Pros
I was on the editorial side of this newspaper company for more than a decade, and my co-workers were the best people I have ever worked with. They were friendly, supportive, and helpful, and we had a great time at work and outside of work. Even at the end of my time there my co-workers were still great. Not only that, but along the way I worked under some superb managers, guys I would walk through fire for. In my early days there, the attitude in my small paper was highly competitive. If we saw a story that we thought would interest local readers, we'd go get it.
Cons
Lee is now a different place. As the Internet trend became clear, the company lagged on embracing change and investing in new technologies. Lee has always been a lean operation, but they really dropped the ball on R&D spending to meet the challenge posed by the Internet. With their resources, that should not have happened. Shoot, even computer software was hard to come by in newsrooms. Management seemed to believe that Microsoft Office was all anyone needed. Sadly, a company that had great market positions in the communities it served let all that slip away. The usual pattern followed. Management began cutting people to cut costs, and the result is all the experienced people left, or were bought out, or were fired. Editorial management at my former paper is now young and inexperienced because they did not have years of mentoring, and it shows in the published product. Circulation is down, and it's no surprise because who will pay the same or more money for a thinner newspaper with much less local news and reporting?
