The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

I'm going to post a bit more on the D&C next week, but those of you who have a long-term interest in the Gannett empire would do well to check out Gannett Blog.  "The Editor", who runs the blog, gets lots of inside tips from Gannett employees.

Here's a short sample of the corporate dysfunction he finds:

• Online ad growth at Gannett is half the industry average.
• Gannett stock is at a ten-year low.
• Gannett bought a video publishing service that doesn't let users embed video in blog posts, a key feature that helps video go "viral".
  
• Gannett's crisis management pales in comparison to Coke, which also faced a crisis in the 80's.

The Editor wraps it all up in a "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic" post, which contains this important insight about what Gannett needed to do with its new corporate plan:

It needed more reporters, editors, photographers and artists to gather the exclusive content -- from city council meetings to high school football games -- that would give Gannett papers and TV stations a competitive edge.

"Exclusive content" is critically important, because few will visit a newspaper's website to read reprints of stories they can get elsewhere.  If Gannett adopted the Editor's strategy in Rochester, we'd have more beat reporters, which means more coverage of debates, town hall meetings and other events of interest to constituents in the 29th.

Of course, none of this is forthcoming.  Gannett has elected to do more of the same, and their stock price reflects the market's judgment on that strategy.