Pros
Solid pay and a family run company. Nice perks associated with being a media company. Excellent benefits but recently reduced from Chronicle Corp days. Good people still work at the Chronicle, many with 20-30 years of service and a lot of history about the newspaper business. Over the years, opportunities for advancement to other departments were made available but the selection and final decision on who would recieve the promotions were sometimes impacted by non-performance issues. Very flexible with schedules allowing for the impact of long commutes from the East Bay and Valley. The best part of the entire experience was working with the people at the Chronicle.
Cons
When the Chronicle was purchased by Hearst, the transition to a true, corporate environment was difficult for many long term employeess. Centalizing the accounting and purchasing functions made day to day operations much more cumbersome. The greatest challenge that faced the Hearst Corp was finding a way to resolve the weekly loses of $1,000,000 after the end of the dot com boom. Classified revenues were in the toilet and the SF gate had not yet hit it's stride. The unions had a strangle hold on the company as a result of managements reluctance to stand up to them for decades. But, things have taken a major turn with the 100% outsourcing of the entire production operations this year.