Hearst Television Promotes Akili Franklin To Corporate Recruiting Position

Akili Franklin, since 2020 the news director at Hearst Television’s NBC affiliate WYFF Greenville-Spartanburg-Anderson, S.C./Asheville, N.C., has been promoted to the newly created corporate position of director, news management recruitment for Hearst Television.

In this new role, Franklin will identify news professionals for positions across the company’s news division. She will also oversee the Fred Young Hearst Television Producing Fellowship program.

Barbara Maushard, Hearst Television senior vice president, news, said: “We’ve always placed a premium on leadership; this new corporate position was designed for someone with an eye for recruiting strong managers for our local, multiplatform news operations. Akili has succeeded quickly in every role she’s undertaken at Hearst Television, and has advanced rapidly in our company. She’s now taking on a very important job: identifying and developing newsroom leaders of the future — leaders who espouse the core values of professional journalism and who can adapt to the rapidly changing media landscape.”

Franklin will work closely with Sinan Sadar, Hearst Television’s director, news talent recruitment, who will continue to focus on hiring for on-air positions.

Among a number of accomplishments during Franklin’s time there, the WYFF newsroom earned a national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2022. Franklin has spent most of her career with Hearst Television; before moving to WYFF in 2020, she served since 2016 as news director at Hearst Television’s WDSU New Orleans. “Under her leadership,” Hearst said, “WDSU News thrived and, by 2017, became the No. 1 local newscast across several dayparts and earned multiple Emmy, AP and Louisiana Association of Broadcasters awards. Her team was also nationally recognized in 2018 with the Edward R. Murrow Award for Breaking News.”

Before WDSU, Franklin was assistant news director at Hearst’s WVTM Birmingham, Ala.  Before that, she served a prior tour at WYFF, as news producer and later executive producer. She previously was a news producer at Hearst’s WPBF West Palm Beach, Fla.

She holds a degree in mass communications from Hampton University.

Franklin is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists. In 2021 she was named a Riley Fellow of South Carolina-based Furman University Riley Institute’s Diversity Leaders Initiative, joining a network of South Carolinians that includes corporate CEOs, legislators, superintendents, religious and nonprofit heads, and business and community leaders. Also that year, she received a Jefferson Award for Public Service in connection with being designated a public-service ChangeMaker by the national nonprofit organization Multiplying Good.