This blog is mainly about the spectacular train wreck at The Sacramento Bee and its parent company, the McClatchy Company. But I also post about current events, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, politics, anything else that grabs my attention. Take a look around this blog, hope you enjoy it.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Gearino explains why Gary Pruitt should resign
Gearino makes a compelling argument for Gary Pruitt to resign. Click here to read it.
I'd add: if Pruitt doesn't resign, the board should remove him. . . .
25 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Week 7 Jim "Oops" Witt resignation watch. Do the honorable thing, Elvis. Resign. And take Boy Blunder Pruitt and Hatchet Man Wortel with you.
Don't stop with Mr. Pruitt. Management is too scared to tell the employees which of their colleagues are leaving. They left it up to the fired workers to spread that news. What a bunch of wankers.
Pruitt has lost the confidence of the employees. The don't believe in him nor do they respect him.
Regardless if what happens to McClatchy long term, Gary Pruitt lacks the ability to lead the company any longer. Nobody wants to follow him at this point. Even the survivors are sick of him.
If management is making the changes that will help newspapers rapidly evolve in a fundamentally new era, management has not made its strategy apparent to workers; instead, it seems to be gutting-and-running.
To evolve, newspapers must preserve local news writing, get rid of the content that can already be found elsewhere, and renew readers’ perception that local media provide unique and worthwhile local content.
To compete in an era of free and low-cost competition, newspapers must dismiss costly layers of editors and managers, and pay local content creators (ideally by the piece) for original high-value work that is of genuine local interest.
Because of its much higher costs, local investigative journalism (as opposed to routine reporting) may have to be handled by specialty content providers at a premium price. In the current economy, costly forms of journalism cannot effectively be subsidized with revenues from free media.
So I agree with others here that shareholders should reconsider the employment of current McClatchy management.
But to be fair, are the unions any more prepared than management to let go of layers of editors and managers, salary-based compensation, benefits, and wire content that weakens the local perception of a newspaper as something that is truly local?
11:37/4:37: It's probably the cloaking device. Pruitt's there; he's just cloaked. This is part of the "compensation package" for upper managers. The editor and publisher in Anchorage are almost always cloaked. But there's a rumor they are going to uncloak this week just to announce the names of the lucky few who get to stay and work for reduced pay to help keep profits going south. McClatchy, the one-time savior of Alaska journalism, has been transformed into McClatchy the imperial occupier. Where is Howard Weaver when you need him?
ditto 3:30! Local content is what keeps my buying my local newspaper instead of the NY Times. But instead, we've gotten rid of reporters who cover local news but hung onto the TV and film critics. I personally think they're fine people, but if we want to keep them, they should be covering local stuff, not out-of-town stuff that the AP will have anyway. Where are the business minds in these decisions??????
McClatchy’s purchase of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain, which Pruitt engineered, was a roll of the dice. He explicitly bet that newspapers could adapt to the digital future, and implicitly bet that the economy would remain strong. The second bet was lost, and the first doesn’t look good. The result? Thousands of McClatchy employees have lost their jobs in the wake of three cutbacks in less than a year.
Pruitt didn’t lose his job, though. Oh, sure, he’s taking a 15 percent salary cut and won’t get a bonus this year.
Chappy: McClatchy is a public company, and its profit-and-loss information is right there for everyone to see. It makes a profit on its core business of publishing newspapers. The losses have mostly come in the form of writedowns of assets that have lost value (which in finance-speak is called an “impairment”). If the company broke down its financials paper by paper (which it doesn’t), we’d probably see that some are, in fact, money losers … the Miami Herald, for instance. But the Triangle remains a strong market, and the N&O still operates in the black.
4:19 so why the large decrease in employees? Get rid of the losers and let the profitable newspapers alone. Bad management and very bad economy will only get worse results.
If I were to perform my professional duties as poorly as Pruitt, I would have been walked to the door long ago. Instead, I am a talented worker who gets to trudge through the bodies every day trying to get a paper on the doorstep. And you know what? He'll get his pay and bonuses back long before I do. I wish the company would cut there losses, quit plying us and the public with empty endless sentances and file already. The mothership will never bounce back from this, especially under good ole' horsefaces' leadership. Pack your box Gary - we have plenty around here to share...
25 comments:
Week 7 Jim "Oops" Witt resignation watch. Do the honorable thing, Elvis. Resign. And take Boy Blunder Pruitt and Hatchet Man Wortel with you.
Amen........and do you realize how many hourly people's jobs could be saved if they also took just one (1) Corp VP with them?
Where's my voting card!
He'll never resign. He still says that the KR purchase was a good idea.
Nobody with any real talent would take the job. It's not like they're lining up to be the CEO at struggling McClatchy.
