CNN Reviews

Pros

Amazing training workshops, opportunities to learn, diverse people, energetic atmosphere, every day is different--never boring.

Cons

As an intern in the newsroom, your supervisor is always busy and might not always have the time to help you, but by figuring things out yourself you learn a lot.

Pros

prestige, pace of work, ability to learn from others.

Cons

too many middle managers, hard to move up depending on what group you're in.

Advice to Senior Management

Be transparent. Have organizational charts.

Pros

The pay is good for the job title

Cons

Your contributions are not valued
Other people will take credit for your ideas and work
Outside points of view go unheard until its too late

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to all your employees even if their ideas don't line up with what in you think. If they're wrong an least you will have taken a look at the problem more fully.

Pros

The managers are complimentary, and there's a great sense of pride to work for such an amazing news organization. People are passionate about what they're doing.

Cons

There is almost no hustle to keep great employees from leaving. There is a lot of dissatisfaction among current employees -- mostly because they are overworked and there's no end in sight.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep the people who work hard. Make an effort to hire freelancers full time. Fill open positions quickly and efficiently.

Pros

You work at CNN, it's great.
Busy all of the time.
Great people and different departments you can learn from.

Cons

Pay is bad, no benefits until you get hired full time.
It's hard and VERY competitive to move up. The DC Bureau is too small.

Advice to Senior Management

N/A

Pros

One of the best benefits packages in the industry, great opportunity to learn the business, financially sound.

Cons

Tough place to be mid-career, hard to advance beyond mid-manager level without adcanced degree or strong internal connections, lower than average pay for entry-level and early career employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Do more to stop the brain-drain from your individual business units - when you take over a unit and demote managers in order to place your own hand-picked employees from outside the unit in management positions you are only encouraging seasoned people to leave - which is happening all the time these days. And there is little or no trasnfer of institutional knowledge - meaning your team has to re-invent the wheel that was already spinning along nicely.

Pros

When they do what they do best there's nobody better. Benefits are excellent. There are still people there who care about the journalism.

Cons

Too much airtime is devoted to junk and silliness. Promotions are doled out based on managers' favoritism and have nothing to do with job performance.

Advice to Senior Management

Admit that people have different strengths and take advantage of them. Focus on hard news and leave the fluff to others.

Pros

Though it is a very competitive place, CNN has people who are genuinely friendly and are happy to help you out.

Cons

Internships were all unpaid, probably just because they CAN do that as CNN. In a humorous contrast, I interned at a public radio station and received a good stipend!

Advice to Senior Management

Keep helping good interns get jobs.

Pros

Turner is a company where recent grads and seasoned journalists want to work. Great benefits (for those who are hired full time). Great perks. Good place to work.

Cons

If you are a contractor or freelance, you don't get benefits (401K, Insurance and Parking). I could be frustrating sometimes getting to know when are you going to get hire.

Advice to Senior Management

Get to know your staff. Take more classes in order to know all production needs. Be patient and please never underestimate the abilities of a producer.

Pros

CNN allowed me to better understand how a broadcast copany develops a marketing strategy and how they go about implementing it

Cons

As an intern, your not paid, and an entire summer with no revenue coming in is very difficult to do. Its a must though because of the opportunity

Advice to Senior Management

Small pay incentives would significantly improve the internship experience, it is surprising how working with little money for the summer can stress someone