More layoffs

[Warren Toda]

Layoffs/buyouts at Postmedia and The Globe and Mail. The Globe plans to lay off or buy out half of its staff photographers.

[Ken Gigliotti]

              with heads down ,
    the greatest can only turn away,
 
 it's lips move , only a mumble is heard
    at this dark time , the  lesser reel ,
     others smile a dark unsettled  smile  ,
    and move into that emptied  space .
                  It begins.

[Warren Toda]

Usually when a sports team does poorly, they fire the coach(es). Too bad newspapers don't follow this noble tradition because the problem with newspapers starts at the top, not the bottom.

Several months ago, The American Customer Satisfaction Index released its annual survey of  - you guessed it - customer satisfaction for 2012/13.  Although it's a US survey, the results may be similar to Canada. For example, guess the bottom four industries, the four that had the lowest customer satisfaction.

Cellphone companies, cable companies and airlines.

Wasn't difficult to guess, right?

Wait, what's the fourth industry, the industry with even lower customer satisfaction?

The newspaper industry.

Newspapers have held the bottom or almost bottom position since the late 90s which, by sheer coincidence I'm sure, is when some newspapers started doing layoffs and blaming the Internet. So that's well over a dozen years in last place.

Sports teams fire the coach not only because its quick, decisive and offers the most potential for major change but also because they know the players are the stars whom the fans pay to see perform.

Perhaps someday, newspapers might realize that photographers and reporters are the stars whom the readers pay to see perform. Perhaps someday, newspapers might also realize that customer satisfaction is somewhat important.

But I'm not optimistic.

[Nathan Denette]

Bang On Warren!!!!

[Ken Gigliotti]

This is a bitter pill coming from Canada's best paper , everyone else  ranks somewhere  below

Random newspapers , never very good ,
but they didn't have to be , people just bought them .
Money was made , great gobs of money ,
No one ever asked or quality . It only cost a dime.
 Ever changing , daily .
 If you didn't like the story of the day ,
 tomorrow would be different.
  Weirdly intelligent , eclectic , sometimes safe .
   Weirdly bold ,
“Can we be sued”, was the only question .
“Don't give a damn”, was often the answer .
They just bought it , and it just sold .
  Weirdly heroic and full of brass.
Once ,arrogant , street tough , our market knew us.
God like , street wise , forthright ,
forged steel from a thousand lost bar fights.
Connected to the dark side , even St . Jude would turn his head.
Steel eyed , the only thing that mattered was , can we take 'em.
They just bought newspapers , we never ever sold them .
No one ever knew why . But we always knew where.
News boxes at busy street corners , outside factories ,
from the hands of children and hawkers .
The hard sell and an easy box ,take one take 'em all .
It's only a dime .
  The business that was always threatened , or always for sale .
Brashness came from always being near death ,
and Unforgiven
Fear of death alway made it strong and free .
Till now.

[Eduardo Lima de Oliveira]

Well said Warren.

[Warren Toda]

...Canada's best paper...

The Globe is so good that in today's paper, they had a photo which, according to the headline and caption, came from January 1797. That's 29 years before photography was even invented! Now that's good.

If you thought Toronto mayor Rob Ford using crack was a big deal, then read today's Globe front page (yes, the shiny page). According to "Canada's national newspaper", the mayor of Rio de Janeiro wears shorts! No word yet if he wears shorts while in a drunken stupor. I'm sure our nation really needed that information, that's why it was front page.

And, as they say, that's just the tip of the iceberg.


Remember when "honourable" politicians would step down when they failed in their duties or felt they could not live up to the responsibilities of their job? Why don't newspaper executives and publishers do the same?

As you know, the newspaper industry has been suffering unprecedented difficulties for the past 20 years. During this time, we had no idea what to do about it. And by "we" I mean my predecessors, not me.

Initially, we tried to ignore the problem and hoped it would go away. When that business strategy failed, we tried as many bells and whistles as possible. We put video on our web sites, we added Facebook logos, we chanted "digital first", we had reporters send mindless tweets every 3 minutes, we even added a few outside links to our web pages. But still our business floundered.

We tried to salvage our print product by changing fonts, adding celebrity gossip stories, having reporters copy and paste as many press releases as possible, eliminating photo captions, reducing the number of pictures we use and not bothering with fact checking or proof reading. We even changed our logo - twice! But our readership continued to decline.

We cut staff as much as possible, as frequently as possible, in order to keep quality high and attract advertisers. After all, the less news content we have, the more advertising space becomes available. I don't know why but so far this hasn't worked. We may have to lay off more staff to free up more page space.

Nevertheless, I have come to realize that I have not fulfilled the obligations of my office nor am I able to do so. I have let down our employees, our advertisers and most importantly, our readers. As such, I am resigning immediately.

