A PREVIEW AND A PROMISE

In the aftermath of the News Director Reel Survey”, I thought it only fair to post an MMJ/Reporter/Anchor survey so people could talk about the things News Director’s (and managers) could do better.

(The link is still active for anyone who wants to take part! I’ll write up an article on that when I get enough feedback, aiming for 50 responses, currently at 33 as of 5/27 at 7:23 pm.)

I keep checking in throughout the day to see the responses and if there are themes to get my writer’s mind working.

There was one question I felt couldn’t be bunched into what is going to be a very long, interesting, fascinating, disappointing, and eye-opening rebuttal.

Someone wrote, “What’s the best part about being a News Director? I’ve been told before I have the leadership qualities for management. But it seems like someone is always unhappy with the News Director. I get that you can’t please everyone. But what’s the most rewarding part?”

This question always immediately brings a lump in my throat and leaves me fighting back tears, as I once had a moment I still dig into on the tougher days that showed me the reward. 

More on that in a bit.

First, I suggest you ask as many News Directors as you can that very question.

Hint: Might be a good entrance into their world to show initiative in leadership long before you want them to hire you. Contacts are just everything. But you know that, you are a journalist.

For me, I can’t tell you where I am or where I am going without telling you where I have been.

I am an independent, free spirit. Always have been. I didn’t ever need or ask for help. I have a memory of holding up my family going to church because I wouldn’t let ANYONE help me tie my shoes when I was around 5 years old. (Sorry, God!)

I’ve always been a faster learner, and I learn by DOING, not by watching. I need to be touching the keyboard or device while you walk me through it, not the other way around.

When I got into the news, I wanted to be a producer forever and always. When I got the chance to, my decision was more solidified. Working overnights, weekends, and evening shifts in smaller/mid-markets for my first three jobs helped. There generally weren’t managers around, but always available if I needed them. I wasn’t too proud to ask for help when I genuinely needed it, but I got more confident in my decisions and my managers learned to trust me.

I was lucky to work in producer-driven shops. (Well, lucky because I was a producer, maybe others didn’t feel the same.)

When I was 25, working in a mid-sized market, our amazing Executive Producer was leaving. He was THE guy. He made everyone laugh, want to work harder for him, but accepted no bullshit. It’s a fine art, and a nearly impossible task to constantly balance all those elements. But this guy? He had it all – all the time.

I was the nightside producer and perfectly happy with that. I didn’t wake up before 10 am, I had a newscast all my own and nobody over my shoulder squawking about rundown changes or breaking news. “I got this”, I would say as the managers left. I was on my way to be a line producer in L.A. and someday I was going to line producer the Oscars or be producing for the network. I was going to be a producing superstar like Jane in “Broadcast News”.

Then one day, my News Director pulled me in and said, “Do you have any interest in the Executive Producer Job?”

I laughed, “No. Hell no. I don’t want schedules and meetings and all the boring manager stuff. I want a rundown, a couple of reporters, a late newscast where I can talk about being people impaled and use sassy language to sensitive for the breakfast or dinner hour shows. No friggin’ way.”

I didn’t even feel honored to be asked. I was baffled as to how I could be so amazing in producing, and she would want me in that boring job, spending the day on the phone, blah blah blah. I had news ART to make, people! 

I was used to being on a non-manager shift and being independent while working with fantastic teams. We kept each other’s secrets and gave each other a kick in the ass when needed. We had jokes nobody understood like screaming “10 MINUTES” at dinnertime. I’ll keep that inside joke inside because it was just our little thing and I’m rambling on enough.

My boss explained to me that she thought I had leadership skills (sound familiar, anyone?) and that people followed me, for better and for worse. She wanted to work on the “for better” and eliminate the “for worse”. (Look, I was a smart-mouthed producer at a time it was not only a skill but a survival tactic. Cut me a break.)

When she told me she needed to be fill in for a little bit until she hired someone, I didn’t want to let her down. She saw me smile and say “ok, just for a little bit” and I kept the smile on until I was out of her eye line and could only think “I gotta wake up at 7 am. 7 AM! WHAT KIND OF MONSTER WAKES UP THAT EARLY??” I had to deal with rush hour traffic. The night crew was going to the bar without me at 10:30 pm. Who was going to take care of my baby (and by “my baby”, I mean the 10 pm newscast.)

But I did it. It was awful. It was awesome. It was frustrating. It was exhilarating. And. I. Was. Hooked.

