Tag Archives: Gannett

Back to the N.Y.S.V.E.C.U.: Dear Beth McDermott, Blink Twice if You Need Help

2 Replies

I hate to unload on the same struggling media outlet twice in one week, in this case the formerly respected Burlington Free Press, but this is outrageous.

Notice anything funky about the byline?

Yeah, “Reporter Assisted by AI.”

It’s one of TWO articles on Tuesday’s front page attributed to Beth McDermott “assisted by AI.”

That’s two out of three stories on the front page, the third being a national story from the USA TODAY content farm.

I hadn’t noticed this before, because I can’t remember the last time I picked up a print copy of that rag. But apparently it’s been going on for a few months at least, and it’s deeply disturbing on two significant levels.

Continue reading →

Welcome to the N.Y.S.V.E.C.U., Part 1: I Don’t Know What This Is, But It Ain’t Journalism

3 Replies

Sheesh, you go out of town for a weekend, and the media beat goes a little bit haywire. Lots to get to, so much so that we’ve entered the News You Should View Extended Cinematic Universe. The customary edition of NYSV will follow, but we have a couple of special editions to get to first.

____________________________

The Burlington Free Press needs to die.

I say this reluctantly, because it does still employ a handful of hard-working reporters. Nothing more than a handful, to judge by its Newsroom Directory, which lists six — count ’em and weep — SIX reporters laboring in the corporate-owned sweatshop of a formerly great newspaper.

Six. [Shakes head, mutters under breath]

Which means that in order to fill the Free Press’ greatly-reduced news hole, they have to rely heavily on “content” cranked out by Gannett functionaries spread far and wide. These pieces of Hamburger Helper “journalism” are disposable clickbait at best, an insult to the reader’s intelligence at worst. And boy howdy, I have rarely seen a piece as insulting as this one.

Continue reading →

The Free Press Isn’t Even a Newspaper Anymore

3 Replies

I moved to Vermont just in time to catch the tail end of the Burlington Free Press‘ long reign as the state’s leading newspaper. It was a full-sized daily with a deep and wide-ranging pool of journalists including three experienced reporters covering state politics and policy, which made the Freeps an indispensable resource for anyone interested in such things.

That institution is long gone, and things have just gotten worse and worse, sadder and sadder. The latest nail in the Free Press’ coffin is its coverage of the Burlington Police Department’s “roll-playing scenario” in which a bunch of high school students were terrified by someone pretending to be a masked gunman.

Or should I say the paper’s disgraceful non-coverage. Because so far, the Free Press’ only mention of the incident, which has been the talk of the town ever since, was a story written by a USA TODAY reporter phoning it in from some other part of the country.

That’s it. The Burlington Free Press is dead.

Continue reading →

The Free Press Takes Another Step Away from Tangibility

Leave a reply

A sad but inevitable day for the dwindling cadre of Burlington Free Press readers, whoever they are. The “newspaper,” if that is indeed the proper term by now, has announced that as of April 1 (no foolin’), it will no longer deliver paper editions to subscribers’ homes, instead depending on the tender mercies of Louis DeJoy’s US Postal Service to get the papers to your doorstep mailbox within probably mere days of publication.

(As a subscriber to a paper that went to mail delivery a few years ago, I can tell you that this is a road to newspaper irrelevance. We hardly ever get the Times Argus on the day of printing. There’s often a gap of two or three — or four or six or more — days between publication and delivery.)

The announcement of the change, penned by the Freeps’ Dinosaur-in-Chief Aki Soga, contained a goodly quantity of desperate word salad meant to obscure the harsh reality of the business and make this seem like a good thing.

The reality is this: Free Press readership is cratering. I doubt that there are enough print subscribers to justify anyone’s time covering ever-longer delivery routes with ever-fewer paying customers.

I hadn’t realized how bad the carnage was until I read Seven Days’ writeup, which includes some extinction-level statistics:

Continue reading →

The Free Press Did Not Censor Doonesbury. The Truth is Much Sadder.

1 Reply

A couple Sundays ago, the Doonesbury comic strip took us to an imaginary Florida high school classroom where a teacher was sharing some uncomfortable truths about the Civil War as some of her students pondered reporting her apostasy to the authorities.

The strip did not appear in Gannett newspapers across the country, including the Burlington Free Press. Which raised a kerfuffle about censorship: Did our biggest national newspaper chain remove the strip out of concern for the tender sensibilities of southern readers? Were Free Press editors on board with the decision or were they forced to go along with a corporate kill order?

Well, no. The truth is a lot less scandalous, and a lot more depressing about the fallen state of print journalism in general and the comics in particular.

Truth is, Gannett canceled a whole bunch of comics including Doonesbury six months ago, almost certainly for budgetary reasons. The Free Press hadn’t run Doonesbury since last September. Nobody noticed. And that’s just sad.

Continue reading →

A Gloomy Day for Vermont Newspapers

1 Reply

There were two pieces of bad news on the state’s media front today — one substantive, the other more symbolic.

The latter is the departure of Rob Mitchell from the Rutland Herald and Barre Montpelier Times Argus. The former is the fully-consummated merger of Burlington Free Press owner Gannett with GateHouse, forming the largest (by far) newspaper chain in the country. The combined entity, now saddled with $1.8 billion in debt and facing continued declines in circulation and ad revenue, is set to go on a cost-cutting spree that could eliminate more than 10 percent of its workforce.

