Freedom Communications

[bhmccorm]

any information or opinions on working for a paper under this company? I know they've had financial trouble, though that's not really special in print media these days...

 

[J-School Blue]

My own time at a Freedom shop seems better in retrospect than it did while I was working there. I mean, yes, the pay and hours are what they are, but that's the business. I got to do decent work a lot of days with very good people, and my decision to leave was more the "fleeing journalism entirely" sort of deal than any issue I had with the way the paper was run.

The best thing I can say about Freedom is that they seem to basically leave their papers alone. We never received any weird mandates or quota requirements of the sort I've heard horror stories about from folks who worked at other chains. They seemed to stay out of the way and let their people do good work more often than not.

Caveat: I left my Freedom gig in 2008. While that was around the time the bottom was falling out of the industry, that was before the bankruptcy and the company's financial issues didn't seem as worrisome as they are today. I imagine it's a different atmosphere now, though what that atmosphere is I couldn't say. That said, that's every media company right now. There's no "secure" paper to work for anymore.

I'd work for them again if I woke up tomorrow and I decided I no longer wanted to avoid any sort of newspaper work. So there's that.

 

[gravehunter]

I think it really depends on which paper you work for. Some are better than others in the Freedom family. Like the previous poster said, Freedom let the papers pretty-much run themselves without getting too involved in the day-to-day ops.
The Freedom paper that I worked for in the past seems to be cutting its own throat, but I base that opinion on management decisions more than the fact that it's a Freedom paper.

 

[bhmccorm]

thanks guys - I've been doing some asking around too and found out some things that were enlightening from people that have worked there...