Gannett Reviews in Elmira, NY Area

Pros

I loved working at my local paper. We had a great staff of dedicated people who really care about the community - most of us either grew up there or had lived there for years.

Cons

Watching a competent and caring staff decimated by decisions made at Corporate headquarters. I survived 4 layoff rounds before getting the ax myself. The choices made about who to cut made no sense whatsoever. Job performance, dedication, institutional knowledge just didn't matter. Employee moral was sacrificed time and again in the interest of saving money and pleasing stockholders.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop bleeding your employees dry. They're the ones who most want to save the company. Let them save their paper. The company can be saved site-by-site, not from the top down.

Pros

The bonus structure and pay were very fair and higher than competing papers in the area. Vacation time, sick leave, and personal time were very fair and better than other companies I have worked for.

Cons

The Central NY newspaper subdivision is a joke. I have never worked for a comapany who did less for there community. It was all about the bottom line. You never heard good job from any of management. Management would put you up against 20-35% sales increase over the previous years goal despite the company being down 40% in advertising revenue. Customers (business owners) were treated like they were idiots and should take whatever advertising package we give them. Our managers would contradict themselves constantly and blatently lie to your face. I personally had a manger who would always want you to push the highest priced package first despite the customers needs. I understand this is a business and making money is the goal. But why would she go to a customer and sell him on the lowest package we offer without ever offering a better packae that would bring more revenue to the comapany. Because she was a horrible salesperson and did not deserve her job. She was handed the job over 3 more qualified people because she was tight with her manager. They fired (laid off) the best sales person I have ever worked with because she was outspoken and would stand behind her sales reps when she knew they were right. Bottom line is this is a horrible company to work for. I recently called the corporate HR director to discuss some concerns over how employees were being treated and never called back.

Advice to Senior Management

Times are changing and those who will not change with it will be left beind. Treat your employees with respect and dignity. Give your employees positive feedback along with any advice youmay have for them to improve. This will get you better results.

Pros

Working at a Gannett newspaper can be a joy: you are a part of an organization that the community wants and needs. You make ordinary people into stars for a day. You get people excited about their community, their neighbors and their own lives. People come to you when they need to know something, or need others to know something.

If you are a journalist, you will be surrounded by coworkers that are excellent at what they do. They are in it for the joy of doing it well. They do it because they are the best journalists in the region, and because the community knows that. It feels good to have such great coworkers.

When you do exceptionally well, you will be recognized for it. The company tends to be very good about recognition, because they understand the role of positive feedback in maintaining morale.

Working as a journalist lets you write history. There is no career like it.

Because of the excessive workload, you will learn to work very quickly and prioritize. You will also learn not to need breaks for coffee, socializing, web browsing, smoking, or other activities that most people do to waste time. This will make you extremely valuable to your next employer.

Cons

The company has made a number of changes in recent years that suggest that it values short-term profits over long-term viability. It does its best to maintain a huge profit margin, in order to pay a high dividend to stockholders. Unfortunately, at times when the company can't figure out how to keep revenues up, it cuts costs by eliminating workers.

Cost-cutting on its own isn't evil. Elimination of inefficiency is a sign of a well-managed company. However, cost-cutting done poorly does little to help the company, and is probably more expensive in opportunity cost.

The company has replaced many working, expensive departments of employees with more streamlined, centralized and less expensive departments. Unfortunately, the people left in these centralized departments tend to be too overworked to give full attention to each site they're supposed to be working for. This can lead to a mistrust of centralized departments by employees at individual sites, as well as a general mistrust of corporate initiatives.

Recent changes to the company's products suggest that the company doesn't regard the quality of the product or the quality of service provided to customers as important. The company wants to print a newspaper, sell ads in it, sell subscriptions to it, and fill the parts that aren't ads with information. But it doesn't want to invest the resources necessary to deliver it to subscribers on time, consistently, or even to treat them well when they call to ask where their paper is. Many people in the community will tell you they love the content in the paper, but feel betrayed by the company because we can't deliver the paper regularly enough.

Some sites in the company no longer have the resources to adequately cover local governments in the areas they serve. Because many newspapers tend to be the only local newspapers, a failure to keep governments in check can end up costing the local community when government gets out of hand.

The workload is usually crushing. Most of my coworkers are taking medications prescribed for anxiety. Frequently, the work you do will be what two to four people used to do ten years ago. In fact, the workload is so excessive that most employees do not have the time in their workday to check the newspaper's web site to see what news is there. This means that most of its employees can't relate to the very consumers for whom they're producing all of the web content.

The pay rate is especially unrewarding. The knowledge that much (or even most) of the money your company brings in from local advertisers doesn't stay local may nag at your conscience, especially if you have to write any stories about the local economy. You may have to marry someone with a lot of money if you want to be in the middle class. This is especially true if you have middle class friends to keep up with.

Advice to Senior Management

Invest in the product by investing in employees. Respect the customers. Respect the employees. Stop rewarding yourself for mediocrity. Accept a lower profit margin.

People are willing to pay for content online. Work with other news publishers to develop a universal micropayment system or online subscription system.

Reward talent handsomely. Punish incompetence. Be bold.