Thought I’d launch my new social media blog with a befitting Thanksgiving #thankfulfor post.  And it’s social media I am thankful for.

Let’s talk about Twitter.  I started a new position in November 2008 as a social media content manager for Gannett.  The position has many facets.  It was not a coincidence that I already had a mild obsession with Twitter, but now that it was part of my job, I jumped in 110%.  I have to say, I understand why Twitter is such a great tool, but it has also introduced me to some amazing, funny, genius people I would never have met otherwise.

There are too many to count and I planned to show screen shots of some of my favorite tweets, but silly me, I didn’t realize Twitter doesn’t go back a whole year in my replies.  So what I will show you are at least a few of my favorites from the past few months (and a few I was smart enough to favorite at the time).

Making me laugh:

After tweeting during a PGA tournament, I became friends with @TigersHeadCover.  After mentioning I wasn’t really a Tiger fan, this was the reply-

After mentioning the window sun shade I use on my car has a large Windows 95 logo on it (was a free promo item many years ago), I got this reply-

Mentioning I am obsessed with Augmented Reality (new technology), this reply:

The genius of it-

Then of course, the Tweeple you expect to be funny, like this one-

Bonding:

Not until you share an event of some sort on Twitter, do you really understand the power of a hashtag (#).  Watching sporting events, or awards shows or breaking news- sharing the experience with 1000’s of people on Twitter via a hashtag- is an amazing experience.

Not human, and that’s ok:

When I first realized there were animals on Twitter, I was fascinated.  I even started an account for my kitties and they follow only animals.  These animals have parties (#pawparty) and special dedicated days (#woofwednesday) and it’s an amazing culture.  But I am most thankful for the joy these ‘tweeting animals’ bring me.

They are some of the cutest, happiest twitterers out there-

They are grateful beyond belief-

extremely smart-

and of course, the most popular feline on Twitter, with over a million followers, Sockington-

ok- this one isn’t an animal, but it is a baby- a baby who tweets.  And she is a Republican (unlike her Democrat parents)-

Motivation:

I am not always motivated to workout.  But the people on Twitter, people I don’t even know, are always there to help with motivation.

And the random kindness:

Tweeted about my cravings for ice cream…

he lives in Hawaii.

And a day I was just feeling crummy-

Oh and of course the occasional awesome tweet from a social media rock star

Only 3 months?

And these are just from the past 3 months.  Can you imagine the humor, joy, kindness, support, I’d even say love, that I have seen from my Twitter friends over this past year, not to mention since I joined Twitter (mid ‘08)?  And please don’t anyone feel disappointed for not being mentioned in this post.  You all rock and I could write 100 posts about you all!

If anyone says they don’t get Twitter, and you want to go to your standard list of pre-existing reasons you rant and rave about to colleagues and friends, instead try a new and different approach.  Show why you are thankful for Twitter.

This post doesn’t even delve into why I love and use Twitter for business and why I teach and encourage the staffs at Gannett’s 80+ newspapers and 20+ TV stations to use it regularly.  This is just for me in my personal way, saying thank you to my Tweeple.  You guys rock beyond belief.  Happy Thanksgiving!

A lot of us are pretty pissed off that our companies are doing poorly. We’re seeing our stock options lose what worth they had; we’re not getting raises or actual promotions — just new titles that mean “here’s another responsibility we’re not going to pay you for”; we’re working unpaid overtime because we can’t finish our jobs in the allotted day because we have so many meetings to attend that we can’t get into a groove and finish more than half a task at once.

But it’s not just the corporate office that’s the problem. Some companies are rotting from the bottom up.

