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      Community Impact Newspaper

      Engaged employer

      Community Impact Newspaper Reviews

      2.7

      40% would recommend to a friend

      (141 total reviews)

      John Garrett

      42% approve of CEO

      38% positive business outlook

      Ratings by category

      2.9

      Career opportunities

      2.6

      Culture and values

      2.6

      Work/Life balance

      2.5

      Compensation and benefits

      2.4

      Senior management

      2.3

      Diversity and inclusion

      Community Impact Newspaper has an employee rating of 2.7 out of 5 stars, based on 141 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Community Impact Newspaper employee rating is 27% below average for employers within the Media and communication industry (3.7 stars).

      Reviews by job title

      141 reviews
      1.0
      15 Aug 2024

      Profit Over People, Burnout Guaranteed

      Graphic designer
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      The mission behind the paper and the product itself. That’s all.

      Cons

      I spent almost a decade at Community Impact, and while I initially joined with high hopes, my experience deteriorated over time. A pervasive culture of fear and disrespect has taken hold, primarily driven by the company's mismanagement and retention of toxic employees. The company's treatment of employees is appalling. Those who seek help from HR are met with termination. This blatant disregard for employee well-being has created a climate of silence and intimidation. The company's singular focus on profit has led to a complete devaluation of employees, particularly those in non-revenue-generating roles. Graphic designers are consistently undervalued and overworked. The once-vibrant company culture has vanished, replaced by a toxic atmosphere of burnout and disengagement. The company's lack of appreciation for loyal and dedicated employees is evident in their increasing workloads and diminishing morale. Additionally, the company's constant changes and lack of adequate training leave employees feeling confused and overwhelmed. The increasing workload without proper compensation or additional hires creates a stressful and unsustainable work environment. It's important to note that Community Impact may attempt to discredit negative reviews by claiming inaccuracies and encouraging positive feedback from current employees. However, it's crucial to consider the overall pattern of complaints and the number of likes on negative reviews compared to positive ones. These indicators can provide valuable insights into the true employee experience. It's disheartening to witness a company with such potential squandered due to poor leadership and a complete disregard for its employees. I urge prospective employees to carefully consider the implications of joining this organization.

      avatar
      Community Impact Newspaper Response
      1y
      To future readers of this review, we want to provide context about former employees' perspectives on their time with our organization. As individuals, we each make choices about where to work, and it's notable that this particular employee dedicated nearly a decade to Community Impact. Such long-term commitment is a testament to the positive aspects of our organization. Many of our employees have long tenure with us, which speaks to our commitment to fostering a positive work environment. Our decisions are guided by our core values, and while some reviews may reflect recent experiences, they don't always capture the full picture. Regarding the statement that "Those who seek help from HR are met with termination. This blatant disregard for employee well-being has created a climate of silence and intimidation," we want to clarify that this is not accurate. We hold all employees to our code of ethics, and when necessary, we take action to uphold our team's integrity and culture. We wish this former employee well, acknowledging that everyone’s experience and perspective are unique.
      2.0
      12 Sept 2016

      27 Quit or Fired in the Last 19 Months.. In One Office

      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.

      avatar
      Community Impact Newspaper Response
      9y
      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.
      2.0
      10 May 2019

      Don't work here

      Editor
      Recommend
      CEO approval
      Business outlook

      Pros

      My colleagues are the best part of this job. As editor, I also get a lot more control over the content I want to publish and write about. I really enjoed the week of onboarding.

      Cons

      Do not, do not, DO NOT believe CI when they say they have good work-life balance. I work between 50-70 hours a week. I reguarly work one to three 12 hour days. I also work weekends. Other editors also work 50+ hour a week. Graphic designers work even more. Reporters are hourly, and the company HATES overtime. Actively discourages it. More or less threatens to fire people if they work overtime because he or she is fiscally irresponsible or has poor time-management skills. Find me an hourly employee at CI that doesn't work off the clock, and I will be shocked. When this issue of employees working off the clock was brought up to upper management earlier in 2019, they responded with the company value of "integrity" saying that reporters must accurately report their time, and it's the editor's responsibility to make sure to balance the reporter's workload to 40 hours. There was no admission that the problem may be the culture of despising OT, which causes editorial to be afraid of asking for it. Plus, please tell me how in 40 hours editorial can do quality work of 1-3 public meetings to attend, 2-5 internal meetings to attend, 1-3 several article deadlines to write every day, networking, social media all the while working in an office that is between 20-60 mins away from the local market the editor/reporter covers. Not to mention technology issues and learning new software. Not to mention that a new employee needs time to learn CI-style and processes. Based on the new reporters that have come back from onboarding, barely anything from that week stuck, which has shocked me. The company also prides itself on being innovative. What that means is they change software every few months. HR software and production software (aka InDesign/InCopy) has been switched out in the past four months. HR software took roughly 2 months to employees to understand and learn. I lost count of how many meetings my boss/GM went to so she could learn the software. The production software, meanwhile, has been an utter failure. While editorial and graphic designers complain amongst themselves, communicating this information to upper management means verbal reprimand from upper management that we need to trust in our HQ and "be the example" to other offices.

      avatar
      Community Impact Newspaper Response
      7y
      First, thank you for your passionate thoughts, although this feedback would've been more appropriate going through one of our company's internal communication channels—or directly with your manager or even upper management. We have an open-door policy and encourage continuous communication and problem-solving. We have always improved overtime and even worked in early 2019 to provide our direct managers with more control to streamline overtime approvals as soon as it's requested. Like any news outlet, we do keep an eye on overtime but we never deny overtime that is requested or incurred. Moreover, we are working hard to maintain legally-bound worker rights as it applies to non-exempt (hourly) and exempt (salaried) employees. We work hard to protect our employees as well as our company in this process. We ask our exempt employees to work efficiently within a reasonable timeframe—typically during normal weekday business hours unless the employee is covering an evening meeting. If the workload becomes too much to handle in the allotted time, we need employees to seek guidance from their managers about how to manage time more reasonably. Because it can be done: we will help you manage your time and show you what truly is important to work on/cover and what is not. As we grow, the company hopes everyone can appreciate the new technology we are adopting, but it will take time and collaboration to integrate the new processes associated with these new technologies. We see this investment in ourselves and our people as extremely positive especially against the backdrop of the newspaper industry as a whole. Above all, it is the mission of Community Impact "to build communities of informed citizens....through the collaboration of a passionate team." The journalism we do is important and as a news-gathering organization, we have to work odd hours and weekends occasionally. It's a thankless profession at times, but we are an organization that embraces it and strives to accomplish as close to a work-life balance as possible in the journalism industry. We believe most of our staff achieve this balance.
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      ReviewsCommunity Impact Newspaper reviews

      Glassdoor has 149 Community Impact Newspaper reviews submitted anonymously by Community Impact Newspaper employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Community Impact Newspaper is right for you.