The NJ Newsroom of the Future Begins
A memo from David Ledford to NJ reporters, editors and other staff went out with a list of the new job descriptions that NJ employees need to fit into (see below). You’ll recall that NJ employees are going to be required to re-apply for their jobs, re-interview I suppose, and convince whoever is in charge of this business that they should still be around. After reading the memo and the Job Descriptions (see below), this is just an odd thing. It certainly looks like they are using this exercise to orient themselves to the web and it looks like they are going to reduce positions. It isn’t immediately clear that some of the folks on the editorial page would fit into this order. Which (even though they make me mad sometimes) seems like a waste of knowledge. I understand that some of the NJ folks have already decided that they will not re-apply and are walking away. Over the past year, that’s quite the exodus of local knowledge.
I don’t quite get the business of re-applying for a job. You’d think that the editors of this paper might know enough about the people who work for them and enough about their new mission to be able to match up skills with needs. There’s something incredibly mean about this, as if to outsource any blame for staff reductions by saying that the employees who are gone did not fit. Even if the goal was to reduce overall staff numbers in the first place. As was pointed out to me, if these editors don’t know enough about the skills and capabilities of these folks, then maybe *they* are the ones who should be re-applying for jobs.
Another thing I don’t get is what this is meant to accomplish — other than even more staff reductions. (Seriously, how heartbreaking is it to see that there is more coverage of entertainment and “cool ideas” than for Wilmington and NCCo.) I’ve heard that Gannett’s paywall strategy has been a dud and why not? If the NJ is any indicator, they provide readers with less product and they charge more for it. Where’s the value to consumers for all of this?
Still, there’s more change to the NJ coming folks. And the question is how much less of a paper can this be before everyone abandons it?
h/t Anonymous Source
Everyone has to re-apply for their jobs? Hmmm, where have I heard this before?
News Journal going through a Gannett Priority Newsroom process.
Let’s see how this works out for them.
Miss M wrote:
If everyone is terminated, and must re-apply, they don’t have to lay off by seniority, and legal problems concerned with seniority go away. Further, they can hire back people who were making less money than others, and, since these are all new jobs, the pay rates might be different.
This has nothing to do with what the editors know; it has everything to do with what the lawyers tell them.
Miss M asked:
Well, that was the problem in the first place: people were already abandoning it! Newspapers are, at bottom, 18th century technology; every story in them is at least several hours old, and much more current news can be found — usually for free! — on the internet. The newspaper business model just doesn’t match 21st century technology.
The only medium size newspaper website I look at is for the Lexington Herald-Leader, for UK sports, and every page you open has annoying pop-up ads. Newspapers depend upon advertising revenue to survive, and this is their (current) way of getting that revenue online. To me, they’re a lot more annoying than just the printed ads on the dead trees edition pages.
Also, look at the positions listings. When you see the word “exempt” after a title, it tells you that the position is exempt from paying overtime.
Any of you out there had a family member run an obituary in the NJ lately? The cost is so frightful, no wonder they are going under. Many a family around here doesn’t do the NJ anymore for obituaries. Not uncommon for the cost to range from $366 to $1100. The exact same “word for word” obit in the Daily Times or Delaware State News is generally one half or one third the cost.
to show you how bad things have gotten at the NJ, last Saturday they had the same story running twice — once in the “USA Today section” of the paper, and once in section with the comics and entertainment stuff. Same exact story. It ran twice. Does anybody there care anymore?
Newspapers can still play a vital role. For better or worse, the News-Journal is about the only media source that just about everyone in the state has access to and is viewed by the most people, but their new format is doing a huge disservice to the State, and, it doesn’t help that the paper refuses to ask hard questions, point out the need for change in this state, and would rather try to sensationalize everything it puts on the front page.
When it folds, something will take its place. This blog already has taken its place when it comes to political reporting.
“This blog already has taken its place when it comes to political reporting.”
After high-fiving myself, I thought… “Is that a good thing?” This has always been a “hey let’s put on a show…my uncle has a barn” type operation lacking in the kind of aspirations that could make it a true member of the 4th estate.
As much as I hate the piece of shit, the state needs a newspaper of record.
