Family-owned papers

I like small towns. I worked as the SE at another small daily and had a great job, then got stupid and went to a different paper to work as a news designer. I've learned the grass isn't always greener on the otherside. It's pretty darn green, pun intended, in Greenwood. Plus, I used to work for Media General, so my whole outlook on positive experiences in journalism might be a bit skewed.

 

Does the Ogden family count?

 

I wondered that myself.
Ogden is large chain that is family owned.
The Charleston Gazette and the Morgantown Dominion Post (all W.Va) are both family owned papers.

 

Amen. I work at a family-owned paper and it is the hottest circle of Hell. An absolute disaster on all managerial fronts from the editor-in-chief to our "beloved" SE. What a joke.

 

The Decatur (Ala.) Daily is family owned.

 

Yes, and the Nuttings laugh while employees apply for food stamps.

 

The Oklahoman is family-owned.

 

The Daily Herald in suburban Chicago is owned by the Paddock family and The Northwest Herald is the flagship paper of the Shaw family's chain.

 

And then they tell their employees to spend those food stamps in another town because they are making the paper look bad.

 

You may never have heard of the Wilkes Journal-Patriot in Wilkesboro (N.C.) but they are family owned and do a bang-up job with their sports section. It's often bigger than the Winston-Salem Journal's.

The JP is a three-times-a-week paper with two staffers and tons of stringers. They average 5-6 pages in their sports section, and I've seen it as big as nine. Their goal is to staff every single high school event in the county and every playoff game/meet/event involving one of their four high schools no matter where it is. They also cover App State and NASCAR (and do it well) ...

Oh, and their Web site is just a static page with info on how to submit news and sports items... If they ever do get their Web page going full speed, they'll rule the world... or at least their county ...

 

I've got a couple of friends on the inside there (business side of the operation) who tell me it's as demanding a place to work as anywhere they've been -- but also the fairest and most open-minded upper management they've ever seen.

By one guy's estimate, they could improve their operating margin 20 percent if they went the lean-and-mean route, but ownership insists that managers be aware of long-term implications of cutting corners just to look pretty for now. The mantra is that you have to justify every penny you intend to spend, but you also have to justify every penny you intend to cut.

 

I'm at a family-owned shop. Haven't suffered through the horror stories of some here, but I'm still convinced they're tight enough they can eat coal and eventually crap diamonds. Still, on the whole, not bad.