Jim Hopkins, formerly of USA Today, used to run a watchdog blog that took USA Today’s parent company, Gannett, to task for its misdeeds. Here’s something that a blog commenter posted a while back that you might be interested in reading:

I can’t help feeling that lots of little stories were missed here. Combined, all the many smaller issues are what really makes or breaks a workplace. Employee spirits and productivity are often broken by bosses who hit the bottle a bit too much or by managers sleeping with the help. I know of one Gannett editor who was emotionally/clinically disturbed to the point where he should have been removed from his job years ago, before he inflicted so much damage on so many careers of people who worked for him. He went undetected because higher-ups refused to open their eyes to realities, a common problem at Gannett properties of all sizes:

* Staffers who have to pull double duty because of a coworker’s incompetence.
* The general lack of accountability for some while others are held to impossibly high standards.
* The huge workloads and all the rework that is necessary because of territorial misbehavior.
* The inability of mid-level editors to truly lead without being either mean or over-the-top friendly (in sort of a fake way).
* The lack of respect that comes in all forms.

Which of those five things have affected you already?

Double duty: I’ve written on several occasions — and in fact just last week — that employees often find themselves covering for the less-skilled workers so that everyone doesn’t get dinged. They do it without getting paid extra or even getting recognized, and if they go to their bosses because someone’s slacking… well, the boss might do something, or the boss might not, but it will trickle back down that you’re the person who tattled. It’s just like grade school except without dodgeball.

Accountability: The only person held accountable is you. Not your co-workers, who keep screwing up. Not your boss, who keeps overloading you and expecting you to continue to perform but doesn’t even thank you for making him look good. Not the CEO, who keeps his job and his expensive car and his two months off a year when you’re barely keeping your head above water.

Rework: The last person to know that the entire focus of the project has been changed is the person who has to do the most work, or the most detail-oriented work at any rate. And that person is always told at the last minute, right after turning in something that he or she thinks is some of his or her best work. And that person is always, always you.

Lack of leadership: Who’s in charge around here? No one! No one wants to take responsibility or make any decisions because that creates an accountability situation. People run around like beheaded chickens until the Big Boss finally tells them what to do, and that doesn’t help much either because the Big Boss just gets grumpy and takes it out on the peons — you again.

Respect: If your boss doesn’t respect you, then you don’t respect your boss. And you don’t respect your boss’s boss because s/he isn’t making sure your boss is respectful of how much work s/he is dropping on your head on a daily basis. Oh, and “employee of the month” doesn’t cut it. Not anymore.

Is your company rotting from the bottom up? Or just from the top down?

The correct answer is probably “both”, and you know it.

Today in The (Monroe) News-Star we have another in the unending series of editorials lauding the higher education establishment in Louisiana. The editorial is authored by this gaggle of folks.

The editorials in this column represent the opinions of The News-Star’s editorial board, composed of President and Publisher David B. Petty, Executive Editor Kathy Spurlock, Managing Editor Ken Stickney, community representatives Gretchen Dean, Anthony Killian and Jake Metzger and newsroom representative Margaret Croft.

Just keep in mind who at least two of the authors are and why might they be interested in what happens in the Louisiana education bureaucracy.

Executive Editor Kathy Spurlock is married to Lindsey Wilkerson, a $52,000 per year Director of Web Services in the office of University Advancement & External Affairs at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. And Carey Creagan Stickney, wife of Managing Editor Ken Stickney has a $61,600/year job as Dean of Enrollment Services at Louisiana Delta Community College in Monroe.

There are reports that former Asheville Citizen-Times Editor Susan Ihne has settled her $15 million wrongful termination lawsuit against newspaper Publisher Randy Hammer and the newspaper’s parent company, Gannett Co.  The terms of the settlement haven’t been disclosed.

The lawsuit, filed by Susan Ihne in December 2008, claimed that she suffered from workplace bullying while working with Randy Hammer.  Ihne claimed that Hammer began bullying and harassing her shortly after he started working at the newspaper in october 2007. 

The lawsuit stated “that this harassment and bullying consisted of yelling and raising his voice at the Plaintiff, belittling and degrading her on the job, and misusing his power in a calculated effort to destroy her self-confidence and get her to resign from her job.”

Ihne also claimed that Hammer threatened to fire her and ordered her not to contact corporate headquarters concerning him.  Hammer “created a hostile work environment by his abusive conduct,” according to the lawsuit.