Mitchell had continued to serve as general manager of the papers after their 2016 sale to Pennsylvania-based Sample Newspapers. His resignation marks the end of more than 80 years of Mitchell family involvement in the two papers.

If he’s being in any way forced out by the new owners, he’d doubtless keep that to himself. He did say that “I started to realize that I wasn’t growing in this role anymore,” which could be taken to mean that he didn’t see a future under outside ownership.

The Mitchells’ tenure wasn’t perfect, but they were at least local owners answerable to their own communities. Sample, whose properties include a few dailies and a lot of weeklies and free shoppers, has no such ties. So far, its tenure has not seen noticeable cuts — but neither has there been any tangible sign of strengthening the Herald and Times Argus, which have been bare-bones operations for years.

The Gannett/GateHouse deal creates a true industry monster that will control 18 percent of America’s dailies. Ken Doctor, news industry analyst who writes the Newsonomics column for the Nieman Foundation, expects that one in eight G/G employees will be out of a job by the end of 2020. And that’s on top of a fresh round of layoffs expected to come even before the GateHouse bloodletting begins.

Continue reading →

Exit the Puppet Master

Leave a reply

Looks like someone’s gotten the ziggy at Free Press Media. Opening sentence of a story on the Free Press website:

Former Free Press Media President Jim Fogler is returning to his previous role, replacing Al Getler in the top job at the Burlington media company and newspaper.

The bulk of the article recaps Fogler’s career and describes what a great fit he is for the job. Getler, meanwhile? We do not speak of him. The only other reference to the apparently former president and publisher is this:

Getler was hired as president of Free Press Media in January 2015.

Oh well. Easy come, easy go. At least Al will have his ventriloquist sideline to fall back on.

GetlerVentriloquistNo, really. Here’s a screenshot from his sizzle reel.

 

That’s the stuff. Sad to say, you can see his mouth move when his puppets “speak.”

Continue reading →

Gannett is determined to wring every last goddamned nickel out of its dying business model

5 Replies

There are times when I wonder if the Burlington Free Press and its corporate overlord have flipped their mission statement. Times when it seems like they’re trying to KILL the newspaper business by driving away their customer base.

The latest time came recently, when I received a postcard from Barbara Smith, VP of Customer Obstruction Service, notifying me of A New Enhancement to My Gannett Experience.

Oh Lord, I thought. What fresh hell is this?

Two things. First, the Freeploid is launching “an exclusive, special Sunday premium section on popular local topics four times a year.” Yeah, I’ll bet they’re on advertiser-friendly subjects like Food, Tourism, Skiing, Buy Local, and stuff like that. I doubt there will be any additional journalism on offer.

The bad news? “The subscription rate will be an additional $1 for each of these exclusive, special Sunday premium sections.”

Yaaaay! I’ll be paying extra for ad-friendly “content” just like I’m currently paying for recycled USA TODAY “content” in every freakin’ paper.

Continue reading →

Who needs institutional memory?

3 Replies

Well, as was foreshadowed in this space, two mainstays at the Burlington Free Press are accepting Gannett’s early-retirement offer. As of October 31, Mikes Townsend and Donoghue will no longer grace the masthead or the pages of Vermont’s Shrinkingest Newspaper.

On their own, these departures won’t spell doom for the Freeploid. But look at what’s happened over the last couple of years: the paper has dumped almost all of its experienced news staff, leaving us to the tender mercies of twenty- and thirty-somethings who are (1) short on experience, and (2) in many cases, still finding their way around Vermont.

Count ‘em up: Terri Hallenbeck, Nancy Remsen, Sam Hemingway, Tim Johnson, Matt Sutkoski, Candace Page, Lynn Monty, now Townsend and Donoghue. (Apologies if I missed anyone, which I probably did.) That’s a lot of institutional memory, especially on the hard-news side of things. The remaining olds, to use the term very loosely, are mostly doing features: Brent Hallenbeck, Joel Banner Baird, Sally Pollak. Dan D’Ambrosio is kind of a hybrid: he does some good work, but he also does some client-servicing in the business pages.

(Here’s an interesting note: if there’s a staff listing on the Free Press’ website, I sure as hell can’t find it. Used to be very accessible. Now, if it exists, it’s well-hidden. Too embarrassing?)

Continue reading →

Adventures in voluntary buyouts: Volunteer, or you will be volunteered

3 Replies

Remember when Gannett announced a new round of early retirement incentives aimed at cutting the numbers of senior (i.e. high-cost) staff? Well, the deadline is almost upon us. And apparently, not enough Gannetteers are volunteering.

The offer, for those just joining us, was open to staffers 55 or older, or who had at least 15 years’ seniority in the company. Employees with 25 years or more seniority would get two weeks’ pay per year of service (capped at 52 weeks’ pay); those with 15 to 25 years seniority would get 1.5 weeks’ pay per year. Vermont’s Gannett outlet, the Burlington Free Press, has some notable Olds on its masthead, including Mike Donoghue, Michael Townsend, and Aki Soga, who would presumably qualify for the gilded plank.

Last week, Gannett’s Chief People Officer (I kid you not; that’s his actual title) David Harmon sent a letter to all staff, reminding them that the deadline for this offer is Monday, October 12. And delivering some unsubtle hints that so far, enthusiasm for the offer has been less fulsome than expected.

Continue reading →