For Fairness Sake, Read Burlington Free Press Response To Upheaval Uproar

Burlington Free Press Executive Editor
Michael Townsend explains his perspective
on changes at Gannett and his paper.  

You might have read my sharp criticism of the media giant Gannett this week, the parent company that owns the newspaper where I used to work, the Burlington Free Press.

I stand by everything I said about Gannett's boneheaded management style, it's abuse of employees, its iffy philosophy on how to judge the importance of news articles.

The Burlington Free Press has suffered a lot of staff departures in recent weeks over this upheaval, and there's been a LOT of community discussion and criticism about the quality and journalistic commitment at the Free Press.

That discussion is a good thing.

Burlington Free Press Executive Editor Michael Townsend has responded to this discussion with an article he wrote that explains his, and Gannett's perspective on this.

In the interest of fairness, please read what he says by clicking in this link.  It can't hurt to see where he, and Gannett are coming from.

Townsend says the paper will remain committed to accountability and watchdog reporting.  It's worth reading his whole explanation.  He disagrees with a lot of the criticism that's blasting Gannett and says there's some false information floating around out there that needs to be corrected.

That said, I still have a LOT of problems with what's going on at Gannett.

Also, just to squelch any rumor mill stuff, nobody asked me to link to Townsend's article. It was my decision only.  Journalism 101 tells us to provide perspective from each side of a dispute.

Death Of A Vermont Newspaper

The other day, I wrote about how Gannett, the media giant with newspapers all over the nation, was really screwing with its employees and the reading public.

They're making veteran reporters reapply for their jobs, and using a metric that appears to determine that if reporters' material is good "click bait," then they're good. If the reporter writes great, groundbreaking stories, but people don't immediately click their "Likes" on Facebook or whatever in response,  then it's worthless.

My previous piece noted that the Burlington (Vt) Free Press is one of these Gannett papers, and they jettisoned me more than a year ago. (Which turned out to be a big favor to me, which is another story.)

However, I have to write again, because the news out of Vermont's Burlington Free Press has somehow managed to get worse. Much worse.

I'm learning today that two more veteran reporters, Terri Hallenbeck and Nancy Remsen, are sadly fleeing the paper.

As I noted, under a metric Gannett is using, successful reporters, in Gannett corporate's mind, have a lot of Web hits with their stories.

Writers whose stories don't get a lot of Web hits are suspect, at least in the crude eyes of Gannett.

Both Hallenbeck and Remsen are, or at least were, the Statehouse reporters for the Free Press. Generally, politics is followed with a lot of interest, but it's not usually the kind of thing that sends people to their 'Like" buttons on Facebook or inspires them to spout off on Twitter.  Unless a politician does something particularly abrupt and shocking.

Likewise, Tim Johnson, a veteran Free Press reporter, was not rehired when he reapplied for his job. 

Johnson covered higher education for the Free Press.  Higher education is important, especially around Burlington, where the University of Vermont, Champlain College and St. Michael's College have huge influence on just about everything.

But again, higher education isn't like cute cat videos. People don't really light up the Internet over higher education reporting unless there's something shocking. But people do follow it, because it's so important.  However, readers just generally digest Johnson's reporting, understand it, and act accordingly without screaming about it on Twitter.

But I guess to Gannett, "reader engagement" is more important than delivering the news. Engagement is important.  However, by "reader engagement," I suspect they want instant, blind responses, not thoughtful consideration of the news.

Hallenbeck eloquently talks about this on her Facebook page:

"Some of you may have heard that the Free Press and all Gannett newspapers rewrote all the newsroom job descriptions and required employees to apply for new jobs, which focus on pursuing the most popular stories as measured by website clicks. That no longer seems to include many of the stories I've had the pleasure of covering the last 10 years as a Statehouse/political reporter at the Free Press.

It breaks my journalistic heart, but I can no longer pretend it's not happening."