Ihne informed Gannett’s upper management about Hammer’s harassment and abusive conduct, but she claimed that Gannett failed to take action.  Furthermore, the lawsuit stated that Ihne was fired in May 2008, and Ihne claimed that the termination was “due to age discrimination and sex discrimination.”

Ihne joined the Citizen-Times in October 2005.  In a 27-year career with Gannett, Ihne worked for a number of newspapers as a reporter and manager. She was awarded the Gannett’s top honor for an editor — a President’s Ring — in 1999 and again in 2005.

————–

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According to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, Gannett’s newspapers suffered plunges in circulation from September 2008 to September 2009. The Louisiana newspaper numbers are as follows:

The (Lafayette) Daily Advertiser: (-15.6%)
The (Shreveport)Times: (-10.6%)
The (Monroe) News-Star: (-9.7%)
(Opelousas) Daily World: (-24.2%)

We give them another couple of years before they all literally dry up and blow away.

The (Monroe) News-Star’s Johnny Gunter this morning reports on the move to hire a Shreveport consultant to monitor Monroe’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program. LPNO had reported on the story earlier.

From Editor & Publisher:

Circulation at many of the country’s largest newspapers continued a steep slide as the Audit Bureau of Circulations Monday morning released the latest figures for the six months ending September 2009 — proving yet again that the industry can’t shake the dramatic declines that have taken hold over the past several years.

On a comparable basis, ABC reported that for the 379 newspapers filing with the organization, average daily circulation plunged 10.6% to 30,395,652 — one of the most severe drops in overall circulation. Sunday circulation for 562 reporting newspapers was down 7.4% to 40,012,253.

Here are the top twenty-five newspaper’s numbers, also from E&P:

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL — 2,024,269 — 0.61%
USA TODAY — 1,900,116 — (-17.15%)
THE NEW YORK TIMES — 927,851 — (-7.28%)
LOS ANGELES TIMES — 657,467 — (-11.05%)
THE WASHINGTON POST — 582,844 — (-6.40%)

DAILY NEWS (NEW YORK) — 544,167 — (-13.98%)
NEW YORK POST — 508,042 — (-18.77%)
CHICAGO TRIBUNE — 465,892 — (-9.72%)
HOUSTON CHRONICLE — 384,419 — (-14.24%)
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER — 361,480 — N/A

NEWSDAY — 357,124 — (-5.40%)
THE DENVER POST — 340,949 — N/A
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC — 316,874 — (-12.30%)
STAR TRIBUNE, MINNEAPOLIS — 304,543 — (-5.53%)
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES — 275,641 — (-11.98%)

The PLAIN DEALER, CLEVELAND — 271,180 — (-11.24%)
DETROIT FREE PRESS (e) — 269,729 — (-9.56%)
THE BOSTON GLOBE — 264,105 — (-18.48%)
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS — 263,810 — (-22.16%)
THE SEATTLE TIMES — 263,588 — N/A

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE — 251,782 — (-25.82%)
THE OREGONIAN — 249,163 — (-12.06%)
THE STAR-LEDGER, NEWARK — 246,006 — (-22.22%)
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE — 242,705 — (-10.05%)
ST. PETERSBURG (FLA.) TIMES — 240,147 — (-10.70%)

An analysis from Reflections of a Newsosaur:

Following an average drop of 10.6% in the last six months, daily newspaper circulation has fallen to a pre-World War II low of an estimated 39.1 million, according to an analysis of industry data released today.

The first double-digit circulation decline in history means only 12.9% of the U.S. population buys a daily newspaper. The analysis is based on data provided by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, an industry-funded group.

Newspaper circulation now is lower than the 41.1 million papers sold in 1940, the earliest date for which records are published by the Newspaper Association of America. Back in 1940, newspapers were purchased by 31.1% of the population.

And here is some more good news this morning. Both revenues and profits at Gannett (GCI) continue to decline. Gannett owns the daily newspapers published in Shreveport, Monroe, Alexandria, Lafayette and Opelousas.

