Patch reviews

Where to begin? Across the board, reporters and editors dealt with high school-esque, clique-ish behavior. With little to no oversight, that behavior had the potential to, and did at times, could become untenable. After the first couple of years, we began the steady move away from journalism to curated clickbait. We were told to hire "writers" from the community, many who had little-to-no journalism experience, but we couldn't afford professional freelancers, anyway. We were easily working 12-15 hour days regularly. If those hours had really been dedicated to journalism, I might still complain.. but I would see the value. Instead they were dedicated to creating identical, banal, vapid pieces of content dictated from HQ with no regard for the needs of our individual, local markets. We had no copy editors, and kids just out of college, who didn't know the difference between "its" and "it's," were editing final copy. It was a disaster, embarrassing, and worst of all, for those of us who considered ourselves journalists, we really did not have opportunity to learn or grow as professionals.

Management disconnect with New York national desk being run from Chicago. Patch preaches coaching employees and giving them the opportunity to thrive, but some are let go suddenly with no explanation. No performance reviews. Anonymous 360 reviews breed paranoia.