I saw that not only did I get to oversee MORE shows, but I also got to write the Special Opens. I was GOOD at that. I got more insight into working with reporters, anchors, promotions, sales, etc. I didn’t have to waste any time on the VOSOT nobody wants to write (producers, you know which story I’m talking about. It’s SO important but a pain in the ass to tackle.) I got to make decisions for the WHOLE newsroom, not just the nightside shift. I got more pushback than “my people” at night, and I got a little hazed for being so young in a “temporary” management role.

I went home in tears sometimes. Living in the shadow of ‘The Guy’ was tough.

The position ended up turning into a full-time gig. What can I say? There weren’t as many meetings and schedules as I thought, and I got to work on special projects and the pay bump was nice too.

So now I was on the management track, and being a go-getter, I then decided my goal was to be News Director by 30. (I was 26).

My next stop was at FOX startup station in tornado alley, which happened to be right up my alley. I was Assistant News Director to one of the greatest managers I’ve ever had, who is now VP of News for a big company.

This was different. NOW there were schedules, hiring, interviewing, and making decisions on carpet and paint. There was travel for training and consultants. Focus groups and research. I had a boss who expected me to get things done, and I liked to rise to the occasion.

For the record: If you can ever sit in a focus group, do it. It’s a slaughter of everything you think of nice people just wanting to share opinions. Ruthless, I tell you, ruthless.

So, the years go on and I make a few more management moves, learning more along the way. I learned more from mistakes than successes, and nobody could talk worse about me than myself if I made a mistake. I come with self-contained punishment mechanisms called anxiety and guilt.

I was 30 years old, and I got my first News Director offer. It was a city far away from a city I loved living in (Las Vegas) with people who were special to me. I had moved many times before and didn’t know why this was different, but it’s because those people were different. They were the “magical moment in time” people you’ll always remember throughout your career. We all have one, lucky ones have two or three.

I turned down the job, not really knowing if it was the right thing to do. I followed my heart and not my head.

New goal. News Director by 40. Party in Vegas a little longer while working my rear end off.

I actually made it at 36.

It was a northern Nevada town, Reno. I started my career there. Meant to be? I lived in Nevada already and loved its eccentricities and fun facts like “All counties but two have legal prostitution”. I knew the politics and I knew the laws and I was ready.

“I know what I’m getting myself into”, I said to myself.

ANNOUNCER: “She had no idea what she was getting herself into.”

In my first week or two on the job, someone had misunderstood the drug-testing policy if you had an accident and decided to have the person use the drug test cup and proceeded to duct tape the container, put it in a padded envelope, and put it in my office door inbox with a note marked “READ ME FIRST”.

Moments later, after reading and opening the envelope, I walked into Human Resources, stunned.

“There’s urine in my inbox”, I said.

“What?”, the HR person said back.

I tried to repeat myself but could feel my stomach turn and didn’t know if the words or vomit were going to come out. I managed an “I said what I said.”

Can you believe she didn’t believe me? (That’s rhetorical in case you haven’t picked up my vibe.)

We went to my office door, and I pointed at it. She grabbed the envelope and looked in. She said, “That’s not how drug testing works.”

“OMG LADY! I know THAT!” I said to myself as I just stared at her.

That was my first major News Director task, and I realized that urine cups were just the beginning of all the things News Director’s deal with that nobody else ever really sees. My cup was about to runneth over.

Within 3 months, we had aired a promo that enraged the LGBTQ community, and my name and contact information were shared across Facebook and YouTube, alongside a terrible mistake – that I didn’t make. Wait. I was in charge now, so all mistakes did fall on me. I vowed to take every complaint call, hear everyone out, apologize that we were wrong, have a correction go on air, and even told my boss if someone had to get fired for it – fire me. I’m new to the area and I will take the bullet for the hard-working person who just used a terrible play on words. Eventually, the tide turned, people were accepting of the apology and correction, and even defended the station’s response to it since I was so open to hearing them out. But there it was by my name for years to come.

I broke up a near fistfight between two shouting anchors right in the middle of the newsroom.

I worked all the shifts to get to know all the people and all the workflows. I assisted with digital transitions and made friends with the corporate team. I did my first budget, which wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it was going to be thanks to some help. We needed fire gear for the upcoming wildfire season, and that was expensive and wasn’t in the budget. Calling around to several wildfire stations in the Tahoe area, we found out they had some extras. But they were only “Extra Small, Small and maybe some mediums.” Just the size of the average female reporter. They gave them to us. We saved some money.

I started taking the calls from networks when big stories were brewing and “sure CNN you can use our reporter live but can you spring for the hotel bill and meals?” I asked already knowing the answer. Money saved. Reporter on CNN. Win/Win.

I got to make important decisions on a new set, like what color the couch should be on the interview portion of the set. I was handed a bible of fabrics by a burly man and he said, “pick what you want!” I said, “Can someone help me?” and the men around me scattered like engineers going to a station potluck.

