Local News Burns Out

Hank Price

The latest RTNDA/Newhouse School at Syracuse University study of television news departments is must-reading for all station owners. Veteran researchers Bob Papper and Keren Henderson have produced an eye-opening look at growing problems that have been ignored for far too long.

Bottom line: News directors report that employees are becoming burned out. Stories of being “stretched too thin,” “exhaustion,” “quiet quitting” and “contract breaking” abound. Many newsrooms seem to be operating in crisis mode with a host of personnel problems piling on top of each other.

News directors are trying to face the problems head on by taking a wide range of steps, from changes in scheduling to team building exercises to, in some cases, more money.

Going beyond the study, it’s easy to see that news directors can only do so much to help because it is not within their power to address the root causes of so much employee discontent.

One cause is that we have a new generation of employees unwilling to become chattel for the sake of building a career in journalism. Old timers might be proud of having paid whatever price it took for success, but that doesn’t mean today’s staffers should be blamed for wanting more normal and balanced lives.

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The bigger issue though, the elephant standing in the middle of the room, is that many news departments are simply understaffed. Over the past 15 years, the ratio of news employees to the number of local newscasts produced has dropped like a rock.

Going back to Papper and Henderson’s report for a moment, we learn that today’s “average” television newsroom employs 2.6 reporters, 5 MMJs and 5.5 photographers. That’s a total of 13.1 people spread over seven days a week.

What the study doesn’t show are the support people from engineering and production, such as teleprompter operators, who are no longer present. Advancing technology, such as the move from satellite and microwave trucks to cell-based coverage, has obviated the need for some of those people, but for the most part news department employees have been forced to take up the slack.

Larger markets will have more people, smaller markets fewer, but the bottom line is that an affiliate producing 25 or so hours of news a week 15 years ago might well be producing 40 hours today with a smaller total staff. Add to that the heavy volume of mobile, web and social media work and you have an overwhelmed newsroom.

Then, there is the quality issue. The old saying that a great photographer can make a mediocre reporter’s work far better than they deserve remains true. You still see traditional crews in some larger stations, but for much of the industry that has become a rarity, reminding us that the mass conversion from reporter/photographer teams to MMJs was a Faustian bargain from the start, implemented for no other purpose than to save money.

The reality of producing more product with fewer resources means most news directors are pressed to simply get the news of the day covered. That’s why we see constant repeats of the same stories which, by necessity, are often much longer than the content deserves. We have come to the point that something as simple as a fresh live shot is seen as a differentiator.

I’ve written in the past about the pervasiveness of copycat thinking in television news, but there are good reasons for that sameness. The last thing a news director bogged down in personnel and coverage issues has time to think about is innovation.

So, whose fault is this? Certainly not the news directors. If anything, they are the biggest victims. As the study makes clear, news directors are trying their best, but they can only do so much.

What about general managers? Part of a GM’s job is to put employees first, and they can do many things to help, but GMs do not have ultimate control of staff size.

The solution to these problems doesn’t lie at the station level. It is squarely at the feet of corporate decision makers who are more concerned about quarterly earnings than the quality of local news coverage. More importantly, these are decision makers who place budget restrictions over the well-being of their employees.

Having run stations for more years than most people survive in this business, I get it. Profitability matters because without reasonable profit, no one has a job. Reasonable profit used to mean a minimum of 40%. It’s half that these days, but still a very good business. The wild cards no one likes to talk about are debt service and cord cutting, which is why there is so much downward pressure on the expense line.

Even so, station owners need to be aware just how tough things have become in their news departments. Television news has always been a high-pressure business, but for many newsrooms it has also become a struggling one. In a world of ever greater competition on ever expanding platforms, this inability to get the job done represents an existential threat to our business.

If linear television is to matter in the future, not to mention our product competing in the wider digital world, it will be because the innovative spirit of those that came before us is healthy and pushing boundaries forward. Right now, that can’t happen because many newsrooms are not healthy.

As we approach budget season this fall, I hope general managers will make the case for an appropriate number of news staffers in their 2024 plans, and I hope some of those additional positions will be approved. Given what the RTNDA/Newhouse study shows, newsroom staffing may be today’s most important station issue. It must be addressed now, before it becomes too late.

Hank Price spent 30 years leading television stations for Hearst, CBS and Gannett while concurrently building a career in executive education. He is the author of Leading Local Television and two other books.

