Where to begin. This place is a caricature of a poorly run corporate office from another era. Where the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Almost comical:
1. A Napoleon complex editor in chief with zero leadership/management skills as well as no enthusiasm for the digital future. My job, when hired, was to undertake a digital part of the newsroom. Six months in, it was obvious there was no digital plan in place, or movement toward a digital function of the old, dying print editorial department. Every endeavor or suggestion made about digital progress was shot down with "the board won't approve that." So the antiquated hierarchical scheme is well embedded here. Worse, when something with the website goes wrong, it falls on the digital person's shoulders when it falls on IT's shoulders, yet IT here is incapable of fixing the problem as well. (see last bullet point for more)
2. The same editor has ongoing anger management issues that every long time employee knows about. "It's toned down since 2014" and previous years, these older employees say, but he still keeps this anger bottled up and lets it out in ways where, if it was worse in the past, he should have been fired years ago. The way he engages employees is inappropriate and unprofessional at best. He's basically stuck in the "All The President's Men" hardscrabble journalist/editor mentality from another era, with a death grip on the print product. He needs his ego stroked daily. He will outrageously put another reporter down at any given chance without any guidance. He still thinks the DJC is the stepping stone to the Wall Street Journal and the next step on the journalism ladder. However, the digital media world and a volatile industry has upended this concept his refuses to accept.
3. Same editor loves openly gossiping about other colleagues below his level, at his level or higher up, even gossiping about what happens in the DJC annual board meetings, like when the board finally appointed its first female member in 2018 (wow, old boys club much?), and the CEO made a misogynistic joke in her presence. Same editor talks openly on the newsroom floor about employee's hirings, firings and resignations, and other HR-only material.
4. Same editor keeps older, non tech-savvy, semi-racist editor(s) around that cause numerous, various problems for editorial staff over several years, resulting countless reporters to quit, sometimes without notice. Yet, these editors in "leadership" roles is never reprimanded, never fired and given another chance.
5. Over my time it became obvious the infrastructure of one of the buildings was rapidly deteriorating - electrical, a/c and boiler issues - and company opted for cheap fixes. Sign of losing money.
6. Editorial keeps a strict paywall on its all content, so every reporter, even the best one, is always scooped by the competition because none of the readers can access the site. No law firm will pay a ridiculous $900/yr subscription for a print newspaper in 2019 with the addition of a crappy website that never got finished. Also, the bathrooms are in deplorable condition. I once saw a piece of chewed gum stay in a urinal cake for a few months before removal, so they don't hire cleaning crews frequently.
7. There is no Human Resources department here. There's a shell of one, but it'll never help the affected party/victim. Remember the hierarchical structure mentioned? The power and responsibilities fall on a few people who may have overstayed their time at the company, or they are unqualified to handle all their duties, or both, and they are unwilling to work collaboratively.
8. Department meetings are non-existent, so tasks are always passed around the editorial department word of mouth or in 1 off emails without bringing the group involved together to strategize. Same goes for lack of meetings to talk forward-thinking, bigger picture objectives than just getting through the negative day to day slog.
9. Same head editor puts outside attorneys, law firms, judges, legal recruiters and his "inside legal sources" in front of protecting the integrity of the work of his own reporting staff when questions, corrections, clarifications or conflicts of interest arise.
10. What a joke of a website upgrade. Daily Journal hires outside computer programmers to work on the project while working on the DJC's separate company, Journal Technologies, tech initiatives. With that, all suggestions to make the desktop and mobile part of the 2017 Daily Journal website rollout were unheard. The programmers left for better jobs. And all the unfinished and hanging errors with the existing website were never corrected to this day.
11. The worst thing I ever heard here. An employee of 20 years had to resign because the company would not budge on some work from home flexibility so this person could spend some critical time with a developmentally disabled child. This employee landed huge sales accounts and marketing wins and this is how they were treated.
12. Terrible, almost non-existent health insurance. No 401k. No vision or dental. No telecommuting policy.
There's probably 10 more cons but you get the picture.