Houston Community Newspapers Reviews

*The pay is awful (even by journalism standards) and, for whatever reason, hourly instead of salary. Thing about that is, management forbids overtime, for any reason - EVER. If you go just one hour over 40 at the end of the week, expect to hear about it and have your hours changed back to 40.0. As everyone in this industry knows, this job is hardly ever limited to 40 hours a week. We're required to clock in and out everyday, which is a massive time-wasting charade (and frankly, I don't understand how it's legal). If it's going to be like that, why not just put everyone on salary and have done with it? It's asinine. *Horrible health benefits, and their 401K is absolutely useless. This isn't exactly a job you want to retire with. *Despite the name "Houston Community Newspapers," the company's corporate headquarters is located in Conroe. That's like the New York Times locating their corporate headquarters in Hackensack, New Jersey, or the Washington Post relocating its main base of operations to West Virginia. So upper management is completely, depressingly out-of-touch with anything that's going on outside of Montgomery County. The whole of the Houston Metropolitan Statistical Area has something like 6-10 counties, mind you. I've lived in the Houston area for decades; Conroe, though it's grown in recent years, is simply not a destination. Aside from the Woodlands, Montgomery County may as well be Dallas for the vast majority of the Greater Houston area. *When 1013 Star Communications bought out HCN a few years ago, they completely annihilated any online staff. So in addition to all the other work a reporter does, you are expected to scrub/post at least four news stories and two "Living Section" stories online a day, as well as consistently update the community calendar. Upper management has said they want two of those news stories each day to be bylines; however, this is not enforced since even they understand that those are *totally* unrealistic expectations. Edward R. Murrow couldn't do all that in a day. You cannot get blood from a stone. *Despite the constant kvetching of the handful of online staff that is left, they are completely unprofessional and sloppy with their postings. Stories with no byline listed, stories post twice, stories posted in the wrong section, stories with 25-plus word headlines, stories where the first paragraph is simply something like "EPA PRESS RELEASE," stories that have zero relevance to your "hyper-local" publication....I could go on. *Did I already mention they throw around pennies like manhole covers? Prepare for "we would, if advertising was selling more ads!" as the constant refrain each and every time you suggest a way to improve the paper that might actually require a small financial investment. *You, a sales rep, the sports reporter and the spread-entirely-too-thin photographer will be the sole ones from HCN that ever go into your area (if it's not in Montgomery County, that is). It's pretty hard to establish serious presence in the community that way. You'll go to chamber events where other news outlets are out in full force, and you are the single dope from HCN representing the entire company. It's embarrassing, and certainly damages our credibility. *The printer is located in Austin. So after you send off the finished paper to the printers, there's a one day delay before it actually makes it to peoples' lawns. For example, if your paper is thrown on Friday, it goes into production on Wednesday. So if you cover a meeting or any kind of breaking news on Wednesday evening, it's not going to appear in print till almost 10 days later. (And that's another thing! I'm no accountant, but doesn't sending multiple 18-wheelers back and forth from Austin each week cost a TON of money? Money that is desperately needed in other areas? There REALLY aren't printers located closer we could use?)