Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Media Gannett CEO has Seen the Future and it Sux
Posted by PJ Tobia on Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 11:00 AM
So it turns out that this confusing mess of rewritten press releases, wire service stories and baby/pet pictures has a name: the Information Center.
A few days ago Romenesko, the world’s greatest journo-nerd blog, posted this memo dated 11/02/06 from Gannett CEO Craig Dubow. The memo is about a “Gannett innovation called the Information Center.”
Apparently this was written in advance of Gannett’s roll-out of a new website design that both remaining Tennessean readers are now stuck with. Dubow describes the new look—which is the online version that has been up for the last year or so—as “the essence of our Vision and Mission and a key element of our Strategic Plan” (caps in original, if you can believe it.)
He also says that “the Information Center, frankly, is the newsroom of the future.”
Who knew the future was so hard to read and full of pointless blogs?
The CEO also promised that this would help attract more advertisers, though given how the mega-chain is whacking employees left and right, I have yet to be convinced.
At this point it almost seems unfair to make fun of the beleaguered daily and its parent company. Their stock is in the toilet, and more layoffs are almost certainly in the cards. On the other hand, any paper that publishes something called “Michael W. Smith: A hair history” on its front page deserves exactly what it gets.
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