... Craig A. Dubow resigned as Gannett’s chief executive. His short six-year tenure was, by most accounts, a disaster. Gannett’s stock price declined to about $10 a share from a high of $75 the day after he took over; the number of employees at Gannett plummeted to 32,000 from about 52,000, resulting in a remarkable diminution in journalistic boots on the ground at the 82 newspapers the company owns.
Meanwhile, for the journalistic troops on the ground, speculation at the Gannett Blog of late has been whether a fifth one-week furlough might be announced in the near future. Golden parachutes at the tip-top. Furloughs for the rest. Well, those still working that is.
And as Carr points out, Gannett isn't exactly unique, in journalism or the U.S. corporate world. But Gannett and the Tribune Company, owner of The Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun, which he also excoriates, would seem to be among the more extreme cases.
Adds Carr:
Forget about occupying Wall Street; maybe it’s time to start occupying Main Street, a place Gannett has bled dry by offering less and less news while dumping and furloughing journalists in seemingly every quarter.