Hallenbeck goes on:

"The Internet has not only turned news stories into click bait, it has led people to believe they can obtain the news free of charge. If we believe that, we will get the world we are asking for - one that is less well-informed, less open to hearing new ideas from new angles."

Amen, sister!

It does cost money to really, truly find and report the news professionally and accurately. Who wants to work for free? You gotta pay somebody. And we, as news consumers, get what we pay for. Want "content" free of charge? Well Gannett's got it for you. (Although even they have pay walls, however ineffective they are. )

Getting back to click bait, is that really the best way to gauge the importance of any particular news story?

People, including me, react immediately on social media to the odd, the funny and the bizarre more often and easily than they do the news. But that doesn't mean people like me don't read and follow the news and think it's important. And I often base my decisions upon what I read from serious news sources.

Look, any publication, including the Burlington Free Press, can't be boring. There's room for light fluff amid the serious journalism. We can't eat just broccoli. It's nice to have a piece of candy thrown in every now and then.

But newspapers still ought to be home to serious, informative news. Um, that's why they're called newspapers, right?

Journalism must have writers that engage you, draw you into their articles, write well, and provide their own quirky, professional, funny and intelligent perspectives on the news.

Hallenbeck, Remsen and Johnson all did those things supremely well.  Maybe the problem with this trio of journalists is they are super smart, super experienced reporters with a lot of institutional knowledge who can go in depth and really make us understand what's going on.

We can't have that, can we? God forbid any of us read anything other than superficial, superfluous fluff news.

Gannett seems to be all about immediate gratification. I alluded to that in the original essay from the other day, when I accused them of thinking just financial quarter to financial quarter, and not long term.

So cat videos and listicles it is, then.

Luckily, Vermont has other sources that are at least partly filling the void left by boneheaded corporate newspaper management.

So, on to Seven Days, VT Digger, Vermont Public Radio and other good sources of news if I want to see what's really going on in Vermont.

I'm Sadly Watching Gannett Torture My Former Colleagues, Journalists And The Public

Gannett's rather ironic logo.  

UPDATE : Seven Days Newspaper has a little more inside info from the ridiculousness at Gannett,  here at the Burlington (Vt.) Free Press.

In the article, a reporter who unsuccessfully reapplied for a job recounts the experience.

It's infuriating.

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION: 

Maybe I have survivor's guilt.

Gannett, the media company that has itself been in the news lately with its layoffs and, um, creative management, jettisoned me in August 2013.

It was part of their wave of layoffs. They're always laying off people, it seems.

I hate to say it, but they did me a favor, especially considering what I see going on at Gannett nowadays.  Still, watching Gannett corporate head honchos do what they're doing makes me sad.

Gannett management is acting like a train engineer having a major mental breakdown and causing a real train wreck. Their victims are its journalists, and the news consuming public.

Gannett has 82 daily newspapers across the country and more than 440 non-daily publications in 30 states and Guam, says the company Web site. 

It's no secret the journalism profession has changed incredibly and newspapers are suffering. Gannett can easily be forgiven for struggling with the changing industry and how to keep readers and its newspapers and Web sites relevant.

What's inexcusable is the incredibly boneheaded, cruel and self-defeating way they're going about it.

From what I hear, and to a lesser extent, from what I remember working there, they keep reducing resources and staff, forcing the remaining people to do more work with less time and fewer means to get the job done. Plus the employees have to pour more time into social media, the web and all the other bells and whistles meant to keep readers engaged.

Everyone there is stretched too thin. The result is a poorer quality newspaper and web site, which drives away readers, which reduces revenue, which goes on and on and turns the company's newspaper division into a death spiral.

They seem incredibly intent on driving away readers and revenue, rather than attract it.  I know here in Vermont, I hear over and over again that the Gannett-owned Burlington Free Press is not worth their time anymore.

Which is a total shame, because the remaining journalists at the Free Press are totally top notch. If they were given the opportunity to actually do their jobs, the articles in the Free Press would be totally ground breaking, engaging, important, and would change Vermont for the better, all the time, every day.