My hope is that my successor will bring new ideas, new passion, and new life to this newspaper. Failing that, my hope is that the New York Times can come up with a solution so we can copy them again.

Famed journalist Elwood Blues once said, "we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it." That pretty much describes what we've been doing for the past 20 years - driving around aimlessly in the dark.

Today, should we bother to take off the dark glasses, we might see that the sun has risen. In fact, the lights came on over a decade ago. We just didn't see it.

My successor should learn from my mistake of trying to adapt the future to fit our past.

A newspaper's job is no longer simply reporting the news. Anyone with a cellphone can do that.

Our job is to capture the public. Capture their attention, their imagination and their aspirations. And we should do this not by blunt force - we really should stop blaming the public for failing to buy our product - but rather by using something our readers don't have a lot of - time.

We should invest the time to create original photography which has been repeatedly proven to capture the attention and imagination of the public. We should stop insulting our readers by our use of cheap, meaningless stock pictures. We should respect our readers and give them our best, not our cheapest.

We should invest the time to create the words that will inspire our readers. To that end, we should stop using rewritten press releases and stale wire copy.

Our job is to make the world smaller so that our readers can be part of something bigger. Only then will our newspaper be relevant and important to the public.

In the process, our paper should be built upon honest principles, not corporate policies or share prices. To that end:

    • Readers are smarter than us. They often know more about a story than we do. So we will fact check to make sure we get it right the first time. Anything else is an insult to the readers.

    • Advertisers are not our customers. They are not our target audience. But they are our business partners. We succeed or fail together.

    • We will no longer use 1950s techniques to understand our readers. We will not categorize our readers based upon sex, age, income or education level. None of this matters anymore, assuming it ever did.  Our job is to appeal to readers' interests, imaginations and aspirations. These are not measured by sex, age, income or education level.

   • We will stop using third-party readership surveys and do our own. We (should) know our readers best and we need to hear from them directly.

    • We don't have to be first. We just have to be the best. We won't publish any story until it's done, and done right. This will ensure our credibility and build trust with our readers. Credibility is everything.

    • We will publish only non-partisan, unbiased information at all times. When we do self-serving reporting, we fool no one but ourselves because readers are smarter than us.


In conclusion, for the past few years, I have truly enjoyed cashing my weekly paycheque which, thankfully, wasn't tied to performance. Someone once suggested that my annual salary should be $1 for each subscriber we had. Thank god that didn't happen.

But don't cry on my departure. My bonus exit package just paid for a new house in Boca Raton and a lifetime membership at the Polo Club.

[Ken Gigliotti]

If it isn't the smartest paper , it might have had the  smartest person running it . This predicament has been in the works for many decades .We have some smart people too . Everyone is thinking till it hurts.  This is a tangle of neglect and side deals over a very long time .   The end of denial . “Day late” is almost insurmountable in this culture  , but people like to read and see what they see acknowledged .Just make it interesting  and leave the news to the web . To the next level .Charge .

[Warren Toda]

This predicament has been in the works for many decades. ... This is a tangle of neglect and side deals over a very long time.

Gradually, then suddenly.

The end of denial.

"If you have the same problem for a long time, maybe it’s not a problem. Maybe it’s a fact."

And: Dead Brand Walking


Those links talk about retail businesses but see if you can spot the similarities with the newspaper business.

[Ken Gigliotti]

Masking a problem by rolling it in profit  or during WW2 the Japanese based  their defeat on “victory disease” to much early success . Even where I work ,there are those who still say ,” well we still make a lot of money” . It is the trend that is getting the attention and what to do next is worrisome . The Globe just gave everyone permission to fire photographers. The world is going visual , this is out of step .
Speaking Of Mayor Ford -The Rob Ford media circus brings my idea of “audience  thirds' into focus . There is a small  group of people who go to a restaurant, buy the meal and decide if they like the place or not. Some hate the meal  and  make a big noisy deal about the bad meal and won't pay , demand  the  manager etc. . The many others who are unhappy , pay for the meal smile and say good bye but will not return and the restaurant owner will never know why  . So the newspaper  is the restaurant ,ok.
  The Rob Ford showed that the former newspaper readers are still around , but need  a good menu special to bring around.  . Same for hard news , disasters and mayhem .  In politics it is called the “undecided”.
 The Ford thing was kind of a street fight  and the call to watch was like a crazy all age  flash mob of interest .It was like two old pick up trucks crashing into each other in a farmers field . Great fun . The public got to witness  the newspaper business discover that people take drugs . With all the tire spinning ,crashing about , and parts falling off, the readers had a pretty good time . This isn't the public broadcaster crowd we always hoped for, but it was big  and carried on way longer than it should have. At the end of the day everyone was just covered in mud and feeling just a little bit ashamed . But the numbers , it just captured everyones attention .  My take from all that ,the customers aren't dead or disinterested , they just “undecided” about content and  need a good show.