Gannett Employee Reviews about "upper management"

Pros

Great first job out of college. Laid back work attire and environment. Love the people I work with. Finally has some great training on the products that they have to offer.

Cons

If you are put in a 'bad' or 'down' market it can be tough to make money here. Seems to be a disconnect between upper management and lower people.

Pros

If you want to be a journalist, you get to be a journalist and work with a lot of very good, dedicated journalists in the company. Rochester is a collegial newsroom and local managers (as of 2022) are good people. Vacation/PTO time is good if you make it to your third year.

Cons

Upper management has no commitment to local journalism and there's no clear business direction for the company. There is constant change. There's not enough newsroom staff to cover the stories that should be covered and you will face criticism from the community for that (not to mention people telling you their horrible experiences with their subscriptions.) Be prepared for frequent layoffs and cuts. It's slightly better in unionized newsrooms - Rochester is one.

Pros

The developers, designers, and immediate supervisors are excellent workers and are the foundation of the department. The pay is decent if you're straight out of college and it is a great starter job. Benefits are acceptable and HR seems to genuinely care (when they can be found).

Cons

Upper management is the problem. They are uninformed and choose to stay that way which is immeasurably detrimental to the department and its revenue. The leadership staff is continually trapped between ignorant upper management and the very reasonably upset artists. The department is continually making rash moves which tend to go in the following order: 1. Upper Management determines that something needs to be improved and formulates an ill-conceived plan. 2. Some unfortunate member of leadership is dragged into an unexpected meeting and is bullied into promptly executing the ill-conceived plan. (They may try to explain why the idea is terrible but upper management tends not to listen.) 3. Now that leadership has a moment to try and improve on the plan, they do so as much as they can, while under the ridiculous deadline that had been set. 4. Plan is executed. Plan fails. Leadership is blamed by both upper management and the design staff.

Pros

Good job for college graduates; you're able to network a little and expand your portfolio. The Des Moines location has a modern and spacious layout; employees get a decent amount of space at their desks/workstations. Casual dress code (jeans and t-shirts are okay.)

Cons

Wages aren't competitive at all, and there are practically no pay raises. Upper management do not care about keeping their employees happy and respected. Gannett Corporate will also change their benefit providers several times a year to cut down on costs, so employees are stuck with terrible coverage. There is a lot of mandatory overtime throughout the year, but that's normal in the world of publishing.

Pros

Great PTO and flexibility to work remotely and flex your schedule when needed.

Cons

Rapid changes while upper management tries to figure out what works in an extremely competitive industry. Unfortunately, as soon as a change is fully implemented, the flaws in the plan show and then more changes and repeat.

Pros

HR and help desk are effective.

Cons

They treat you as if you are disposable. Does not value potential talent, and does not understand the concept of digital media. Only company I know of that continuously does lay offs. They just want to make sure they're able to pay (unnecessary) upper management salaries.

Pros

Great work environment, hours, benefits, and pay

Cons

Upper management was out of touch with the everyday workers and then they outsourced the majority of the department

Pros

It's a big company and there are tons of things it does. Having worked there looks good on my resume. I met some great people that I hope to remain friends with for a long time. They also have access to some really incredible tools.

Cons

Upper management seems to be disconnected from the reality of the company. In less than 2 years, I had 3 new bosses, my department was split up, I did a different job than I was hired to do. Lots of things like that. The upper-level management is pretty useless. They just come in, blow some smoke up everyone's rear and tell them everything is going so well. The lower level employees are treated like pawns in a chess match. They hire people who literally have no idea how their system or process works and put them on huge accounts. This isn't the 'great opportunity' type of situation, this is 'just don't screw it up' type thing. They also let people go at random, leaving people with the feeling that the axe might be coming for them at any day. Huge layoffs where lots and lots of people get let go. It's scary. When they let people go, they just throw the work on those who remain. The entire time I was there, I heard stories about how it used to be. Well, it ain't like that anymore. I wasn't in a sales position per se, but I was asked to aid in sales numerous times. The sales people there are greedy and dishonest for the most part. Lots of them don't know or care to learn what they do. They just go out and sell things and hope someone buys it. Also, the commission structure reinforces sales reps to do as little as possible. If they do more than their goals, they don't really make more, but their job gets that much harder the next year. The last thing I'll say about the place. It has no soul. I don't mean that to sound like I'm a bitter former employee. I'm not. For the most part, I enjoyed working there. I met some absolutely amazing people and honestly, I learned a lot. By not having a soul, I mean, it has no real reason for being. The paper side of things is sort of on life support. You'll hear from upper management that it's still alive and strong. But it's not. They decline year over year is ignored and positioned as a 'transition to digital' but their product is outrageously over-price and offers less features than most of it's competition. A lot of what the current paper is is just a reason to get ads in front of someone. People don't read the paper like they used to. Sure, some people do, but we're talking a fraction of what it was. So what is it there for? If advertisers aren't seeing results, why keep selling it? This is backed by what I said earlier in 'greedy' sales people. These greedy sales (who exist even at the sales director roles) will say whatever needs to be said to sell something. I set in a room while a sales director manipulated the truth to a client to get them to purchase. Saying we're going to hit your target audience, then backfilling with generic targeting. What resulted was about 10% of their audience being their customer base, and the 90% just being the exact same as regular display. They just wind up paying a ~$20CPM. This dishonesty is why I left. I couldn't walk into a room and tell some business owner a lie like this. This is why I say they have no soul. It's not about creating value for clients there. It's about creating revenue for the company. Sure, they are big enough to throw water into a leaky bucket for a while, but eventually, it'll catch up to them. And their eventuality seems to have caught up to them.

Pros

Steady job. "OK" job for recent grads... Able to burn through podcasts quickly. That's about it.

Cons

After working for three years I can safely say it's probably the worst job I've ever worked in my life. Upper management wants the designers to be 'creative' but run the department as if it were a factory churning out ads. Turnover is high. Pay is equivalent to baristas or almost any other entry level job despite requiring knowledge of HTML, CSS, and animation in ads. Haven't gotten a raise in two years even though asking continually. Stress is compounded by constant micromanaging to hit nearly impossible benchmarks. Morale is very low and they discourage people from 'talking'. Always being told to 'do better'. Everything the employees do is calculated in a statical daily chart to the point it's difficult recognize the difference between GIADC and ESPN. Upper management/ad representatives are oblivious to what the design department has to put up with daily. From one artist to another: avoid this place like the plague. It kills the passion and determination of creative people.

Pros

My coworkers were great people.

Cons

All they care about is the bottom line. You are but a dollar amount and expendable to upper management. Doesn’t matter if your job is vital to workflow. They will just dump it on someone else. They are going to cripple themselves out of business. Also three years I worked there and only one measly 50 cent raise.