So, white and beige it was. One suede leather and one smooth leather. I certainly hoped it was going to look good. (Thank goodness it did!).

Within 6 months I had called several previous News Directors of mine to apologize. For the time I was being a jerk. For the time I didn’t understand why they didn’t give daily feedback because “what else do they do?”. For all the work they did that was never seen, inside or outside the office. For the budget cuts, hiring freezes, interdepartmental firings they couldn’t talk about but weighed heavily on their minds even while trying to smile and get through another random breaking news story. For not realizing many of them did two hours of work before work and took calls well past bedtime. For the times I thought “it must be nice to sit in an office and stare at a screen all day”, now realizing they were likely in the middle of something, all the time, serving either the budget, HR, corporate, digital, and station managers. For not realizing how hard they try to find the money to get what people need. For the times they had to decide between one nice camera or three average ones. For all of it. 

At my first producing job, I would actually huff and puff out the door every day at 6:35 pm when my News Director was not there to tell me how well I did or give feedback. The NEWS was on, where was he? God, I want to slap that version of myself, but you don’t know until you know that you can’t be everywhere all the time and have any kind of life or sleep pattern as a boss. 

Most positions in the newsroom have an instant gratification option daily. Produce a show? It was clean or not. Tell a story? It was good or okay or bad. Shoot or edit video? It’s either good framing and color with good audio or an error on one (or more) of those. You go home knowing how you did today in so many of the positions. The desk knows when they owned a story. The team knew when they won breaking news coverage. The digital team could see instantly on a screen how their story was performing.

It’s a whole different world for us in the big office “doing nothing but staring at a screen.” We can celebrate the success of our team members, but it doesn’t really feel like “our” victory. It’s a team victory.

So, I’m going to break this down, sentence by sentence, not necessarily in order. As I say in many posts and conversations with you guys, this is just MY opinion, and others may have similar or vastly different reward parts.

“It seems like someone is always unhappy with the News Director”

Truer words have never been spoken. Someone always is, and if you don’t prepare for that, you are going to spend a lot of nights feeling like you failed.

If had to make everyone happy, they’d all work dayside, and we’d have no morning reporter. Heck, we might not even have a morning newscast. We’d always have the top-of-the-line equipment and I’d happily pay to fix it no matter how many times I’ve said, “use the sandbags on those sticks when it’s windy.” Nobody would work Christmas, Thanksgiving, or truth be told – any holiday. We’d just go dark during news holes. All the vehicles would be brand news and I wouldn’t mind cleaning up someone else’s mess inside them. The list goes on.

We know when you are unhappy with us. We do. Either we sense it, see it, or someone told us. We know sometimes at the bar our work decisions, comments, or presentations are the talk of the table, picked apart piece by piece. We know because it wasn’t too long ago we were at that bar in another role. You aren’t unique if you talk about unhappiness with management people or the decisions they make.

This bothered me for the length of my first job. The more I tried to make people happy, the more points of unhappiness there were. It didn’t end. And I didn’t sleep worrying about it.

Then I had an epiphany. I think it’s when I realized I was serving the wrong master.

At another News Director job, I had a very nice person on staff who supported everyone, bar none. We had a producer who was just not getting it. Training in groups, one on one, off-hours, in the heat of the moment, none of it was working. I heard the “nice” person say to the struggling person “It’s going to be okay. You’ll get it.”

I pulled her into my office when I could be discreet about it and said “Stop telling her it’s going to be okay. It’s not okay that the show is a train wreck after this amount of time (and I’m not talking about the first few months). It’s not okay facts are wrong and stories are being plagiarized. If I have to make a tough decision, and that train is approaching, I can’t have her thinking that she was going to eventually get it.”

The “nice” person was confused, as I am sure you are now. It wasn’t a callous or cruel comment, it was a proven fact this person was not cut out for the role and it was hurting the product and the morale in the newsroom with everyone taking time to assist with basic tasks for someone who couldn’t get it. You see, the same people helping her were complaining to me that it wasn’t fair. Yet, they kept helping her, only to get more frustrated. Found out someone was actually doing half the job for her, and we STILL had a mess.

When “nice” woman asked me how I could be that tough one someone, I simply said “I have to be able to sleep at night. I have to go to bed knowing I made decisions that were best for the staff, station, company, and community, and not always in that specific order. Some items I get feedback on, some I don’t or can’t, and others I weigh back and forth for a few days while others wait for the reckoning. But if I did what I think it right for this station and I have an explanation to back that up, then I can sleep well at night.”

