March 29, 2024

100 Best Companies to Work For–Not Big Media

FORTUNE’s anuual “100 Best Companies to Work For” issue came out this week and once again no large media companies appeared on the list. However, for the first time five small- and mid-size media companies did appear on the top-100 list.
The FORTUNE article was written by Robert Levering and Milton Moskowitz, who wrote the original book titled The 100 Best Companies to Work For In America in 1984. In that original edition of the book, Time Inc. was to only media company to be included in the original list of 100. In subsequent years since then, media companies have been significantly absent, and no large media companies other than Time, Inc. in the original book and The New York Times Co. (#93 in 2003) and America Online (#51 in 2000) have ever appeared on the list.
On this year’s list of the 100 Best Companies to Work for, three media companies and two media-related company appear on the list: Discovery Communications, Emmis Communications, John Wiley & Sons, Valassis, and Arbitron–Discovery and Emmis for the first time, Arbitron for the second time (#52 in 2002), and Valassis, which has made the list every year since 1998.
Discovery Communications and Emmis Communications ranked #25 and #27 on the mid-sized companies list (#67 and #74 on the complete list), Arbitron and John Wiley & Sons ranked number 24 and 28 on the small companies list (#60 and #95 on the complete list), and Valassis ranked #29 on the the small companies list (#100 on the complete list). Here’s what FORTUNE said about the five companies:
DISCOVERY COMMUNICATIONS: “At this parent of cable network the Discovery Channel, more than half the executives are women, including CEO Judith Hale. The company makes it easy on new mothers and fathers: They receive three weeks’ paid time off.”
EMMIS COMMUNICATIONS: “In 2001 this chain of magazines and radio and TV stations cut pay 10% (offset by a 10% stock award). So why do folks like it here? They cite great communication from the CEO, who travels around doing employee Q&As.”
JOHN WILEY & SONS: “When this publisher moved from Manhattan in 2002, it asked employees what perks they wanted—and followed through by providing a pristine river location, on-site exercise room, café, and free shuttle service.”
ARBITRON: “At this radio market research firm, workers recognize one another for a job well done with $100 American Express gift cards (there’s no restriction on how many you can bestow). Last year nearly 300 employees received $50,000 worth.”
VALASSIS: “Each year managers at this publisher of newspaper inserts and coupons take a job-skills inventory to identify candidates for growth opportunities. The company often creates new positions to accommodate special talents.”
In the eight years that FORTUNE has featured the 100 Best Companies list, media companies other than Valassis have appeared in four of the lists, with four in the 2005 list being the most. However, you have to take the 100-Best list with a grain of salt and put it in context.
For example, The New York Times Co. made the 2003 list (covering the year 2002) as a result of its winning a record number of Pulitzer Prizes for its 9/11 coverage and before the Jason Blair scandal hit. Arbitron has appeared on the list twice–in 2005 and 2002. American Online got on the 2000 list more than likely because the stock was at an all-time high and employees’ options made janitors millionaires on paper before the merger with Time Warner when everything tanked. In the 2001 list, Enron was #22 and was #24 in 2000. Wall-Mart Stores appeared on the 2002, 2001, and 1999 lists.
I have my suspicions about the validity of the lists because of the way surveys are conducted. FORTUNE claims that about 1,000 companies are contacted and only about a third (356) complete the “exhaustive survey process.” The 57-question survey from Levering and Moskowtiz’s company goes to a minimum of 350 randomly selected employees from each company and two-thirds of the total score for the list comes from these employee responses. The remaining one-third of the score comes from Levering and Moskowitz’s “evaluation of each company’s demographic makeup, pay and benefits programs, and the like. We score companies in four areas: credibility, respect, fairness, and pride/camaraderie.”
Therefore, if a company doesn’t want to participate, it doesn’t make the list. I suspect that several media companies that I know are good places to work, such as A.H. Belo, don’t particpate. And companies that aren’t such great places to work do particpate and “suggest” that employees say nice things in the survey.
Nevertheless, because large media companies have been consistently so rare on the 100-Best list over the years, I think it is safe to assume that they are not great places to work. Too many of them (Time Warner, Viacom, News Corp., NBC-Universal, Disney, etc.) have vastly overpaid, egocentric, narcissistic, headline-hungry executives who believe they come first, not their employees. The supply of people who want to work in the media far exceeds the demand, so pay and benefits at or near the bottom are typically awful.
In FORTUNE’s Hall of Fame list of 22 companies that have appeared on the list since 1998, types of companies that are perceived to be low paying businesses are in the Hall of Fame. Wegmans Food Markets (#1 this year), Whole Foods Market, and Publix Super Markets are in the grocery business. Nordstrom is in the retail business, J.M. Smucker is in the food business, and Marriott International and Four Seasons Hotels are in the hotel and food-service business. These businesses are not as glitzy as the media and there are not scads of people eager to take jobs in them, so they have to be nice to people –something most large media companies have no idea how to do.
What’s the lesson here? If you want to work in the media and want to work for a company that will treat you well, don’t work for a large media company–work for a small- or medium-sized one that appears on the FORTUNE 100-Best list. Of course, if you work for Valassis, a perennial on the list, you’ll have to live in Livonia, Michigan.