Pros
The Crain Family (Keith, Rance, Chris, especially K.C.) are genuinely good people, and I had fun working for them on occasion. There is a flexible, laidback feeling in addition to the family environment. The offices and technology (software, cloudware, hardware, etc.) have seen significant upgrades in spending capital and budgets in the last two years.
Cons
The publishing industry flat out sucks right now. Pay is below market value for Chicago, NYC, California, but average for Detroit and Ohio. Company waited too long to invest significant Capex into digital infrastructure. While most at the corporate level are fairly new and try hard to make it work, you have to question their decision making and whether or not they realize the severity of the situation they put themselves into. I could sense the lack of confidence in what they were doing numerous times, and these were the people that are supposed to be leading me. To make things worse if they made one mistake, it could be you who takes the beating in the form of reprimands from other superiors or flat out let go. It’s very possible the old guard ad sales side of the business could derail all the new tech infrastructure and corporate governance created in the last two years. These sales teams think they have more leverage than they really do from the legacy business model of the print era, yet they are the ones who can’t sell print to save their lives anymore while having some level of cluelessness on how to target their clients via digital and custom audience sales. Some dept in corporate is going to have to come down hard on these people and collar their old school demands and practices, which has never been done in the 100-year history of Crain. It’s always been ad sales above all else, even though the company has diversified its revenue in audience development, events, and now custom content. Times have already changed...