USA TODAY Co. reviews

It is nearly impossible to make any real professional development within the company. Jobs and promotions are given because of nepotism or you're a sycophant. There isn't any clear path or expectations for you to grow within the company. They really just want a warm body to sit at the desk. Most employees are extraordinarily underpaid and over worked. The company expects overtime every week. Sometimes with little to no advanced notice. You have absolutely no chance of making more money than you were hired in making unless you put in a lot of time with the company and you're still going to be grossly underpaid. Management (past and present) lacks foresight, they do a lot of things blindly without any research and get upset when things don't work properly. They are always playing catchup. Whether it's the amount of work that needs to be done, keeping with design trends, or knowing where the industry is moving. They're driving blindly. They have absolutely not idea how to run a digital business. This is most likely due to the fact that the people in charge are not designers, developers, or even decent human beings. They do not care about their employees or their time. When an opportunity to move up in the company opens up they do not interview everyone that has applied but instead treat their employees that have giving the company years of their lives like a piece of paper. Employees time is meaningless to them. As stated before they just need as many warm bodies to fill the desks. You're not a human being, you're a number on a piece of paper. There is no feedback of professional development. The only feedback that is given is from sales representatives that know nothing about design. You're told to just do whatever to they tell you to do because they just want the work done instead of it being done correctly or ascetically pleasing. This goes back to not caring about employees. They're willing to let go of great talent to save themselves. There have been several previous employees that have left the company because they were not taken serious or listened to. Management does whatever they want and when it doesn't work passes the buck onto the person below them. There is no accountability for the people in charge. If you work for this company and wish to develop as a professional do work on your own time and seek employment elsewhere. It will not look good on a resume to have Gannet as a previous employer. It actually will get you turned away from certain places. Overall the company is just absolute garbage.

Wow, where do I begin? We are supposed to be "artists," but it's more like we are a large production team, cranking out complete GARBAGE ("ads"). This is not really a design position, but more like a production position. You will start off with a shift likely starting at 3pm or 4pm, maybe 5pm, and on top of that, the pay is absurdly low. If you can get on a specialty team the ad content is much better, but hey, there's not enough room for everyone to advance; just become a lucky one. Work here if you don't mind throwing together ads for, let's say, a church's potluck, a tiny business with a weebly web address for its business, a local pawn shop; perhaps a garage sale, or an auction! Fun... Worst yet, reps who are in contact with the client relay their supposed "creative direction" to us by ANY MEANS NECESSARY. I really mean it; by whatever means. Including, but not limited to: scanned images of chicken scratches, (and you have to rotate the image to even read it), photo copies, pdf files with notes (and chicken scratches). VERY professional, reliable communication in the digital age of 2015. Remember, YOU are the "artist," but, listen to EVERY thing that an ad rep says when they ask for a revision, or, correction as the GIADC likes to call them; if you don't "follow directions" you will get an error for it. No matter if a bungling rep's grammar and spelling made you reminisce on your first grade class when you were still learning how to spell simple words like "the," and how to construct proper sentences. You may have to end up sending the "instructions" to build an ad to your nearest TQ, or "supervisor" to see if they can decipher what it is an ad rep is trying to communicate. Those people are truly special. 90% of the ads you will create here will probably need all of the following: A LOT of text (they often will have you take a text heavy print ad, and squeeze every bit of that text into a 160x600 ad), an address of the business, the web address, and even a phone number! BORING! It's ridiculous the amount of crap that gets thrown in these ads. The ads always get OVERSOLD with the amount of content that is included. If by some small chance you have "artistic expression" and you are able to create what you want, if the ad rep (who by the way has ABSOLUTELY NO knowledge of the technical limitations that we have) sees things a bit differently, by their discretion most times, you have to listen, no matter how ridiculous the request. Often you will get things like, "place a call to action that says, 'click here.'" You have NO REAL TIME COMMUNICATION whatsoever with the ad reps. Often they will berate the previous "artist" in new correction notes if they disapprove of something in an ad. I know some people who have been in the department for YEARS, and I don't know how they do it. They must like it? I don't see how. I can't stomach this place, and I feel FORTUNATE to be leaving! I've worked at this company less than a year and I could write a book. I could go on an on about the cliquishness, hypocrisy, etc, but I won't.