23 March 2009

gannett / the town talk downward spiral continues

Gannett Co. Inc., the parent company of The Town Talk, announced today that all employees will be required to take unpaid time off during the second quarter of 2009. The company also announced a wage and salary freeze.

The unpaid time off will be taken during the second quarter, which starts Monday and continues through June 28.

In a memo to all Gannett employees, Craig A. Dubow, chief executive officer of the McLean, Va.-based media company, said:

"We are about to begin the second quarter without any real relief in sight from this unprecedented economic downturn and its challenge to our company. Despite all of your truly remarkable efforts to reverse the trend, our revenue numbers continue their downward slide and we have been faced with more difficult decisions.

"One of those choices was between more layoffs or another round of furloughs. We chose, for most employees, a furlough program consisting of at least one week of unpaid leave to be taken in April, May or June."

Higher-paid employees will be required to take a second furlough week or a combination of one week’s furlough plus a temporary salary reduction equivalent to one week’s pay.

A separate memo to employees, from Robert J. Dickey, president of Gannett’s U.S. Community Newspaper Publishing division, said a wage and salary freeze will be effective April 1, 2009, through March 31, 2010.

Gannett Co. Inc. publishes 85 daily newspapers, including USA Today, and nearly 900 non-daily publications. In Louisiana, the company owns The Town Talk in Alexandria, The Daily Advertiser in Lafayette, The News-Star in Monroe, the Daily World in Opelousas and The Times in Shreveport. ~ source

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this is gannett's second round of mandatory unpaid employee furloughs.
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meanwhile, william gheen, with americans for legal immigration writes:
From the New York Times to the Raleigh News and Observer, there are For Sale signs hanging on the doors of prominent newspapers across America with only a few buyers at hand.

While this must be very stressful for newspaper employees, editors and reporters alike, a large consensus of American citizens are waving and saying "goodbye and good riddance!".

Public trust for the contents of the American print media has reached all time lows. Most Americans who still read these papers have become adept at discerning the truth of what is happening by what is either distorted by the papers or what facts and perspectives are completely missing from articles like large elephants in the room.

Reading between the lines is what news consumers have been forced to do, as the ethics of journalism have been abandoned and many major print media institutions have become more concerned with attempts to politically indoctrinate their readers to fairly unsupported views, instead of telling readers what is really going on in our nation.

You can trust my word on this, because I am a man who is lucky to even be quoted before at all in publications like the LA Times, New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and Chicago Tribune.

While the Washington Times stands alone, with their fair treatment of my positions in favor of more border security and immigration enforcement, almost every one of these other publications have abused me, my positions, and the truth!

If you do see a quote from me, the chances are higher than 50% that I've been intentionally misquoted by a reporter working for a newspaper that favors amnesty for illegal aliens. If you are lucky enough to even have an opportunity to hear my view, which is representative of the vast majority of Americans on immigration issues, you can usually find my quote just past the half way mark in any article, which has been determined to be the part of the article people are least likely to read or remember.

My opposition, those who favor amnesty for illegal aliens and open borders, will usually be found in the first and last of the article, which are the prime locations for quotes. I am lucky if the article quotes less than five opposition sources compared to my single doctored comment.
[...]
Gone are the days of true investigative journalism, as any ramped up news story has, to pass through intensive Political Correctness filters creating a world where every child in America has heard of the Duke Lacrosse Team, but not even one newspaper in North Carolina will mention the more than four documented and horrific gang rapes of innocent Americans by illegal aliens in the last few years.

The real gang rapes are suppressed and censored information because it might alarm the natives and the public might seek political change towards more immigration enforcement and border security. The Duke Lacrosse fiction novel was big news because it fits the story cliche that white people, especially wealthy white people are the cause of all of society's ills. Racial equality concerns have given way to racist one way streets in the modern print media. Of course, the Duke Lacrosse fiction story had to go out of the limelight immediately once the abused college students were exonerated.

The real problem with the newspapers goes far deeper than racial issues or even top political issues like illegal immigration.

The real problem with the American print media is with the truth. Many of them have sacrificed the truth at the altar of politics and engaged in unethical behavior to conceal the truth, while propagating lies. The results are manifest in our nation, and the results are a key reason America is in so much trouble and experiencing so much hardship today.

The same lack of integrity, the same lack of principles, the same disconnect from the American public, and the same greed and political corruption that infects Washington, DC is pandemic in the newsrooms and offices of the editors.

The newspapers have been lying to their readers by crafting political propaganda so thick that there should be a "paid for by" disclaimer beneath the articles as campaigns for public office are required to provide. I wonder if the Federal Elections Commission could handle the extra work load of regulating these paid political writers at the papers?

There's lots of talk in Washington, DC of regulating free speech on talk radio shows and the Internet. Could it be any more overt that corrupt politicians in DC are trying to protect their corrupt political advertisers in the print media? If we needed any regulation of free paid political speech in America, which I do not approve of, it should start with the newspapers.

Vox populi vox Dei

After all, Internet news, blogs, and talk radio shows have rapidly growing and loyal audiences. This is because Americans are getting more accurate information via these mediums and if there is a political slant to the coverage at least it is overt and not masquerading as fair and balanced, as the newspapers claim. ~ read more
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see also
eric hufschmid
the media criminals
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gannett stock nyse:gci closed today at $2.35. thats down from a 52 week high of 31.86 and slightly above a 52 week low of 1.85
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