See the story at Marketwatch.com.

Here is the full report.

The Wall Street Journal has overtaken USA Today for the title of biggest paper in the USA; http://j.mp/pRs3D

“Where do we go from here?  The battle’s done, And we kinda won.  So we sound our victory cheer.  Where do we go from here?”
From Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Musical

A couple weeks ago we had a huge Content Summit at Gannett.  We have been planning it for months and now it is over, but I realize the work is just beginning…

Gannett is a media company and over the past two weeks, our stock has been rising, which is kinda nice.  There are a few reasons for this, but I joke that the street got wind of our new content strategy and it is showing its confidence in our plan.

My current job focuses on social media, but I have always been passionate about improving and reinforcing any company I have worked for.  I step outside of the box sometimes, and sometimes I even step too far, but I want my company to succeed.  It isn’t really about me, right?  It’s about trying to recognize ways to move Gannett into the future successfully.  This may be via innovation, may be via audience participation, may be via technological changes… never ignoring the basis of what we do best- journalism.

So today I am livestreaming sessions from Izeafest and from the Online News Association conference.  And in a couple weeks I will be attending the 2009 Blogworld and New Media Expo (very excited- if you will be there, let me know).  But my point is I am always trying to learn.  I always seek out the words of the influencers and ‘rockstars’ in the space I occupy or hope to occupy.

I don’t know what the future holds for Gannett, but I am confident we will be able to bring it through the current wave of ‘newspapers are dying’ and get to the next place where people understand and appreciate the importance of quality investigative journalism.  I want to see Gannett be known for being an innovative media company.  I will help get it there.

How much for The Town Talk?

Selling points:

It’s been an institution in our community since 1883. When you bought The Town Talk (and Central Newspapers) nine years ago, after it had been purchased by Central Newspapers in 1996 for $62 million in cash, you also bought a printing division known as McCormick Graphics, another institution in our community, named after the founder of The Town Talk, Edgar McCormick.

Great brands with great name recognition and a relatively stable region of consumers.

A regional newspaper monopoly, which is what, at the time, made your decision so obvious. After all, you specialize in mid-sized markets featuring only one or two dominant media outlets.

Setbacks:

You’ve recently had to make a number of cuts, and though you have been coy about these decisions and the divisions they have affected, no one can deny that when you report “40 jobs will be affected,” as you did late last week, you either mean, “We’re shipping them off, or we’re cutting them.”

After hearing the news last week about your decision to shutter your in-house printing operations, a friend of mine said, “It only took them thirteen years to kill McCormick Graphics (a business that, in some form or fashion, has been in Alexandria for over a century).”

In my opinion, you’re struggling here because of the exponential proliferation of the Internet (and your overall reluctance to participate or understand how to translate your product online; your forum is an example of the absolute worst kind of hybridization, “serious” journalism succumbing to contextualization by a random group of anonymous and often ignorant contributors, whose comments are rarely, if ever, checked for facts or accuracy)… and you’re struggling because of your decision to run a local, home-grown newspaper as if it could ever be an asset that could yield a 30+% return to corporate.

You can dance around it; you can pretend as if you’re still a local paper with local folks delivering the local news. But, at the end of the day, you have to ship away a chunk of your profit margin here in Central Louisiana to your national offices in Virginia. (And, by the way, USA Today is still looking good).

When the output of your editorial writers and letter writers exceeds or nearly equals the production of the LOCAL news desk (and when your forum contributors are the MOST prolific of all), the problem becomes even more obvious: Opinions, after all, are cheap, but reporting the news is what makes a newspaper a newspaper.

And sometimes, the news is bleak.

From your forum, where, admittedly, I believe rumor and innuendo often passes without objection or oversight:

Newspaper stocks surged yesterday after the release of a report that suggested that the worst of the decline in ad revenue at the nation’s dailies is now over.

The report, issued by TNS Media Intelligence, gave investors the confidence that the ads would rebound with the economy.

