A. H. Belo Reviews

Current Employee – been working at A. H. Belo

Pros – Strong passion for the company to succeed at most levels of the company

Cons – Leadership tends to make reactive decisions and sometimes have unrealistic expectations on execution and results

Former Employee – worked at A. H. Belo

Pros – good benefits, working enviornment, co-workers are competent and diligent.

Cons – dying industry, tough economic times for any newspaper

Current Employee – been working at A. H. Belo

Pros – Some of the best journalists in the country work at The Dallas Morning News, and they continue to produce great work despite all the Internet noise that passes for news out there.
Senior leadership cares deeply about Dallas and surrounding communities.
Willingness to experiment in order to engage audiences and create a sustainable business model.

Cons – In effort to create new models, sometimes forgets core competencies.
"Cutback culture" is hard to overcome, especially in light of constant initiatives that don't seem to be managed or measured.
Overall gloomy outlook for and perception of newspaper industry is a constant pressure.

Advice to Senior Management – Diversify and do a better job of grooming younger staffers into leadership positions.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at A. H. Belo

Pros – The pay is pretty good.
Nice, friendly place to work.
Understanding of situations that come up outside of work.
Flexible with requesting time off.

Cons – Was sold on a job that turned out NOT to be the case.
Not much room for advancement or growth.
Expectations are high relative to the training (or lack there of)
Managment does not appear as knowledgable as he/she should

Advice to Senior Management – Be sensitive and accepting of the criticism given by your subordinates and actually listen to what they have to say. Besides, the better job they do, the better you look as management.

Current Employee – been working at A. H. Belo

Pros – Good work / life balance. There isn't a 9-5 mentality. Dress is casual and there are occasional employee benefits events such as company lunch or HR handing out free popcorn.

Cons – Bad management at the upper most levels. Decisions are bottle necked by top management who feel they have to approve every decision. Top management often asks company to work with third party vendors who are run by close friends and former co-workers. Entrenched pockets of old media people in charge of technology decisions they have no experience with.

Advice to Senior Management – Create a culture of innovation. You have smart people working for you but they are not allowed to innovate and improve. Adopt something similar to Google's 20% time. Print newspapers may not be dead but we can agree that they are dying. As such, it's only prudent to begin to make the funeral arrangements. Start planning a post print strategy now and move in that direction.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at A. H. Belo

Pros – Good benefits. Large company, if that's your thing.

Cons – Outdated usage of web technologies.

Advice to Senior Management – Employ designers and developers to lead designers and developers.

Former Employee – worked at A. H. Belo

Pros – Very fair in pay. Much diversity in the workplace.

Cons – Top management heavy. Politics plays a roll in deciding layoffs.

Advice to Senior Management – More emphasis on journalism. Quit Kowtowing to advertisers

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at A. H. Belo

Pros – Great work/life balance. Time off as needed. Flexible schedule. Decent pay/benefits. Friendly environment.

Cons – Decisions on software products have been made by people outside IT department, which led to terrible large-scale purchases. Old technology/l lots of Perl/PHP scripts that only a very few people have a clue about. Very old/clunky/inefficient/unreliable home-grown systems. Developers are expected to support this old software. Very few (none?) new projects using current technologies. Newspaper industry's immanent demise has been accelerated by the recession causing thousands of layoffs, followed by pay cuts across the board and cut-backs on some benefits.

Advice to Senior Management – I have no advice for management. Unfortunately this field is required.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at A. H. Belo

Pros – The company has great benefits.

Cons – ...ability to grow within the company.
overall industry

Advice to Senior Management – look for a more innovative approach to business

Current Employee – been working at A. H. Belo

Pros – The pay is not bad. The hours are late at night and early in the morning. This is a great part-time job for folks who have full-time jobs during the day, because the schedule does not conflict with most other jobs. The work can be somewhat physical, but does not require a lot of physical strength. Compared to the pay of most part-time jobs with similar responsiblities and job functions, this one pays well. The biggest reason for this is probably due to the schedule which is typically between 11 pm and 6 am. All that is require to do this job is to be able to work in early morning hours and to have some basic organizational skills, people skills and some limited computer skills.

Cons – Newspapers everywhere are struggling and a h belo is no exception. The opportunity for advancement is somewhat limited, but what can you expect from a Newspaper. The company had a voluntary severance plan that reduced the full-time employees by about 500. So it is easy to understand why moving up is somewhat limited. It is sometimes difficult to maintain a full-time job and this job. It is not easy to get up in the middle of the night to go to work, especially after having worked a full eight hours somewhere else. One should take this job with the expectation that this will be decent part-time job with decent pay, not with the expectation that you will be promoted into management.

Advice to Senior Management – The DC's are somewhat understaffed with all the changes that have taken place. If you have more layoffs be careful about cutting back staff in the DC's. The staff is already probably not enough to handle the workload.