One of the more succinct reactions to Gannett's boneheadedness is from blogger Jeff Pearlman, who titled a recent post: "Dear Gannett: Fuck Yourself. Love, Jeff."

Pearlman captures Gannett's self-inflicted downward spiral perfectly:

"Gannett folks shrug, say it's a byproduct of the modern newspaper as a ghost. Yet who created that ghost? Who stripped down the products, then stripped them again and again? Wo ripped the hearts and souls out of newspapers? Who ended investigative reporting? Who did this to the newspaper business?

Answer: Gannett"

The layoffs, the cookie-cutter approach Gannett management applied to journalism, the internal bureaucracy. Gannett seems to manage via panic. They think quarter to quarter, to please the shareholders who demand profits each quarter.

What Gannett fails to do, in my opinion, is think long term, to position itself in a new media landscape over the long haul.  Which makes Gannett's self promotion as a media innovator puzzling.

Recently, things got so much worse.  I guess Gannett management had to drive home the fact that the industry has changed and Gannett employees must change with it. That part, I'm OK with.

But they are going about it by forcing employees to reapply for their own jobs. It's demoralizing, humiliating, stupid, a waste of time, and damages the paper and the community.

Why not retrain workers for today's realities? And you don't have to be kind about it. The employees that show they are in the game end up staying, and the ones that won't change and grow with the job leave?

I'd guarantee that almost all Gannett employees who are respected enough, and given enough resources, not to mention pay, would embrace all this re-training wholeheartedly.

But nope, they're forcing employees to reapply.

Here in Vermont, one reporter, Lynn Monty, was laid off because she declined to reapply for a position. She understandably found the process degrading and insulting.

I'm not worried about Monty. She's a talented and passionate journalist who will land on her feet. But Monty's exit captured the attention of such national media watchers as Jim Romenesko, which further helps blacken the reputation of Gannett as a soul crusher and a model of weird management incompetence.

Monty's experience has been repeated all up and down the Gannett chain.

At the Cincinnati Enquirer, several journalists left rather than reapply for these supposedly reconfigured jobs, says the Cincinnati Business Courier.  

"Veteran employees told the Courier they are heading for the door because they would rather take a buyout package than go through another round of upheaval and the indignity of reapplying for jobs at a company they've worked at for decades."

The Arizona Republic is going through the same thing, and the accounts of what's going on there, as they appeared in the Phoenix New Times is grim. 

Gannett is splitting its business into two, a newspaper division and one for its television and non-journalism Web sites. I wonder if this upheaval is a tortured way to spin the newspaper end of the business into something value-less? Something that can be jettisoned more easily?

Gannett is certainly jettisoning staff pretty easily.

Looking back, I think Gannett was right to get rid of me last year. You want to work for a company at which you care whether they succeed or not. Gannett has created an atmosphere where I don't think that employees care whether Gannett fails.

Face it. Morale stinks. More than stinks. It's not there anymore.

I was in that boat. Like most journalists, I cared about the quality of my work, and wanted to demonstrate that through my work. Gannett, with its cutbacks and lack of resources, wasn't letting me do that.

The management at the Burlington Free Press tried their best to support us journalists and turn out the best product we could given the constricted circumstances. I have to give the editors at the Free Press tons of credit for that.

But the corporate overlords at Gannett made things impossible.

I, too stopped caring whether Gannett succeeds. So it's good that I'm out of there.

Now I've cobbled together a couple jobs and am getting by. And most importantly, I care for both the quality of my work AND I care whether the companies I work for succeed and thrive.

It's too bad Gannett seems to care a lot about its shareholders, but doesn't care much about its employees.

More importantly, Gannett doesn't seem to care much about the communities it serves.

For that, Gannett unfortunately deserves its apparent slow, painful death. It's just sad they're taking so many good people down with the ship.