My final blog post, related to the reorganization of the newsroom, is about our relationship with The Tennessean.
The rumor mill is always working and there are a lot of folks who think we are, or about to be, a bureau of The Tennessean, or a section, or an insert, or something else.
And it is complete hogwash, regardless of what they wish were true.
We have an odd relationship. Both are independent operating units owned by Gannett Company, Inc., and therein lies the dicey part.
The primary market for the DNJ is Rutherford County. The primary market for The Tennessean is the Nashville metro region, which includes Rutherford County – and Rutherford County is quite important to The Tennessean as it is to us.
We are the only two papers in Gannett, and perhaps in the country, where you have one paper’s market completely within the market of a larger metro paper owned by the same company.
That makes us friends and competitors.
Here is how we work together. From time to time, there is a story in Rutherford County they want, so they use our story. Sometimes, we’re short handed, so I’ll ask to use one of their reporters. Likewise, we’ll use their coverage of things in Nashville that might interest our readers.
Sometimes, there are more tangible areas of cooperation. For example, we published a Sunday TV section for years as does The Tennessean. We discovered that both sections had the exact same TV listings. A couple of calls by me and we now have a joint, single TV section, and about $2o,000 per year, split between the two papers, is saved in the process. Readers lost nothing, efficiency was gained, and we saved a few bucks.
Not quite the end of the world, no?
There are other areas of cooperation. Some Tennessean staff who live in Rutherford County use our office when they don’t have meetings in Nashville. Likewise, there are Tennessean sales teams that focus on certain advertising segments while we focus on others. Our local sales teams also sell advertising into The Tennessean and other Gannett papers, including The Clarksville Leaf Chronicle and The Jackson Sun.
I work closely with a number of managers and vice presidents at The Tennessean, but here’s the deal – I manage The DNJ as a local operation. On more than one occasion, The Tennessean wanted to do something involving The DNJ and I vetoed it. At the same time, there have been a lot of things The Tennessean proposed that made sense for our readers and our business model, and I agreed to it.
Training is a great example. The Tennessean staff are training monsters – they are always training and I think that’s a good thing. Ad director Heather Kent leverages this to great benefit for the DNJ sales team and it is working. The local team is ahead of their print and digital goals for 2013, year to date.
These relationships exist all over the nation. Gannett owns 81 newspapers and USA Today, a bunch of non-daily papers, TV stations and other all sorts of other entities and companies. We all share content. We all work together when it makes sense to do so.
Not too long ago, ad director Heather Kent and I went to our Pensacola paper for sales management training. Taylor Loyal visited our Phoenix paper for a look at how they handle digital news. It really is about cooperation with other organizations, leveraging their strengths to our advantage, and building a stronger company across the board.
There are other Gannett units we work with.
For example, we hire a separate Gannett company called GPS to print and deliver the paper. They provide other services as well. We hire an entity called the Design Studio to layout and design the newspaper every night and we work closely with the DPC and VPC (Digital Production Center and Video Production Center) to handle certain tasks for which we lack the manpower and/or expertise.
Another important organization is the Gannett Foundation, which gives grants in our neighborhood. Funny how people complain about Gannett… until the Foundation starts handing out checks.
All these tremendous resources are at our disposal. Wouldn’t we be stupid to not take advantage of them? I think so and therefore I do take advantage of them.
It’s not nefarious and it doesn’t mean the end of The DNJ. It is far more about leveraging the resources that come with being part of the largest news organization in the United States so that we can better serve our community.