Talking TV: How One TV Reporter Goes Niche For Win On TikTok, Instagram

Every TV station has its bantering anchors, reporters and meteorologists, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone having so much fun so often as Julie Baker.

That feeling is infectious around Baker, a reporter for Nexstar-owned KXRM in Colorado Springs, Colo., and it has translated well on TikTok and Instagram, where she has a large and growing following for videos of her on-set antics at the station and Weird News segments that mine the bottomless pit of human folly that she posts directly to social.

In this Talking TV conversation, Baker explains she’s shed the rigid TV persona from her career’s earlier days for good and that both station management and viewers have embraced the off-kiltered authenticity she revels in now.

Episode transcript below, edited for clarity.

Michael Depp: I’m Michael Depp, editor of TVNewsCheck, and this is Talking TV. It’s an anxious age for TV news and we’ve spent many of the more recent episodes of this podcast wading into the gravely serious issues the industry is facing right now. From TV journalist burnout to generative A.I. to the battle over vMVPD negotiation rates, when you may ask, are we ever going to have any fun?

Well, the answer is right now. Right now, we are going to have some fun with a TV reporter who looks to me to be having way too much fun doing her job. Julie Baker is a reporter at Nexstar’s KXRM in Colorado Springs, Colo. She also moonlights as a radio host at a top 40 station in Springfield, Mo., as the host of The Julie Baker Show. But many more people know her for her videos on TikTok and Instagram, which is where I first saw her.

Now, there’s nothing worse than having someone to describe to you something that they thought was funny. So, let’s just watch a couple of those videos right here. Coming up, a conversation with Julie Baker about a different way to approach the job of TV reporter and how such reporters can relax and be more natural on social platforms like TikTok. We’ll be right back with that conversation.

Welcome, Julie Baker, to Talking TV.

Julie Baker: Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Julie, you’ve been doing this TV reporter thing for a while now, at least 10 or 12 years, working for Nexstar, most recently the ABC O&Os and at other places. And yet you don’t seem infected with the syndrome that afflicts so many TV reporters — that rigid, plasticized delivery syndrome. How did you inoculate yourself?

I think certainly there was a time in my reporting career where I felt I had to be those things. I guess I could start in college. I always felt stories that were different and told in different lights were more impactful, that people would remember them more. But as I got into my career, I looked around the newsroom and thought, Oh, like nobody’s doing stories like, I think stories should be done. I should really conform to this very, like, suit and tie, serious news journalists. And I did that for a number of years, and eventually I kind of found myself in a state of burnout. I didn’t enjoy it. I felt inauthentic. I felt like I was shoving myself into a box. And there was a time I remember sitting on the anchor desk thinking, yeah, I could do this for the next 30 or 40 years. I could probably make decent money at it, but I think I might die a little on the inside.

And so, I took a break from TV news and got asked to start a radio show, but really quickly realized how much I missed TV news. But I looked around and I thought, I don’t know if I can pull it off the way that I want to pull it off. I was fortunate to find a station that said, hey, we see you. We see your style. We want it.

You’re a person who seems to be very relaxed on set with your colleagues. We saw a little bit of that at the top. Let’s watch a little bit more of that right now. So, Julie, what’s the trick here? What’s the mindset that a TV reporter or just anybody who’s regularly on air should adopt to avoid falling into that rigidity trap?

I think for me, I got to a point where I said, self, you’ve just got to entertain yourself. And if you feel good about it, if you feel authentic, if you feel like you’re just who you are, great. If other people like it, awesome, they are welcome to tag along on the journey. If they don’t, that’s OK, too. But you’ve got to be true to yourself, I think is the thing that was so important for me to realize and to really grasp.

Well, now that you are being yourself, how do your bosses and your colleagues react to you being you on set and in the field?

I think my current station, I was really transparent with them, with who I was, and they said, great, we love it. This is our style. I think I really work with a unique and dynamic morning team at Fox 21 here in Colorado Springs, and everybody on our show is allowed to be who they are.

And I think that is, you know, our ratings prove that people at home enjoy that. They soak it up, they love it. We have a really interactive audience, which, you know, might not be the case in other TV stations that are, you know, fit that more traditional, rigid-mold-type thing. Everyone’s allowed to be who they are. We’re all funny. We all love each other. We all care for each other. And we all want to see not only ourselves succeed, but the show succeeds because of that.

What do the viewers tell you about you being you?

You know, the majority of our viewers like it. They think it’s a breath of fresh air. Some people don’t like it. Some people want that more traditional, rigid approach. And that is OK. I think for me, I’ve recognized I don’t like everybody in the world. I can’t expect everyone to like me in the world. And that’s OK. If they don’t like it, that’s for them to take up with themselves.

