Community Impact Newspaper

2.0

Sep 12, 2016

Anonymous employee

Recommend

CEO approval

Business outlook

Pros

There was a small pay raise with each passing year. It is a growing company in a dying industry—and if they were to hire an outside consultant and actually listen to the very real issues employees have, the sky is the limit on how far they can go. There were bonuses if you were fortunate enough to work for a paper that had a good level of profit margin. Working for a smaller paper and not being rewarded as those working for the larger papers were made you feel like you didn't do as much work—even though you were helping out those larger papers with the writing of print and web stories or designing their numerous graphics and advertisements. A very high percentage of the reporters, editors and designers worked very hard—and most were willing to help you with anything. They had profit sharing. The company was and most likely still is privately-owned. There is definitely a sense of pride in knowing that you are providing relevant news to every resident of a given market free of charge. This is a good place to start work right out of college because you will get a great deal of experience that can help you move on in your career. The work environment was fun at times due mainly to the people working around me. They had monthly awards for excellence in editorial, design, photography and sales. They had seasonal wellness challenges that motivated employees to focus on their health. They had fun events like an Olympics style competition outside of the office. They served breakfast at staff meetings. The pot-luck Thanksgivings and other such gatherings were always nice. They had parties for the launching of new markets, anniversaries of markets, paper revenue milestones and Christmas.

Cons

Regarding my review title, this is an absolute fact—I have seen an employee yearbook with names crossed out to prove it (there may even be more). The following are my personal experiences and observations during my more than 3-year tenure as a respected team-player with Community Impact. In an email, they offered a gift card to anyone passionate about the company who posted a review on Glassdoor or Indeed if they sent a screenshot of it to HR. This was in mid January of 2015 which is why you see so many positive reviews at that time. Interestingly enough, the terms of use for Glassdoor indicates that: "You may not offer incentives in exchange for company or interview reviews. We will remove reviews where we have evidence that users were compensated to leave reviews." I'm quite certain someone can provide screenshot evidence of the aforementioned email. A witch hunt was started when they found out someone posted a non-favorable but still mostly truthful review on Glassdoor—several previous employees were questioned and can attest to this fact. After learning of this non-favorable review, a publisher childishly asked anyone to "leave" if they didn’t feel like they were in the right place—at a staff meeting—with at least one new employee present. Religion is definitely brought up more than some people might like. Management was known to ask others about their concerns with you, rather than speak with you directly about them. Management has written people up and put them on probation for things that were not fully under their control. The constant emails were annoying. From my experience, they seemed to care more about their processes and less about the quality of work. Meeting deadlines with mistakes was routinely given more true praise than late work that still made it to press on time with no mistakes and more creativity. Everyone was stretched thin with their workload—so everyone had even more work to complete when there was turnover. Upper management was overly upbeat during times of turnover. There was not enough training. Yearly reviews had opinions from those that you had little interaction with, so the reviews didn't truly reflect your performance—which was a shame since part of the determining factor in the amount of profit-sharing you received was based on that review. I can certainly see why a few people on here have posted reviews stating that if you don’t fit in then you will not get very far. I encourage you to request a copy of the employee handbook before accepting an offer. Look into the following sections: Employment at Will, Overtime, Personal Belongings and Passwords, Searches and Inspections, and any other sections of interest to you.

Community Impact Newspaper Response

I'm sorry that you're experience at Community Impact was less than stellar. Thank you for your thorough review and for recognizing all the positive things we do as a company. We pride our selves on being a privately held company that continues to thrive and invest in content and distribution. We also are very proud of the fact that we have awarded raises every year, even during the recession and have never had to perform layoffs. I'm also sorry you left with the impression that management does not take feedback well because we understand as a fast-growing organization it is extremely important to listen to our employees in order to grow and adapt to the ever changing needs of our staff. We have several forums in place for feedback including an annual employee engagement survey, an open door policy for all management including the CEO and our newly implemented town hall meetings with the Executive team and staff to verbally hear feedback. We agree with you, turnover can be very difficult on the team regardless of it being our decision to terminate employment or an individual's decision to leave. Not only do we strive to bring the very best talent to our company, we also want employees that are the best fit. People who match our work ethic, support the culture we've built and will stay and grow. Thank you for your feedback. We are not a perfect company but hope that continued feedback from current employees and former employees like yourself, help us to continually improve.

27 Quit or Fired in the Last 19 Months.. In One Office - Anonymous employee Community Impact Newspaper Employee Review

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