If Joe Smyth were still around …
Actually, Dana, a newspaper can survive and perhaps thrive. The path to success, though, is not to give less while charging more.
“As much as I hate the piece of shit, the state needs a newspaper of record.’
It’s been about 20 years since then-executive editor John Walston declared that TNJ was NOT a newspaper of record.
My bad.
You’re not wrong. I was just pointing out that Gannett has never taken that function seriously. They claim it when it’s to their benefit and deny it when that’s to their benefit.
Mr Manifold wrote:
The problem is that, whatever that path is, almost none of them seem to have found it. The Philadelphia Inquirer has gone bankrupt, twice really, and The Los Angeles Times is in trouble.
A few thoughts:
— Congrats, Kent and Sussex County. Apparently everything is so great there that you don’t have any problems that need “solutions” like in NCCO.
— Also, sorry Old People — apparently, you never have any “Cool Ideas” and don’t care about “Wellness.”
— In the “I don’t think that means what you think it means” category, someone might want to give the top management a quick primer on the audience they’re supposed to be slavishly focusing on. From what I’ve read, Gannett is trying to go after the 25-44 demographic base — some of whom qualify as the “Gen-Xers” referred to multiple times in this document, but others (about a decade’s worth) who fall squarely into the millennial generation.
Good stuff, Ed. The insipid lingo of the memo is Dilbert-worthy.
Dana: Indeed, newspapers do not have the monopolistic hold on certain forms of advertising, but they’re in demand by consumers. The Inquirer sells hundreds of thousands of copies per day. Even the wretched N-J sells 60,000/day.
Bankruptcy is commonly a result of financing problems. Brian Tierney assembled a consortium to buy The Inquirer and Daily News for $650,000 in 2006. Not only was it terrible timing, they did so with borrowed money.
Lew Katz and Gerry Lenfest bought the paper for $75 million, basically from petty cash. They won’t have lenders demanding that they shut the Harrisburg bureau.
Meanwhile, The New York Times has been doing well, although its stock has dropped recently after rising 100 percent in 2012-13.
The best outcome would be private ownership, as in Philadelphia, where hedge funds can’t yelp because the profit margin has fallen below 15 percent.
I hear from another source the NJ newsroom rumor of the day — this story of a basic break-in isn’t the usual NJ fare, unless there’s something titillating about the break-in. The rumor is that this story is about a break-in at Ledford’s house (who does live in this block of Brackenville Rd), making this a problem about disclosure, right?
But I’m going to repeat that this is a rumor — I haven’t confirmed it with NCCo police and nor has anyone else.
Yeah, residential burglaries aren’t exactly the bread and butter of the NJ’s daily police report. However, lately they’ve taken to filling the cop report with items from Pennsylvania… and I’m not talking about southern Chester County. In the last couple of days, they’ve run briefs about crimes in Pittsburgh and in a town near Lake Erie. In that respect, paying attention to a burglary in Hockessin, even if it is the editor’s home, represents an upgrade in local coverage. And, in cases like this one, they would not ID the property owner, so there’s no disclosure issue … other than the “conflict of interest” standard journalists like to pontificate about … you know, we’re helping the cops solve the editor’s burglary just like we do every other break-in in New Castle County, especially in Wilmington.
David Ledford is a coward and a bully. He wrote job descriptions to match reporters/editors he wanted to keep. Gannett sucks, but those job ads are his work. Hence the ridiculous beats such as military/Middletown suburban reporter. Writing job ads that match predetermined candidates would make Gannett corporate lawyers pee their pants from the litigation nightmare. Not to mention the sheer cruelty in making people dance like puppets for him when he already wrote the final outcome. But that won’t stop Ledford, the man with an ego so big that reporters gossip about how the fool crossed the velvent rope and sat on a priceless chair on a house tour of the famous du Pont estate museum.
There isn’t a press release about that house break in that I can find. That’s what stinks to high heaven about it. All those other stories are desperately rewritten press releases, chunrned out to feed the beast. That story was original non-press release content. With a photo. Extraordinary effort for a cop blotter item.
Ledford is a strange, sad little man.
