In an industry ravaged by the likes of Gatehouse/Gannett, what companies are still good to work for?

It's very hard for me to imagine any newsroom throwing that kind of party for someone who's worked survived that long, all on the company's dime.

 

Only a few papers. The rest are just used to fund the bigger ones.

Their website designs are some of the worst in the industry. Cox is pretty terrible, too.

 

There are no companies in newspaper worth working for. When my job gets cut, which will happen eventually, I will never work for another. This business sucks ass. It didn't used to. But it does now.

 

This business eats the young.

 

I'll second this, Matt. I have plenty of complaints from my years working for Gannett (such as the conpany's high turnover, due largely to a lack of competitive wages, and now the super early print deadlines) but I fortunately don't have many of the same horror stories that friends who work(ed) for other media companies have had.

 

So ... High turnover, lousy pay and nightmare deadlines ... Sign me up!

 

Gannett is disgracefully bad.

 

One trend I've noticed amid all the buyouts/layoffs and relief of the suits when the high paid reporters head to The Athletic ... these long-time employees whose names are synonymous with the newspaper's sports section simply go. They hear NOTHING from the suits. They are told to walk out that door as fast as possible. No pomp. No glory. Bye bye and thank goodness we no longer have to pay that salary!! If the suits on here are honest they will back Fredrick on this.

 

Before I went to j-school, for a couple years I worked for a company in what I considered to be a dead-end job. My days were spent in a shoddy office next to a warehouse. Anything but glamorous.

But each year, around Thanksgiving, the company would rent out the ballroom at a high-end hotel and would serve a formal dinner and give away gifts from vendors, such as a big screen tv, a gift certificate to Flemmings, an Xbox, etc. Another company would come in and set up for us to play casino games all night for chips that we could cash in for other gift certificates. At some point during the night, they'd hand out bonus checks, which were for about five percent of our yearly salary.

Now, in media, the best I can hope for is some holiday cookies in the conference room.

 

I'd try and find some digital startup looking for reporters. The industry has gotten so bad that some local businessmen are venturing into the field - figuring it doesn't take much to compete with the hometown paper anymore.

 

Publix is 1. Vastly successful and 2. at least partially employee owned. The founding family has controlled the company for years and they have always done well by their employees.

The quality of their stores is high enough that they do not have to compete exclusively on price and don't have to pay Walmart level wages to survive. Wegman's in the northeast is similar. Family owned with high service levels that allow the company to generate high enough margins to pay well.