“Nice” woman had some stuff to teach me, and I had “Blunt” stuff to teach her.

You see, when you are a News Director, you lose the luxury of complaining about anything or everything, or saying “Why can’t we just do _____?”, “It makes sense to me to do _____!”, “Why does she/he always ______ when it comes to contracts?”, without having consequences.

We have to make decisions and those decisions have consequences, good or bad. We hire the wrong evening anchor and rating tank? Falls on us. We miss budget by 10% and have to explain why camera repairs are so expensive when we just bought new ones? We have to look sometimes at the COO or CEO and explain that. Why are digital numbers down? No, I can’t look my boss in the eye and say “People work really hard and they just can’t get to their digital stories.” Now it looks like I can’t manage and my staff can’t work efficiently.

 You don’t notice the money lost on a variety of financial climates, so you balk at the 3% raise offering not knowing it was originally 1% or even none at all, but we fought the battle time and time again behind closed doors in meetings you’ll never know about. You just see that we “aren’t there again at 3 pm on a Thursday.”

Sometimes those decisions are made way above our head, and unlike you walking out the door saying "He's making me go to breaking news", we can't say "Corporate is making us all do ____". We are stewards of the company and fight the battles in big meeting rooms or on Zoom calls. By the time it gets to you? No discussion.

We need to keep a million balls in the air, and at some point, you not liking your chair isn’t the top priority.

Here’s an example.

I once worked at a station that had downright dangerous chairs. Broken arms, torn off padding (who are these savages tearing apart arms on a chair?), would slide down with no warning, and just awful. I begged for new chairs in the capital discussions (another set of meetings you think we are out eating Bon Bons.) We counted all the chairs and which desks needed them the most. Do you know what the cost was? $30,000 to get just bottom-line good chairs. These weren’t the ones with ergonomics and back support and excellent padding. Just good chairs. But we also needed a new master control switcher. And another thing and another thing just to keep us on air when end-of-life came on equipment. Guess where the chairs went on that list? Yep. Down. Way Down. So, we bought a few chairs at a time, causing chair wars. I’ve worked at 11 TV stations and I’ve had 4 chair battles between them.

NEWS DIRECTOR LINGO: A Capital Expense is generally anything over $1000. These need to be approved by corporate and in some companies that a laundry list of corporate people. So when just want to “expense” something, we have to do things like buy 4 chairs that total $998.42 with tax and delivery. I am an expert at $999.01 expenses.

So as chairs would come in, people got smart and would take a REALLY crappy chair at put it at their desk and swap the other one so they could get one of the first chairs. I’ve seen real tears over chairs. I know you are thinking “But I sit in it all day long, and it’s uncomfortable, and shouldn’t I deserve a good chair to sit in?” Yes, you should. We’re working on it. We’re always working on it, but there are no ruby red slippers to make that happen. It’s plotted and planned. In one station we even bought refurbished chairs just to get more of them at a better price. Guess what? Two people complained they were sitting in an “old chair” and why were we so cheap? Never going to make everyone happy.

Do what’s best for the staff, station, company, and community. Make tough decisions, stand by them, and sleep well at night. That Master Control Switcher that doesn’t work well right now breaks and there are no parts for it? You could be sitting in a throne of solid platinum and it won’t matter because the station is off the air and losing money in 30 and 15-second intervals.

We just have to be okay with people being unhappy with us. We just have to accept that we can’t explain every decision sometimes due to financial, human resources, personnel, or corporate rules.

I like to say “I’ll tell you what I can when I can, and if you ask a question I can’t tell you, I’ll be honest that I can’t discuss that.” You just have to trust the person. Even if you don’t like them. I promise, no News Director in this country wakes up and thinks “Today I’m going to be lazy and piss people off and not care about it all.”

When I make bad decisions that lead to revenue or rating drops, I can get fired. When you have your own ideas about revenue or ratings, you get another drink at the bar. You have the luxury of having no responsibility tied directly to each and every decision you make.

We serve the greater good of everyone as a whole. We serve the needs of the viewers by providing the content they need with the resources we can afford. If budgets didn’t exist and vendors didn’t charge things, we’d all be driving sports cars, have no student loans, and live in a mansion. But they do. You can’t spend more than your budget without it hurting somewhere else, and neither can we at work.

“What’s the best part of being a News Director?”

The best part for us is the best part for many of you. The honor of telling stories in our community, shining lights in dark corners, and holding powerful people accountable. It’s seeing a story come together after a tenacious reporter worked it. It’s showing someone a new skill and seeing them own. It’s one-on-one discussions where we get to the critiques but also get real about what motivates us, challenges us, and frustrates us. It’s a new producer with their first clean show. It’s the people.

