During a recent lunch hour, staff members of the music trade publication Billboard were summoned to a conference room in the magazine’s Midtown Manhattan office. There, managers gave a PowerPoint presentation about corporate values, detailed the results of an employee survey and promised to improve the office culture.

It was the kind of management show that would normally elicit eye-rolling from a roomful of skeptical journalists. But the more than 100 employees gathered — from Billboard and sister publications like Spin and The Hollywood Reporter — asked pointed questions about executives’ behavior and women’s role at the company, and many walked away with a guarded sense of relief, according to four people who were at the meeting.

It has been a bruising time for Billboard and its parent company, Valence Media. In May, The Daily Beast published a detailed article focused on Billboard’s top executive, John Amato. In the article, he was accused of interfering with editorial decisions regarding articles about Charlie Walk, a high-ranking record executive — and longtime friend of Mr. Amato’s — who had been accused of sexual misconduct. Faced with questions about its journalists’ independence, Billboard initiated an internal investigation into the matter.

The inquiry into newsroom practices turned up allegations against Mr. Amato that included claims of sexual harassment and inappropriate comments at company events, according to three people with knowledge of the inquiry and documents submitted to the company as part of the internal investigation. Mr. Amato left as chief executive of the Billboard-Hollywood Reporter Media Group three weeks ago. Two of his top lieutenants have also been the subject of employee complaints, one for mistreatment of employees and the other for inappropriate behavior around business clients.