I’m late in getting to this–Big Bob had it last week–but the DMN has announced, um, nothing really, that there’s a “steering committee” looking into the layoffs. That’s about it. But good luck parsing that from Jim Moroney’s memo. Sample sentence: “This team has the assignment to carefully consider the recent conjoint research (and any other pertinent research we have done) and build from the ground up, the newspaper they believe best serves the needs of our core readers and fulfills the journalistic responsibilities we have to serve our community.”
I’m glad he only publishes the paper. Full release after the jump.
Bob Mong, George Rodrigue, Keven Willey and I are acting as a steering committee for a “Newspaper Project Team.” This team has the assignment to carefully consider the recent conjoint research (and any other pertinent research we have done) and build from the ground up, the newspaper they believe best serves the needs of our core readers and fulfills the journalistic responsibilities we have to serve our community. As part of this work, they will also recommend the newsroom staffing and resources they believe are needed to publish this paper at our standards for quality.
They will kick-off this work on Friday, July 21. Their final recommendations will be presented on Wednesday, August 9. From Monday, July 24 through Friday, August 4, each member of the team will be required to turn over all authority and responsibility for their jobs to one of their direct reports. They will devote 100% of their time to this project during this two week period.
I am asking them not to make calls, do emails, engage in problem solving, etc. about other TDMN business. I am asking them to be 100% focused on this assignment. To this end, I need you to respect this sequestering and leave them to this important work. Please do not seek them out for input, advice or decisions about other TDMN work. Conversely, if you get a call from this team, I need you to drop whatever you are doing, assign the work to someone else and provide them the time and help they request. They only have two weeks to do this work. Time will be precious. So their needs have to have the highest priority in the company.
The members of the team are:
Jim Berry
Dwayne Bray
Cyndy Carr
Laura Gordon
Lisa Kresl
Linda Leavell
Dale Stafford
Walt Stallings
John Walsh
Bob Yates
Thank you for your cooperation.
>
>
>
Jim Moroney
