Consumer reviews and reports on scam companies, bad products and services
White Digital Media
White Digital Media White DM, WDM, WDM Group, Exec Digital, Business Review USA, Stock Market Digital My experience at White Digital Media, a Glen Whi
7th of Jul, 2011 by User899052
I worked with White Digital Media for three months as a social media intern last summer in their Carlsbad headquarters. I dont know what has changed since then so please dont take this as a conclusive view of how things are now; I just want to give potential employees or clients an idea of what I saw in my brief time there. Since this was my first internship while I was finishing up school, I didnt know what to expect from a company, but I immediately found it odd that in the marketing department, everyone sat around their own laptop, headphones in, creating fake social media profiles (with fake names) and commenting on articles from the various WDM properties to create the illusion that people were reading the articles. As far as I know, its still happening now. If you look through any of the companys FB pages, its just employees talking to each other. Honestly, these social media initiatives took up about 95% of my time there. To get credit for my internship, I had to make up extra responsibilities since my teacher/advisor felt (as did I) that I learned nothing, and spent my time doing vaguely unethical things. Occasionally we would get a break from this and were instead tasked with going through other digital magazines and taking snapshots of their paid Front of Book ads, so that we could then put them in our magazines to give people the impression that we had the same advertisers as more established competitors. I never knew if this was completely legal, though I had a feeling it was at the very least grossly unethical. As to the complaints about Glen White, I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but on the occasions I would see him in the office, he was screaming at someone about this or that. I got a very Napoleonic vibe from him. If you read any of the press releases put out by the company (they put out thousands, though few are ever read by anyone other than the proofreader at the press release company), they talk about how great their internship program is and that it leads to full time employment, which as far as I could see was true, since interns with no experience were immediately promoted to managers and editors and "project managers", though at intern wages. The program goes something like this: intern for three months on very little pay (at the time $100 per week), then becoming a temp employee for another three months while youre still paid next to nothing and are not eligible for any benefits, and then after those come on as a full time employee, though still making less than a full time WalMart Cashier.
Comments
4605 days ago by Boo On You
So I feel like I should add to this. I'm an ex employee, and after my termination, I never really looked back until I got a cease and desist letter from their attorneys. This letter accused me of pretty much all the bad press White Digital Media and the owner, Glen White, had received in the past 6 months.About scam this, scam that, fraud this, fraud that. I was deeply offended by these accusations, and would have never even thought of posting anything online if it wasn't for this letter. So here's my 2 cents, my experience and my opinions about leadership and business strategies. I think if I'm sharing my opinions and stating facts as I saw them, I can't be accused of libel and defamation, but we'll see. It seems that attorney is pretty creative. My intent is to to harm anyone, but share my experience and offer my own insight to other concerned parties.

Basically when I started, I was sold hard on the vision. Everything looked great and it appeared to be in line with some of my goals. However, as I started to learn more about the company, "leadership" and sales tactics/strategies, my excitement quickly faded. Basically, my department was expected to sell advertising for rates that the circulation and readership simply did not support. I can say this because I saw exactly how many unique visitors were viewing the websites and digital magazines. The publications were not officially audited, mainly (I suspect) because the results would not be in line with the inflated numbers we had to throw around to support the high prices of advertising, and ultimately would not support the desired rates for advertising. (at least this was the case in Q1 '11)

Then there was the other sales department, selling advertising in corporate profiles. When I learned about the process for this department, I started to feel very ashamed of my affiliation with this company. In a nutshell, from what I could observe, Companies or associations are targeted and offered a suite of profiles, articles, and other 'goodies' in exchange for a vendor list. These vendors were then called relentlessly to "Support" and "Sponsor" their clients' profiles for, again, rates the circulation simply just does not justify. In some cases, I saw as little as 50-100 unique visitors or less to some of these articles. So, in my opinion, I would not recommend allocating any real advertising dollars to something like this; I would be very surprised if it would yield any kind of ROI. Is this a scam? I don't know. I just felt like it was extremely shady once I learned about the ins and outs. If you have some money to throw around to impress clients, take them to a sporting event or throw some money at their company profile. Just don't expect a lot of eyeballs on a real magazine ad.

If you're looking at working with White Digital Media, do your research. Training was weak. Positions and duties change often, and often times it's something people have little to no experience in. I've never been shown such a lack of respect at any job. I saw the owner, Glen White, say personally offensive things to employees, including calling one employee a "Stupid Prostitute" or saying "How fucking dumb are you!!??" to another... etc etc... Look, I get an owner of a company should be passionate and aggressive with their business, but he's downright mean and belittling to people. I expect a certain level of respect to be shown to myself and my colleagues, even if they'd made minor mistakes. Excessive profanity, especially when directed in a 'talk-down' fashion is not acceptable in my book.

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