Poytner Online has posted this internal Gannett memo:
Date/Time: 9/28/2006 12:48:45 PM
Title: Gannett works to fix serious website problems
Memo sent on Wednesday, September 27, to online editors at Gannett newspapers
All,
We are having a horrible week. The problems with Publicus are severe, and despite around-the-clock attention from GMTI, SAXOTECH, a Microsoft database engineer and an outside database expert, we have not been able to isolate and correct the root cause of the problems. You may have noticed that GMTI has been systematically turning off an on all of the applications that interface with Publicus, such as weather, prep sports, story chat and user registration, ruling out whether they are contributing to the issues. So far, none of them has been found to be a root cause.
In our effort to look at every possible issue, I need to ask if any of you changed anything between Thursday and Monday in the way you design your templates or get content into or out of Publicus. If you set up any automated processes or tried a new approach, please let us know by sending an email to onlinestandards@gannett.com. Our interest is solely to find and correct the problem. GMTI is also checking all templates and may ask certain sites to change certain tags, again to determine what the impact may be.
I know there is growing anger and frustration. I see it each morning in the DPC, which is struggling to keep 40 of our websites updated and working properly under the same conditions many of you are experiencing. And we are aware that page views are beginning to drop.
We are brainstorming ideas for how we might provide temporary relief while GMTI continues to attack the core problem. Please send any approaches you have tried to onlinestandards@gannett.com. We will share whatever methods seem to be helping. I also urge that you keep your audience informed that there are technical difficulties but vent frustrations internally.
We are all committed to healing the system and finding ways of getting through this so that we can get back to innovating and moving our business forward. We have good, talented people throughout the company who are doing everything they can to get us there.
Thanks,
Peter
………
Peter Lundquist
VP/Online Content and Operations
Gannett Co. Inc.
7950 Jones Branch Dr., G-3