Gannet, the nation’s largest newspaper chain and publisher of USA Today, was the biggest winner at the end of the day. Gannett’s stock rose 92 cents to $9.98.

Shares of the New York Times Co. stock were up 88 cents to $8.82.

Stock at the E.W. Scripps Co., which publishes 13 daily newspapers, rose 88 cents to 8.83. The McClatchy Co., which publishes 30 newspapers including the Miami Herald, rose 5 cents to $2.66.

Despite the optimism, most industry analysts believe that papers will never be able to reach the same level of advertising they once enjoyed.

Last month, Lincoln Parish News Online had reported that Gannett newspapers in Louisiana might consolidate operations.

That prediction has come true.

The (Alexandria) Town Talk will soon be printed at The (Lafayette) Advertiser and trucked up I-49 and distributed to area subscribers. What this means is that Alexandria will become a news bureau office of the Lafayette newspaper.

Gannettoid.com has the story, including the memo distributed to employees. The memo says in part:

The move will require a change in press start times for the three newspapers that will be printed in Lafayette: the Daily World, The Town Talk and The Daily Advertiser. Lafayette Production Director Ross Doland is leading the project and will be working to ensure we make our press times as well as get newspapers to their respective markets and customers in a timely manner.

Shreveport-Monroe Axis

Last month it was reported that The (Shreveport) Times started construction on a new printing press. This could portend consolidation of the Monroe-Shreveport Gannett Axis and eventually make The (Monroe) News-Star a bureau of Shreveport’s paper. Over the years, when the printing plants in either Monroe or Shreveport had problems, the other’s press took up the slack.

Good News

We at Lincoln Parish News Online see this consolidation as good news. We’ve made no secret or our disdain for Gannett and its style of political reporting since it came to our state. The impact of their political endorsements, incessant cheer leading for bigger and more intrusive government and higher taxes is fading by the day.

Good news indeed…

Gannettoid.com is keeping up with events.

Gannett will hold a cross-divisional content summit on September 15-17. Poynter Online has the memo.

Gannett to Consolidate Ad Operations in Indy, Des Moines

Gannett confirms RABC plans. Layoffs included, but number unknown.

The (Shreveport) Times to get a new printing press.

Westchester’s Journal News has completed their reorganization, and the verdict is in: cartoons beat business.

The Gannett-owned paper announced today they had decided to lay off their entire business staff in an effort to make good on their August 12 pledge to cut 50 editorial staff members. But the paper determined the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, Matt Davies, can stay.

The choice sheds light on an interesting trend begun last week by the Chicago Tribune. Despite decreasing revenue, the Windy City paper decided to hire editorial cartoonist Scott Stantis, a move the Tribune’s senior vice president and editor Gerould Kern said would “give a new dimension to our role as watchdog over the community’s interests.”

And spurred by the popularity of internet images and slideshows, Ted Rall said this:

Competing with the Internet requires newspapers to showcase their editorial pages and to use edgier, more graphic content.

But the Journal’s decision also reveals the local paper’s discouraging stance on business reporting. Who will report on local business news? And what about the entire newspaper industry?

The good news is these staff members will be able to reapply for different jobs as part of the Journal’s restructuring plan. Maybe there’s a new opening for a crossword puzzle editor.

Well, that fight didn’t last long.

The Southeastern Conference, an NCAA powerhouse, caved on most restrictions it attempted to push on media in exchange for game credentials. The restrictions, according to Editor & Publisher, included:

- No use by newspapers of video and audio game highlights on their Web sites.
- Time-limited restrictions on use of post-game and pre-game video and audio.
- Use of photos online only as part of regular news coverage, not for other purposes, archives or sale.
- The SEC and its universities must be granted licensing privileges to use newspaper images for its own news coverage and other uses.
- No blogging on newspaper Web sites of game events during games.

Anyone with even a slight media awareness would recognize such a policy as absurd. Both the Associated Press and Gannett, a media company that owns several newspapers in SEC country, had rightly refused to take a pen anywhere near the SEC’s revised media credential policy, casting uncertainty upon how the college football season – set to start in a few days – would be covered.

