Buyouts, refinancing at Gannett
Gannett has accepted some 500
buyout opt-ins from employees, Poynter reported Nov. 12. The company had
offered the buyouts in October.
The
buyouts involve some 60 editors, 19 photojournalists, seven managing editors,
three executive editors and 124 reporters, says Poynter, which got a copy of a
listing of the job titles of people chosen for buyouts.
Some 600 people had wanted a
buyout, Poynter said.
Gannett announced Nov. 17
that it had refinanced $500 million in debt.
Layoffs at Tulsa
World
The Tulsa World has cut at
least 10 journalists, Poynter reported in September.
The cuts followed layoffs at
other Lee Enterprise papers, Poynter says.
The Tulsa World had cut seven
people from its design desk earlier in September, Poynter says.
Iowa-based Lee bought 30
dailies, The Buffalo News and more than 49 paid weekly publications from BH
Media, completing the sale in 2020.
Poynter provides a running
list of layoffs around the country.
Lee was also in the news
after a radio story on Floyd Press (Virginia)
employee Ashley Spinks. Spinks said she was fired after the story, WCTF
reports.
Sen. Cantwell releases report on local journalism
Senate Commerce Committee
Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) has released a report titled
“Local Journalism: America’s
Most Trusted News Sources Threatened.”
The report outlines how
changes in the information marketplace and the dominance of online platforms
pose an existential threat to local news publishers, says the News Media
Alliance. The report notes the vital importance of high-quality journalism to
our communities and calls for the restoration of local journalism, including
through Congressional action, says the Alliance.
The publication of the report
came ahead of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation’s
hearing on Oct. 28 examining Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The
heads of Twitter, Facebook and Alphabet/Google testified at the hearing.
Senate Judiciary Committee
Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) announced that Twitter CEO Jack
Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg were scheduled to appear voluntarily
before the committee on Nov. 17. The hearing focus was the “platforms’
censorship and suppression of New York Post articles,” says a release from
Graham.
Plain Dealer’s Friday section retooled
The Plain Dealer’s Friday
entertainment section has been retooled, the paper said. Starting Oct. 23, it’s
been published as a broadsheet section. It’s now dubbed “In the CLE.”
The section had been a
magazine-sized tabloid for more than a half century. It started as The Plain
Dealer Action Tab in 1966 and was renamed Friday in 1976, says the paper.
Among “In the CLE” offerings
are arts news and features, movie reviews, TV picks and coverage of musical
acts to hear locally and online, says the paper.
Dallas Morning News journalists vote for
union; Fort Worth may follow
Journalists at The Dallas
Morning News and Al DÃa have won the right to negotiate as a group for a union
contract, the paper reported Oct. 16.
The National Relations Labor
Board said newsroom staff voted 84 to 28 in favor of union representation. NLRB
must formally certify the results.
“We are disappointed with the
unofficial results of the union vote,” said The News' Publisher Grant Moise in
a statement. “We felt strongly that the best way to move forward is without a
third party being inserted into our newspaper’s culture. We respect the rights
of these employees and will proceed forward in good faith negotiations.”
A. H. Belo owns the paper.
The vote was to form the
Dallas News Guild under the Communications Workers of America.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram agrees to recognize union
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram
has agreed to voluntarily recognize a union for newsroom staff, the paper
reported Nov. 2.
Management’s agreeing to
recognize the unionizing effort means there is no need for a vote on the issue.
More than 80% of
non-management staff signed union authorization cards, the organizing committee
said.
The Fort Worth NewsGuild will
be part of The NewsGuildCommunications Workers of America.
McClatchy owns the paper
It’s the second major paper
in Texas to
go for a union recently. Newsroom staff at The Dallas Morning News opted in
October to unionize.
New York Times Co. launches Pivotal ad platform
The New York Times Company’s
advertising team has unveiled Pivotal, a platform built for marketers seeking
brand relevance and consumer insight on “the most important topics today,” says
the Times.