DEAR LEDFORD: THE EMPEROR WEARS NO CLOTHES.
Emperor,
You’ve nailed it so well you’ve got to be inside. But the reporting job descriptions are so obvious that most regular readers could ID about a dozen who are certain to keep their jobs without breaking a sweat.
I don’t know enough about who edits what anymore to make any predictions on the editing side … but one thing that’s definitely missing is a commitment to what we used to call copy editors. In their haste to put “content” on the web or into print, they have forgotten the importance of having singular verbs with singular subjects, not to mention placing commas and periods in the right places. They either don’t realize, or don’t care, that a failure to write properly undermines the credibility of the content they produce. They need some more copy editors to cover the butts of otherwise good reporters who happen to have trouble with spelling and punctuation.
Compared with the news section, however, the editorial pages are absolutely beyond repair. But I haven’t seen any indication that those folks must reapply.
Mediawatch,
They folded editorial under the banner of news a few years after Curtis left.
Editorial is reapplying, too. Ledford is the only one exempt from reapplying. What you see up there includes every journalism job left at the paper.
Yes, everyone needs an editor. That is why readers pay for it. They expect a professional-level publication, not a blog printed on newspaper. But somehow Gannett leadership spins it as if they are great innovators with the foresight and wisdom to finally realize the problem holding them back from “The Newsroom of the Future.” Oh yes, cutting all the copy editors. Remarkable!
ENC,
Thanks for the insights.
I’m hoping against hope that the half-dozen or so veteran reporters who carry a library worth of Delaware knowledge in their heads manage to retain their jobs and aren’t replaced by a couple of kids who are most proficient at simultaneously taking notes and shooting video.
Not being critical of youth here, just saying that if you could reassemble the group that left or was booted out since Ledford’s arrival, you would have one hell of a good newsroom staff.
An interesting signal of the sham that is the Newsroom of the Future is, is David Ledford’s own Twitter account. 38 tweets since 2009 from someone who has been insisting that his editors and reporters be more involved with social media (and I think that this involvement is supposed to be part of the pitch for the re-hiring process). I’m not a massive twitter user myself, but how do you talk about expanding the “newsroom” to social media platforms when you have little idea how that ecology even works?
People are being terribly disrespectful here to David Ledford, The Man Who Invented Journalism.
Pro golfers have a nickname for Phil Mickelson: FIG JAM. It stands for “fuck I’m great, just ask me.”
Mediawatch: That team exists, largely working for state government and UD now.
SW,
That’s exactly what I was referring to. Many a time I’ve said, only half joking, that if the state ever wanted to compete with Gannett, Markell already has a pretty good team in place.
One unintended blessing for the NJ: the press releases received by their remaining editors and reporters are better written than ever before.
Clearly, Ledford has no interest in good writing or editing, though he does enjoy shallow social media communication. Take a look at any Graham column. The writing is atrocious, yet she continues to have an embarrassing presence. I don’t see any ads for copy editors, which signifies the beginning of the end. The News Journal leadership should be ashamed.
The copy editors have been in Asbury Park for well over a year now. That’s one reason you see “local” news from elsewhere.
Ledford’s main problem is he’s a lousy organizer of material, and he won’t leave the job to people who know how to do it. He’s constantly sensationalizing, so instead of organizing stories to flow, he just jams the most incendiary material towards the top, often in a series of disjointed paragraphs that might as well be bullet points.
Unless things have changed in recent years, Graham’s material is edited by John Sweeney, editor of the editorial page and the only other actual member of the editorial board; the others are just high-ranking officials, some from other departments, included to make it appear that the paper is staffed and — always most important to Gannett, well ahead of good journalism — looks more diverse than it actually is. They used to list the comptroller there just because she was a woman.
Geezer:
I find it hard to believe that anyone edits Graham’s columns. Have you read them? I think John Sweeney is an actual editor, so my guess is that Graham’s columns are untouchable.
Yes, I’ve read them and often winced. My suspicion is that Sweeney, like the one-legged man in the ass-kicking contest, simply doesn’t have the time to edit them.
This paper died long ago when Ganette took it over. Garnett is the death knell to newspapers and informing the communities it dirtys