They didn't replace the last exec who left...
We never really do hear about layoffs at corporate, do we?
Don't stop with Mr. Pruitt.
Management is too scared to tell the employees which of their colleagues are leaving. They left it up to the fired workers to spread that news. What a bunch of wankers.
It's not so much that he should resign, but that he should find the courage to ritually disembowel himself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku
Management isn't scared. They'd have to care to be afraid.
Pruitt has lost the confidence of the employees. The don't believe in him nor do they respect him.
Regardless if what happens to McClatchy long term, Gary Pruitt lacks the ability to lead the company any longer. Nobody wants to follow him at this point. Even the survivors are sick of him.
Yeah, but how many people "follow" him anyway? I'm in the same bldg with him and literally never see the man.
Yeah, but how many people "follow" him anyway? I'm in the same bldg with him and literally never see the man.
=======================
That just inidicates a really big problem. Yet another reason for Pruitt to be replaced. He is MIA.
No, he's not MIA. My point is that he's not mingling with the worker bees in some kind of rolled-up shirtsleeves, inspiring the masses kinda way.
If management is making the changes that will help newspapers rapidly evolve in a fundamentally new era, management has not made its strategy apparent to workers; instead, it seems to be gutting-and-running.
To evolve, newspapers must preserve local news writing, get rid of the content that can already be found elsewhere, and renew readers’ perception that local media provide unique and worthwhile local content.
To compete in an era of free and low-cost competition, newspapers must dismiss costly layers of editors and managers, and pay local content creators (ideally by the piece) for original high-value work that is of genuine local interest.
Because of its much higher costs, local investigative journalism (as opposed to routine reporting) may have to be handled by specialty content providers at a premium price. In the current economy, costly forms of journalism cannot effectively be subsidized with revenues from free media.
So I agree with others here that shareholders should reconsider the employment of current McClatchy management.
But to be fair, are the unions any more prepared than management to let go of layers of editors and managers, salary-based compensation, benefits, and wire content that weakens the local perception of a newspaper as something that is truly local?
http://weblogs.jomc.unc.edu/talkpolitics/?p=523
Re: 11:37 - I'm also in the same building as Pruitt, and in the more than three years I've been here, I have never seen him.
So where do we sign the petition?
In the words of Senator Chuck Grassley: Resign or go commit suicide.
11:37/4:37: It's probably the cloaking device. Pruitt's there; he's just cloaked.
This is part of the "compensation package" for upper managers. The editor and publisher in Anchorage are almost always cloaked.
But there's a rumor they are going to uncloak this week just to announce the names of the lucky few who get to stay and work for reduced pay to help keep profits going south.
McClatchy, the one-time savior of Alaska journalism, has been transformed into McClatchy the imperial occupier.
Where is Howard Weaver when you need him?
Howard left the fu%#ing building, REMEMBER???
ditto 3:30! Local content is what keeps my buying my local newspaper instead of the NY Times. But instead, we've gotten rid of reporters who cover local news but hung onto the TV and film critics. I personally think they're fine people, but if we want to keep them, they should be covering local stuff, not out-of-town stuff that the AP will have anyway. Where are the business minds in these decisions??????
McClatchy’s purchase of the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain, which Pruitt engineered, was a roll of the dice. He explicitly bet that newspapers could adapt to the digital future, and implicitly bet that the economy would remain strong. The second bet was lost, and the first doesn’t look good. The result? Thousands of McClatchy employees have lost their jobs in the wake of three cutbacks in less than a year.
Pruitt didn’t lose his job, though. Oh, sure, he’s taking a 15 percent salary cut and won’t get a bonus this year.
Chappy: McClatchy is a public company, and its profit-and-loss information is right there for everyone to see. It makes a profit on its core business of publishing newspapers. The losses have mostly come in the form of writedowns of assets that have lost value (which in finance-speak is called an “impairment”). If the company broke down its financials paper by paper (which it doesn’t), we’d probably see that some are, in fact, money losers … the Miami Herald, for instance. But the Triangle remains a strong market, and the N&O still operates in the black.
4:19 so why the large decrease in employees? Get rid of the losers and let the profitable newspapers alone. Bad management and very bad economy will only get worse results.
If I were to perform my professional duties as poorly as Pruitt, I would have been walked to the door long ago. Instead, I am a talented worker who gets to trudge through the bodies every day trying to get a paper on the doorstep. And you know what? He'll get his pay and bonuses back long before I do. I wish the company would cut there losses, quit plying us and the public with empty endless sentances and file already. The mothership will never bounce back from this, especially under good ole' horsefaces' leadership. Pack your box Gary - we have plenty around here to share...
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