In a first-floor space the new management at The Tennessean has dubbed an "ideation room," editor Stefanie Murray called a meeting of the newly rehired for what she has dubbed the "newsroom of the future."
Standing in a circle, everyone took a chip from a metal box that was part of a poker set. Murray asked each person to tell the group why they were "all in" on this experiment.
"That was just an ice breaker game I had seen done at a conference a few years ago," Murray told the Scene via email, "and thought it would be a fun way for everyone to be able to say something in front of the group about their new roles."
Of course, everyone had new roles because the newspaper and its parent company, Gannett, had fired the entire staff and made them reapply for new jobs in the newsroom. Whether they viewed the changes at the paper as corporate re-engineering, or merely a clever way to do layoffs, few of the participants were grateful to be there. Many still seethed that they had been forced to take part in the months-long process of weeding out colleagues and friends that some called "a version of the Hunger Games," where employees vied for the same jobs in a new structure.
All in? After weeks of watching fellow journalists leave the building, some were barely there. Even star reporters stood in the circle with their arms crossed, wary of what they thought was a public "loyalty test."
"It was like 'the king is dead, long live the new king,' " said one current reporter.
From conversations with nearly a dozen current and former Tennessean staffers — none of whom would speak on the record for fear of retribution — a portrait emerges of an almost epically mismanaged situation.
For Murray, the poker chips meeting was supposed to be a way to bring the newsroom together. Little did she know that some of the highest-profile staff members standing in that circle were already headed out the door — having decided, as one said, that "there was no confidence in Stefanie's ability to lead the newsroom."
First went Brian Haas, the cops and courts reporter, who bolted for a spokesman job with the fire department. Then came the shocker: Michael Cass, the longtime Metro reporter, exited for Mayor Karl Dean's office, even though Dean has only a year left in his administration. In addition to delivering some of the paper's best beat coverage, Cass was considered a favorite colleague by most for his "even-keel demeanor with which he set a tone from the front of our newsroom," his boss Scott Stroud wrote in an email to the staff.
Stroud, however, was planning his own departure. After arriving from San Antonio three years ago, he developed a reputation as a good editor who wrote sharp analysis pieces on politics and state government on occasion. One by one, though, he watched almost his entire team of reporters walk out. A group that had spent the past year winning multiple awards for the company was virtually gone: investigative reporter Walter Roche left in July and political reporter Chas Sisk in August, followed by Haas and Cass.
Now, after passing him over for any of the new leadership positions in the newsroom, management offered Stroud a new role — tourism reporter.
"I think everyone who worked for him took that as a blow," one staffer says.
Instead, Stroud quit to become the news editor for the Associated Press bureau here in Nashville. Of his old team, that leaves only Tony Gonzalez, who has functioned almost as a one-man bureau. At one point, Gonzalez had three front-page stories and another on the local front page in the same day. The attrition has gotten so bad that by two different staffers' estimates, the paper recently had only seven news reporters covering the city.
In response, Murray has brought in reporters from other Gannett papers just to get the paper out every day. Names like Ann Zaniewski — a reporter at Murray's old paper, the Detroit Free Press — started appearing this week, and more will come to help as the new newsroom copes with an unprecedented level of openings.
The help from Detroit in particular repays a nearly 20-year-old debt. Almost exactly 19 years ago, The Tennessean bused replacement workers up to the Motor City to help break a strike by unions against the News and Free Press. Gannett has always moved staff between papers in times of crisis.
"We're bringing in a few reporters from other sites to help us while we transition, make job offers and move folks here who aren't already in Nashville," Murray said. "We've had three reporters from sister Gannett sites visit us, and all are wonderful reporters who were excited to see Nashville, and I can't thank their home editors enough for sharing!"
The sharing may not end there. Last week came news that Peter Cooper, the paper's star music columnist and go-to writer for chronicling country music legends, was leaving too. Cooper's departure for the Country Music Hall of Fame was so glaring that it merited a news story and a comment from publisher Laura Hollingsworth, with a promise that the paper "will be recruiting for a significant new talent in this role."
The firing/rehiring process that got the paper into this situation has created deep distrust of current management. One staffer referred to the entire process as "Kabuki theater."
"If they were going to go with 'more' reporters, why did so many get eliminated in the restructuring?" the staffer said. "It was clear there were favorites and directives. The process was just a fancy way to let go of people."
If that's true, the reasons for changing have not been communicated to the staff.
"We were told, 'What we're doing wasn't working,' " another staffer said. "Nobody knows what that means."
Given that morale in The Tennessean's newsroom has taken a hit in recent years after repeated rounds of layoffs and buyouts, the Scene asked Murray about the newsroom's prevailing mood.
"Morale is something I'm always concerned about. I would say it's improving, especially as we gain some new faces in the newsroom. The morale of my staff is a big focus of mine for the rest of this year into 2015," Murray says. "Maria, David and I are focused on building a strong team. [Maria De Varenne is the former editor, now news director; David Anesta is "consumer experience director."/>
"Change is always something that makes some people uncomfortable, but we have already seen that members of our team [are] excited about their new roles and the opportunity to interact directly with customers in new ways."
Murray has pushed a metrics-based approach for The Tennessean, analyzing the wants of readers (or "customers," in her parlance). The paper then attempts to meet those desires.
"At the daily news meeting, [Murray] begins meetings asking, 'What are people talking about today?' " one former staffer told the Scene this summer. "Time was editors would be asking, 'What do we have that people WILL be talking about tomorrow?' "
The approach has met with mixed results so far. Year over year, traffic for tennessean.com has largely been flat since July, with a few spikes for big news like the death of former Titans kicker Rob Bironas** (see note below). Otherwise, the paper has begun discounting subscription packages, offering three months for the price of one on print and digital bundles.
Most staff agree that Murray has remained sunny throughout the changes. Her communications with the Scene have also shown that unflappable positivity. But to some Tennessean staffers, that positivity often comes off as a lack of empathy for departing colleagues.
"In her own way, I think she actually tried to make us feel better about it, but she didn't understand that almost 100 percent of the newsroom saw this as a negative rather than a positive," one writer said. "I think a lot of people in the newsroom found her constant positivity toward restructuring as insulting to their collective intelligence."
Another responded that the root of the problem was found in the restructuring. "Basically, they told us everyone was replaceable," one person said. That has gone a long way toward losing the confidence of rank-and-file.
The Scene asked Murray specifically if the departure of so many well-known bylines after they received spots in the new newsroom was surprising.
"I think that our increased focus on engaging with our customers, especially in a social and digital world, was a change that not everyone wanted to be a part of," Murray said. "Everyone needs to make a personal decision about what they want for their lives. This is an exciting time for The Tennessean to reshape itself for the future and truly become reader-focused, but it involves a lot of changes."
Minutes after Murray's email landed, another arrived. Kevin Walters, the paper's longtime presence in Franklin, had resigned for a job with the state. After layoffs, his departure leaves the paper's Williamson bureau — located in the county where most of the paper's senior management chooses to live — with zero reporters.
Email editor@nashvillescene.com.
Update 5:15: Lance WIlliams, the Tennessean's audience analyst (and former business editor), called the Scene to object to our characterization of the site's traffic from July-present as being largely flat. Williams says that due to an improvement in the way the paper counts mobile and desktop traffic, the Scene is not accurately assessing year-over-year trend data and that the paper's monthly traffic figures are between 30-50 percent higher during the period. Because the Scene won't share its source and the data we looked at (and, fairly, the Tennessean won't share data that it doesn't make public), we cannot reconcile the two, but have no reason to dispute Williams' assessment, especially since this is his prime role for the paper.
