[Glass palace: Gannett and USA Today headquarters]
Hardly anyone talked about Corporate at USA Today during the nearly eight years I worked for the company’s flagship — a big change from the three smaller newspapers where I was a reporter and editor in Little Rock, Boise and Louisville, Ky. At the community papers, Corporate — and that’s what people called it — hung over us like a big, ominous cloud. Top executives back at Arlington, Va., and then McLean, Va., after the company relocated in 2001, liked to say they always deferred to “local control.”
But that was complete and total bullshit. In newsrooms at the smaller papers, the editor or publisher would make sudden, odd requests that we do something. When we asked why, the short answer would be: “Corporate.” No more questions allowed.
Polished granite vs. threadbare carpet
It was entirely different at USA Today. The paper shared a luxurious building with Gannett — but that was it. USAT wasn’t subject to the onerous rules forced on the smaller papers: We rarely worried about diversity and mainstreaming, programs designed to feature more minorities in news stories. The quality control programs — News 2000, then Real Life, Real News — didn’t apply to us. There was much more money for business travel. And if you worked at the main office in McLean, you were cosseted in a gleaming glass office complex with granite floors, acres of stainless-steel details, a nice cafeteria, on-site gym facilities, a softball field and other amenities. The newsrooms where I worked employed nearly 500 often well-paid reporters, editors, artists and others.
Contrast that with the Idaho Statesman when I arrived in late 1991. The dirty, threadbare carpeting in the dimly-lit newsroom was literally held down with duct tape. Desks and chairs were old and battered. The closest thing we had to a cafeteria was the dreary, windowless “breakroom” with vending machines. Staffing was razor-thin: As the business-news editor, I had virtually no support from the understaffed copy desk: I edited and wrote stories; laid out the section, and oversaw page production in the back shop. I routinely put in 10- and 11-hour days, and worked most weekends. I got no overtime or comp time, of course, because I was in management.
Curley’s mysterious exit
USA Today started getting dragged into Corporate’s fold around 2003, when Publisher Tom Curley (left) — a likely successor to then-CEO Doug McCorkindale — bolted Gannett to become CEO of the Associated Press. (We were never told why, of course, but it appeared to follow a clash between the two executives.)
Craig Moon, publisher of The Tennessean in Nashville, replaced Curley. USAT staff began worrying that Moon would manage the newspaper more like one of Gannett’s 84 smaller titles: The budget would be reined in. Worker productivity demands would rise. In other words, USA Today would start carrying more of the load.
None of that surprised me. I had worked for Moon (left) once before, when he was publisher of The Arkansas Gazette for about two years, ending in early 1991, not long before Gannett shut down the paper amid a bruising newspaper war with a cross-town rival. By then, Moon had been promoted to Nashville, already on the road to Corporate.
I didn’t see Moon again for another 14 years years. By then, he’d been USAT publisher for about a year, and was making a surprise visit to the San Francisco bureau, where I worked as a business-news reporter. We had exchanged a few e-mails during the previous months about his impending choice for a new top editor, after Karen Jurgensen got bounced during the Jack Kelley scandal. I urged Moon to consider one editor in particular for the opening — someone other than the Tennessean‘s Mark Silverman; the rumor mill had placed Silverman on Moon’s short list. (Moon eventually hired Ken Paulson — but not before offering the job to someone else, I was told.)
Moon’s nervous look
On that day when Moon visited San Francisco, I don’t think he remembered that I worked in the office there. I buzzed him inside, then re-introduced himself. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed like an uncomfortable look crossed his face, as in: Uh-oh: A Little Rock survivor. I wonder what Hopkins remembers?
(Confidential to everyone: I remember everything. Maybe that explains some of the antics at yesterday’s USA Today staff meeting? Or, maybe he’s still pissed off about this.)
Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write gannettblog[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green sidebar, upper right.
[Images: headquarters, Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects; today’s USAT front page, Newseum]
Gannett always staffed lean. I don’t know whether the term “dark time” is used any more. But that meant leaving jobs unfilled (hence: dark, unoccupied offices) — jobs that could be offered up to avert a layoff. So, I’m not surprised to hear that top editor Ken Paulson told USA Today newsroom employees yesterday that he had never laid off anyone before. And he’s worked for Gannett — with sizable breaks — since the 1980s.
Negative/positive: How you set this blog’s tone
September 12, 2008Chock full of so-called positive stories, Arkansas Inc. failed miserably. The advertising department ginned up plenty of ads for the first issue. But the ad-sales folks quickly lost interest as readers fell off in droves. The lesson then and now: Edgy, hard-news coverage wins out over rah-rah “supportive” stories every time. Readers say they want positive news — but seldom buy or click when it’s offered.
It’s no different on this blog. I rely on thousands of employees to help me find examples of great work going on across the company. Most days, I get zilch. When I find compelling work on my own, the response is often the same. For example, I wrote last week about how the Detroit Free Press got results from its amazingly great work on shenanigans in the mayor’s office (screenshot, above). The response from readers here as I write this post: zip. Not a single comment.
Readers set this blog’s tone
I’m not complaining, so much as I’m explaining, because we’re going through another cycle of people expressing frustration that so much of what’s here is, well, negative. “I don’t come often because, frankly, I am a busy working journalist and I don’t have time or interest in reading a lot of griping,” Anonymous@8:28 p.m. said yesterday in a comment on this post. “Seems like a waste of time. . . . The blog would be better if it wasn’t blatant anti-management. Don’t get me wrong. I have my own issues with management; but, I also don’t think a ‘bitch’ site solves all that much in a company going through an industry paradigm shift.”
I’m not shirking my role; I’m ultimately responsible for everything that appears on this site. Still, the vast majority of its content is now thousands of comments from readers. And those comments often drive the content of my posts. If there were more comments that were pro-management, or neutral toward management, this blog would take on a different tone.
Corporate isn’t candid enough
As I’ve said more than a few times in the past: There are 46,000 or so of you, and just one of me. I cannot patrol a company as big and far-flung as Gannett all on my own. I need your help. If you want a blog that relies less on what Corporate claims is “rumor mongering and sensationalism,” you will need to help me produce an alternative.
Please post your thoughts in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write gannettblog[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green sidebar, upper right.
[Image: a screenshot from the Freep‘s website on Sept. 4]
Posted in Commentz Korner, Detroit, Executive Suite, Little Rock, USA Today | 41 Comments »