/23/2006 11:24:09 PM | show profile That's because the Big House has some skewed concepts of the company's communities. You couldn't have paid me enough to try to meet the diversity quota in Montpelier. Did you also have to deal with the three "hot topics" for your community, as defined by corporate? We could say up, down, backward and sideways that one of our hottest topics was immigration, but corporate said nope, it has to be glitz and glamour. Just to give you an idea of how "hot" the glamour was, I swiped the online list of area celebs before I left, and a year later it was nearly worthless because so many of them had died. Every chain has its peculiarities. K-R had them, McClatchy has them, and God knows anything Dean Singleton touches has them. |
| MCM | Posted – 8/24/2006 10:40:43 PM | show profile It was the worst experience of my life I spent four years at The Arizona Republic. I was there when Gannett purchased the newspaper from a local family. And I watched how they promoted the most incompetent and untalented people in the newsroom. If there is a newspaper hell, it is Gannett. |
| MCM | Posted – 8/25/2006 12:29:38 AM | show profile If there is a newspaper hell Gannett is it. |
| recorder | Posted – 8/25/2006 11:56:06 AM | show profile what division of gannett are you referring to? The small dailies have a horrible rep (and rightly so), but the national divisions of gannett (and apparently the broadcast portion, according to the posting here) are handled differently. |
| writerly | Posted – 8/25/2006 12:52:34 PM | show profile good experience as a freelancer I've been writing freelance for one of the Gannett papers and found it a good experience. The editor I worked with was smart and friendly, and payment was reliable and very fast (although the rates were not very high). It was a good place to develop almost any idea I pitched. Of course, if you don't have a good editor, I imagine it wouldn't be as good an experience, but that's not specific to Gannett. Some writers have issues with the Gannett "real people" policy -- they want reporters to talk to local folks, not just experts, which is more work but results in a better-rounded story. |
| inkblot | Posted – 8/27/2006 1:06:21 AM | show profile MCM, I want to make out with you. MCM wrote: "It was the worst experience of my life. I spent four years at The Arizona Republic. ... And I watched how they promoted the most incompetent and untalented people in the newsroom. If there is a newspaper hell, it is Gannett." You are 100 percent correct. I work for The Devil, and I've come to believe that it operates on a paradox: what's bad is good, what's good is bad. I think getting fired from there means you are probably smart and talented; get promoted, you probably do not practice sharp journalism. You should see some of the ridiculous story ideas coming from my bosses that become articles. Man. It's really amazing. When they leave for the day, all the reporters are like: "Get this, (boss) wants me to write about (name asinine story)." And we cringe and then do the assignment and get drunk after work. The tragedy is this stuff goes beyond the newsroom. Readers are pissed. The other day, a regular, credible source went off on a reporter about how much he hates the (local Gannett paper). The reasons were not personal, i.e., portrayed him badly; they were legitimate newspaper quality reasons, like lack of coverage and bad editing. |
| belinda | Posted – 8/27/2006 11:49:53 AM | show profile Recorder makes a good point. I've had friends at USAT since its inception. They're reporters/writers and smart people who wouldn't stay where they weren't happy because they don't have to. Likewise GNS; I never heard anything bad about working at GNS. The small dailies, however, have issues. |
| alpharose | Posted – 8/27/2006 5:13:36 PM | show profile Newly hired and now worried... I will be starting a position on a Gannett daily as a News Assistant, should I be extremely pertified at this point? It is a part-time position but I am excited about what I will be doing. The editor I am working under seems incredibly nice and others, who know him who do not work for the paper, says he is a genuinely nice person. Again, what all of you have stated has made me a bit worried though. I am hoping that since a News Assistant position is a relatively insignificant role in comparison to a journalist, maybe this does not apply. I am interested in any of your thoughts on my concerns. Thanks :-) |
| jmm | Posted – 8/27/2006 8:12:02 PM | show profile Well, it depends on who you are, what kind of a journalist you are. If you are careerist and live with blinders on, it won't bother you at all. If not, you will be asked to sell out big time. Forget everything you ever learned about journalism ethics and reporting without fear or favor. There might be a Gannett paper here or there that manages to bop along out of tune. Tell me if you find one. |
| jmm | Posted – 8/27/2006 8:13:57 PM | show profile Personally, if I were just starting out, I would try to avoid MediaNews Group and Gannett, But Gannett more. Some MediaNews Group papers are sorta OK, if you really can't find anything else. |
| jmm | Posted – 8/27/2006 8:15:26 PM | show profile Alpha, I think you will be fine as a news assistant. Gannett is not known to pay poorly or scrimp on benefits. It will give you some newsroom experience and help you to land a job at a more serious news company. |
| jmm | Posted – 8/27/2006 8:17:06 PM | show profile Re USAT and the wire. I know someone at USAT and he is smart and doesn't have to be there. I think you are right about that, to a point. I think if they maintain any margin of integrity it is at their flagship. |
| jmm | Posted – 8/27/2006 8:19:04 PM | show profile Keep in mind when you refer to "small dailies" as opposed to USA Today, we are talking anything smaller, such as metros |
| jmm | Posted – 8/27/2006 8:27:32 PM | show profile OK, here is my Gannett story. I was offered a business reporting position by a publisher who didn't do his homework on me at all. I had taken a stand in my previous newsroom. I ended up with only the backing of my editor. The publisher tried to kill my stories on and before I was done with that place, the FBI had raided the local government and the US Civil rights commission decided to hold hearings. That was my resume. So, he wants me to write stories about the nearby casinos that would cause them to spend more advertising dollars at the paper. These dollars had been freed up, because the competing paper had been so fearless in their reporting, the casinos had just pulled ALL their advertising from that paper. How do you like that? Is that why you went into journalism? |
| flipflap | Posted – 8/27/2006 8:32:14 PM | show profile were you in s sate that begins with a C by any chance? |
| flipflap | Posted – 8/27/2006 8:32:45 PM | show profile oops, a STATE that begins with a C? |
| jmm | Posted – 8/27/2006 8:53:12 PM | show profile I knew I shouldn't have posted so many specific details. I like my media bistro anonymity. But you can figure out the state easily enough. It has casinos and one of the papers in this state was blacklisted by them. |
| jmm | Posted – 8/27/2006 8:59:27 PM | show profile No offense Flipflap, I am just squeamish. But I think you know the place. So, seeing you know, what do you think? I mean, can you imagine that? I was disgusted. I felt a pit in my stomach, I was lonely for real news people and felt discouraged by the profession. These are the same people who like to quote Mark Twain and say he is a hero of theirs. Right. They'd fire Twain. But that was then. I am feeling better than I did that week. |