Backed by the Times’s
audience data and research, Pivotal delivers guidance and recommendations for
brands to shape creative work and marketing strategies.
The team conducted
multilayered research, interviewed journalists, experts, readers and adults
across the U.S.
and tapped into The New York Times’s first-party data to outline
recommendations around six key territories: race, climate, sex, gender, tech
and money.
“Pivotal offers marketers
insight on the role their brands can play in our lives. In the near future,
we’ll introduce a variety of ways brands can engage with our experts and our
insights,” says the Times.
Uberall works with Gannett, acquires SweetIQ
Uberall has been chosen by
Gannett and its digital marketing subsidiary ReachLocal to become their premier
provider of presence management solutions, said a press release from Uberall.
As part of the agreement,
Uberall will acquire Gannett’s SweetIQ subsidiary. Providing local digital
marketing services, the SweetIQ team will join Uberall and become part of a new
Montreal hub, the company’s seventh location
outside its Berlin
headquarters.
“We’re thrilled that Gannett
selected our ‘Near Me’ brand experience platform as their presence management solution,”
said Florian Hubner, co-founder and CEO of Uberall. “We also want to welcome
SweetIQ’s staff to Uberall and look forward to providing even better service
and support to our North American partners going forward.”
Vox Media launches Concert Ad Manager
Vox Media has launched
Concert Ad Manager, a self-service tool giving brands, particularly small and
medium-sized businesses, the ability to build and deploy ad campaigns at scale,
across premium publishers within the Concert and Concert Local marketplaces,
says Vox.
Concert Local is a
centralized advertising marketplace bringing together a collection of local
media brands, built in partnership with the Google News Initiative.
Advertisers can access
inventory across the Concert marketplace including publishers like NBC
Universal, Penske Media and Quartz along with Vox Media’s 13 topically diverse
networks, says Vox. Brands will also have access to ad inventory across the
Concert Local marketplace, which includes dozens of local media brands like
Advance Local, Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, Dallas Morning News, Star
Tribune, Tampa Bay Times and Texas Monthly.
Hartford council slams Alden Global Capital
The Hartford City Council (Connecticut) has thumbed
up a resolution pushing Alden Global Capital, the parent of the Hartford
Courant, to refrain from more layoffs, which have “decimated” the staff, and to
have the paper go back to local ownership, the paper reported in September.
The strongly worded
resolution, according to the paper, was proposed by councilwoman Marilyn E.
Rossetti.
State Sen. Saud Anwar called
into the meeting that dealt with the resolution and said that the Courant is
the longest continuously published paper in the U.S. and “a gold standard for what
can be trusted.”
Mayor Ben Florsheim of Middletown also called
into the meeting. He said Alden Global Capital “sounds like a villainous
company from a Disney movie.”
Layoffs at Meredith, Bloomberg Industry Group
Meredith Corporation cut 180
workers, the Des Moines Register reported Sept. 18.
The layoffs hit 130 staff
members from its local media group, owner of 17 television stations, the paper
said. The other layoffs are at Des Moines-based Meredith’s national media
group, which publishes People, Better Homes & Gardens and other titles.
Bloomberg Industry Group,
meanwhile, publisher of Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Tax and Bloomberg Government,
informed employees that it’s cutting 21, Talking Biz News reported Sept. 15.
The layoffs mostly involved the business side, said Talking Biz News.
Staff cut at Hearst as O to lower frequency
Beginning in mid-February of
next year, 59 employees will be cut at Hearst Magazines, according to a WARN
notice filed with the New York State Labor Department.
The move comes as Hearst’s O,
The Oprah Magazine goes from 12 issues to four in 2021.
In a video released in the
summer, Winfrey talked about the future of the magazine. “There’s been a lot of
chatter and a lot of speculation about O The Magazine ending,” she said. “I
want you to know it’s not ending. It’s evolving because after 20 years of
covers I think it’s time. I also think it’s a good thing because none of us
were meant to stay the same. We evolve with the times. So, yes, we are ending
the monthly print edition with this year’s December issue,” she said.
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