Comments (7)

RustbeltAlumnus2 says:

July 10, 2023 at 10:20 am

I worked in the TV business in the 1970s and 80s and recognize the change in my own habits. Local stations are giving away the news to my Facebook page, where I get timely weather and news without the need to watch a linear newscast. I recall reporter burnout 40 years ago, too. The top 10 most stressful jobs list should be shared in J-schools. https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/1875-stressful-careers.html

OldSchool says:

July 10, 2023 at 10:31 am

When corporations own and operate hundreds of stations they are always doing cost cutting so what works in Topeka will be put into Columbia (don’t know why I picked those markets) and all the other markets so it will bring in the broadcast cash flow. Most of these mid and small markets have done away with photogs for the most part years ago and now they want the 21 year old reporter to do both jobs without the pay. You cut expenses in news and programming to make the biggest impact to the bottom line and if you are not number one or two in most mid size or small markets you will lose money in the news. Yes today’s generation of journalists (that term is questionable) are hired for less money and then put on a treadmill to oblivion so no wonder they burn out or just quit….

tvn-member-2791368 says:

July 10, 2023 at 10:37 am

So painfully true. In smaller markets managers are forced to fill in on positions they supervise. People coming into the business today are definite NOT interested in being corporate chattel. The door revolves quicker than I’ve ever see it. The pressure to hold down head count (at minimum wage in many instances) if not reduce it is unrelenting. It’s shortsighted in the extreme.

johnbobel says:

July 10, 2023 at 11:16 am

One major group announced that as of next February, its stations would no longer have videographers. Everyone would be an MMJ or find somewhere else to work. Many have already left for other stations that value the videographer or transition into other newsroom jobs. Some just leave journalism. It’s more and more difficult to actually report a story if that MMJ has to do it all.

The same with directors and producers. Now the producer not just writes and orchestrates the show, but programs each element into the system, which with a director’s help, switches the programs. When it works and there are no changes, it’s music. But add a few changes, coding errors, typos and other twitches, and the broadcast falls apart. Instead of a “crew” it’s a gang of two or three to make the newscast happen.

To keep an audience’s attention, the content needs to be compelling. Running and gunning, flipping and filling a newscast with irrelevant content isn’t going to compel anyone to do much more than find news elsewhere.

SunnyinArizona says:

July 10, 2023 at 3:46 pm

A former GM here who worked for small and big companies. I’ve been retired for a few years. But I still wonder if part of reporters feeling overworked and burned out is that they are told to spend an hour or two a day traveling to an empty building or other unnecessary place to do a live shot. When they could spend the time in the newsroom writing a better story, discovering interesting angles and providing better information to the viewers. This would also create opportunity to maybe produce one more story more easily.

Former Producer says:

July 10, 2023 at 11:43 pm

When was the last time a TV station sent a reporter “an hour or two” away for a live shot outside “an empty building or other unnecessary place?” I worked for a few not-too-sharp news managers in my career, and even they saw the folly of sending a reporter that far away for a meaningless live shot. Besides, that would mean overtime. Many people in TV news know overtime is the bane of a general manager’s budget!

Pointless and time-consuming live shots are not the problem. Low salaries, dwindling newsroom resources, and growing job demands are the problem. Broadcasters are simply not willing to spend enough money to effectively fix these problems.

Dave Kovic says:

July 13, 2023 at 10:24 am

The CEOs and corporate leaders who run local stations across the nation are responsible for the burnout. Period. Their motives are to keep shareholders and Wall Street happy and control costs while still delivering newscasts. The result is newsrooms are now filled with “FACTORY WORKERS” who are asked to write, shoot, push record buttons, edit, and deliver relevant news. Is this true everywhere? Of course not. But more and more, competent, and thoughtful people are fleeing television news. They are not appreciated. They are given 1% to 3% raises for doing good work and in some cases are expected to carry the workload of 2 or even 3 people. Who is responsible for that? What is a GM or ND to think when their bosses ask them to add newscasts but are not allowed to add staff to execute? What is a producer to do when they were hired to do ONE NEWSCAST and are suddenly expected to do two shows a day permanently? The quality of the product suffers. The producer will just want to get through the day, through their TWO newscasts, get the stacks ready, and move on as quickly and as efficiently as possible till their shift is over. NOW, what is a GM left to think when year in and year out they must prepare budgets and have to defend their business like they are in a courtroom? They find themselves begging for more resources and pleading with their bosses for more money. When the mindset is about “getting by” and “surviving the budget meetings” this is not so funny, but a symptom of a problem. Newsrooms are forced to hire people who have limited to no experience, or must hire people looking for that first-time TV opportunity and are willing to take just about any salary to get in the door. When one is unappreciated, asked to do more than is reasonable, or given a smidgen of a raise while the CEO of their corporation gets millions of course they are going to burn out and look for better opportunities. Burnout can only be managed and mitigated to some degree inside the station. But the root of the problem is solely in the hands of those who run and own these broadcast corporations and they are the only ones who can begin to fix it. I doubt they ever will.