Also, one of my favorites (and also most challenging) is that you set the tone for the newsroom and you have an impact on policy, procedure, production, and people moving forward. It’s throwing out all the old templates and re-working it with producers for better flow, meter management, and storytelling. It’s creating a “Digital First” or “Real-Time News Distribution” workflow that is going to upset everyone at first but is a blessing later. It’s bringing an idea to life, from the moment you think of it, to writing it down so you don’t forget, to detailing the strategic plan for it (another time we might leave the office to work somewhere focused and quiet), to rehearsing it, to implanting it, to seeing what parts need fine-tuning, and for it becoming “this is how we do it here.”

There is also the part of having a station influence the average producer might not get. My ideas tend to spill to other departments (promotions and engineering, looking at you!). If they don’t buy in, we can’t do this. It’s making sure the promotions team knows when we owned breaking news or an exclusive story and promotes the crap out of it, and I mean by noon today!

It’s seeing journalists hone their craft. It’s watching people who just met weave their lives together in ways that will change them for years to come.

It’s knowing you fought a good battle for new cars and got 2 of them after some wrangling with the capital budget. It’s also hosting a “new car party” welcoming people to work on a freezing cold Alabama morning surrounded by new cars they didn't know were coming.

It’s paying it forward to all the people who did it for you. That’s why I write these articles because there are people who helped me and cheered me on without envy, and I would be a terrible mentee if I kept the gift and didn’t pay it forward.

It’s definitely not schedules and monthly budget reports and meetings-that-could-have-been-an-email-but-here-we-are-and-Frank-always-goes-on-forever.

“What’s the best part of being a News Director?”

Now for my moment I talked about earlier. I’m not going to get through this without getting choked up, so don’t judge me.

I once was a manager, not quite yet a News Director, but I worked with someone I was sure hated me. We verbally bantered back and forth all day long, she was an advocate for really important stories that were video poor and hard to explain. I was an advocate for good storytelling and strong video married to powerful words.

During one random debate over Brit Brit, I said to her “Sometimes you gotta put Britney Spears in the headlines to get people along for the ride to see the important stuff.” She made some comment that I had sold part of my soul to the devil. She meant it. I think.

I just had worked in the business long enough to know the battles to fight and die for and the ones to sit out or state my peace and bow out.

The day Michael Jackson had a health issue I said she needed to lead with it. Argument ensued. I won, she seethed. Hours later, and an hour before her show, we confirmed he had died. I looked at her and said “This is going to be your entire show. Just deal with it and please don’t complain.” She said “Yes, I know” and produced a stellar show for the people and maybe to spite me a little.

On this person’s last day, I was like “Hey, if I don’t get a chance to say goodbye later, good luck in your next job”, thinking I was doing the courteous thing and didn’t want to have a final verbal Battle Royale of luring in viewers with teenaged superstars vs. the price of rice in Burma.

She said, “I’ll come to see you before I go.” Ok, maybe we were having that battle. Note: Google Burma.

Toward the end of the shift, I always went back to my office from my newsroom desk to wrap up for the day. She came to the doorway of my office. I said “Leaving? So soon?” And she stood there, kinda stone-faced. Just stared at me for a second.

Her words were like on a 7-second delay you need to have at the Super Bowl and before I could respond I wondered if I really just heard a compliment.

She said something along the lines of “I just want to tell you how much I admire you. Your strength as a woman, as a manager, and as a journalist. You speak your mind and have the courage of your convictions. You have taught me so much and I’m grateful for that.” I’m not sure I realized which one of us was crying first, but we both were verklempt. All I could mutter out was “I thought you hated me!”

That same person years later asked about a management opening at my station saying she would love to work with me again. I held no grievance to her (or Burma), and while we couldn’t make that work, I’d hire her again any chance I could get. She’s a little too big market for me now though. 

That, dear anonymous survey taker, is the reward. When you break through walls, barriers, boundaries we all have put up to show another point of view, another way to do it, and someone is better for having you in their life. When you come up with an idea that changes a workflow for the better and makes people happier to be there while bringing in revenue and ratings, even if it was tough along the way. When someone you hired ends up at a network show years later. When the person who made the suggestion about refurbished chairs ends up running their own media company later in life (that person was always thinking of ideas!).

When you can take what you’ve learned and apply it to different areas of your management job, it’s rewarding. You didn’t just a job for the past 5 years, 10 years, whatever, you had a career and you’ve grown into the person you used to seek out.

When you have the honor of hiring people, mentoring them, helping them get better, and then stepping back to watch them shine, Wow. Rewards all day long. It just doesn’t have at the out time of a newscast like the rest of the staff.