Less than a month after issuing said policy, though, the SEC has relaxed on most contested issues. My question is who in the SEC thought media organizations would actually comply with such restrictions. More to the point, how could a college sports conference be arrogant enough to think it could silence the 24-hour digital media cycle?

No blogging on newspaper sites during games? How exactly were university athletics departments supposed to enforce an embargo on dozens of journalists writing live updates about the touchdown pass that everyone in the world just watched live? They couldn’t, and there was never a good reason to try.

I do have some sympathy for the SEC, though, as well as other major sports organizations. Technology has changed so quickly, giving meteoric rise to social tools like Twitter, that professional and college sports officials just don’t know how to police media – even in their own locker rooms. Leagues and teams have had to compose policies on the fly to address issues like player tweets.

But the SEC was absurd to think it could scale back media coverage during live events. That would be like telling newspapers they can’t publish game stories until the next day’s paper hits newsstands. Restrict media access to practices if you must, but understand you can’t prevent media from instantaneously photographing, tweeting or blogging events that are happening in front of everyone. If some beered-up guy on a couch in Murfreesboro can blog during a game, then I’d think a professional journalist for the Nashville Tennessean also should be able to.

Perhaps the SEC momentarily outgrew its Southern britches. Or, perhaps it just wanted to see how far it could push media organizations that count on the revenue from SEC football coverage. Well, the SEC, as well as other conferences and professional sports organizations, got a united answer: We’re utilizing all the media tools available to us, and we won’t agree to your restrictions.

I suspect we’ve seen the last of policy proposals like this one.

The first time I saw front-page advertisements in the Oakland Press, a publication I once considered the best pound-for-pound newspaper in Michigan, I thought it was the most buffoonish thing I’d ever seen.

Then the ads got bigger, expanding across once-off-limit property on the paper’s front page and sports cover. Then, The Detroit News started running its own front-page ads (I always knew how much milk cost at Kroger), followed by The Detroit Free Press, soon after it changed hands from Knight-Ridder to Gannett. Suddenly, all my favorite newspapers were sporting ads on their most important real estate.

This used to make me sick. Now, I’m thankful for it. Just like I’m thankful the News and Freep are delivering only three days a week, and can only be found in anorexic form on newsstands the rest of the week.

Sure, these are horrible changes for the part of me that grew up loving newspapers. But those newspapers no longer exist. The news print has shrunk, the Metro and Business sections have assimilated into the front section, and you can no longer get your newspaper delivered on a daily basis.

Yet, Detroit still has two solid daily newspapers, plus a third if you count the Oakland Press, which continue to cover Metro Detroit. (I refuse, however, to include the Macomb Daily in my count.) So while we might not like the physical product as much as we used to – and, really, what do we like as much as we used to? – there are still hundreds of professional journalists covering an area that doesn’t necessarily have the economy to support it.

That’s amazing.

Think about it. How long have we been hearing that either The Detroit News or Detroit Free Press would fold? I can remember a time, a few years ago, when I heard from people inside both newspapers that one of them would be gone within a year. Yet, both news organizations persist, breaking news, keeping us up to date on the Magglio Ordonez contract situation, and alerting us to the latest Detroit government scandal.

I’m done weeping over newspapers. Sure, the news doesn’t have the depth of coverage it once did. But auto manufacturers aren’t exactly cranking out the number of cars they once did. Things change.

I’ll choose to focus on the positive – that Metro Detroit remains one of the country’s best-covered media markets, with two major daily newspapers still rolling presses, buying time for an industry to learn how to profitably transition news from print to digital.

I still hate the front-page ads. But at least we’ve still got newspapers to print them on.

Gannettoid.com is reporting this morning that it has obtained copies of internal documents laying out plans for consolidation in advertising production. The plan is supposed to be implemented in Des Moines, IA and Indianapolis, IN, regions first.