It’s not my business what other people think of me. I want to spread joy. I want to spread positivity. Of course, there are going to be stories where you kind of have to have that more sincere tone, but that’s not the case every single morning. And so, you kind of have to adapt to that. But you know, you’re always going to meet that [person who wants to tell you a piece of their mind. You take it with a grain of salt.

I hope they do so politely.

You know, sometimes they get a little out of control, but that’s their prerogative. That speaks more to where they’re at in life. It doesn’t say a thing about me.

You have a pretty expansive presence on TikTok and Instagram, about 223,000 followers on TikTok, 46,000 or so on Instagram. Do you put up the same content on both platforms?

I do, but different days. So, a couple of years ago I started looking at TikTok, knowing that, gosh, there are so many dumb news stories in the world, why can’t we just make a joke out of it? And I thought that was a really good avenue to put that type of work up. So yeah, I will take all that stuff and put it across multiple platforms, Facebook and then on YouTube I’ll take longer clips and post it. Same content, different days. So, what you might get first on Instagram, you might get first on TikTok another day.

What works there? What do you find people are most responsive to in what you put out?

When it comes to social media, you really have to niche down. You can’t be all over the place. You can’t be all things to everyone. And, of course, that fractures you online where people see one type of version of you, and they assume you’re like that all the time. But that’s OK. I think that’s really important, but people enjoy authenticity. If I’m not laughing at myself, I can’t expect an audience to laugh with me. I can’t expect my audience to do something that I myself am not doing, I guess is maybe a better way to put it.

You have this recurring bit that you do on social, you just mentioned, Weird News. How do you find those stories or how did they come to you?

Goodness gracious, stupid news truly is of abundance. It is everywhere.

It’s an embarrassment of riches?

It is. But truly, it’s a content farm. You know, I read different headlines with my radio show. We have a service. Sometimes they’ll give me ideas, but I get a lot of ideas from my audience who follow me on TikTok, or they follow me on Facebook, they follow me on Instagram. They’ll send me stuff. Recently, I had someone send me a stupid news story that’s kind of in the suburb of my hometown about a woman who lit her house on fire with a spicy tortilla chip. And so, you will get stupid news online seeking it out yourself. But then other people will see it and they’ve been avid followers of you, and they enjoy your take on it and they’ll send it your way as well.

How can you light a house on fire with a tortilla chip?

I didn’t know this prior, and this is one of the cool things about stupid news is I’m always learning stupid facts. Apparently, the grease content makes it just combustible enough. She coupled it with a soda bottle full of Coke or excuse me, a soda bottle full of gas that she had poured on, lit the chip on fire, threw it on the clothes. And of course, that’s all a contributing factor to her house going up in flames. But you learn something new every day.

Wonder what the thinking was there.

I have no clue. She did say to police, according to what I read, I did it on purpose. So, at least she owned her crime.

A lot of younger journalists, aspiring journalists who are in school right now, don’t want to go into TV anymore. Would you try to convince them otherwise?

There was a journalist that I followed one day for my internship. I interned in St Louis, and she said to me, If you don’t absolutely love this job, don’t do it. You have to love this job. You have to love it. Otherwise, it will eat you alive. So, if this is just something where someone in college thinks I just want to be on TV, it’s so glamorous, they are not thinking correctly because the glamour ends where the power button begins. It is an illusion that it’s glamorous. It is something that you have to really want.

Fortunately for me, I’m very nosy and I love waking up in the morning. I take that back. I don’t always love waking up in the morning. That alarm goes off really early, but I love waking up in the morning, digging in, put my nose in to the grind, if you will, and see what’s happening in the world and looking for takes to tell people in a creative way what’s happening in the world.

From your own experience, what else would you say to convince a younger journalist or an aspiring journalist on TV that it is worth a try?

Ooh, what would I say? Well, it’s really rewarding. You know, you have the power to make a difference in a community. We just approached the five-year mark of Hurricane Florence 2018. I believe it was right on five years. My math is not good. I’m a writer. And for me, that’s been the most impactful coverage of my entire career. I was able to be on Atlantic Beach, which is kind of separated from the mainland of North Carolina, before anyone could have access to it. So, in two and a half hours, myself, my photojournalist and the late fire chief there of Atlantic Beach, literally went from house to house to house, showing people who had requested on social media to see their home so they can anticipate what they were returning to, exactly what was going on.

Now, of course, Hurricane Florence carries a much more sincere tone. It’s not really a joking situation and you can determine those story by story, but it was impactful. I later went back six months later and the fire chief who took over said, because of your coverage, we were able to do X, Y, Z. I will still have people reach out to me on social media and say, because of your coverage at Atlantic Beach, I was able to … do insert what they were able to do. So, you get a chance to really help out the community in a way that you might not otherwise think. You know, somebody’s home gets hit by a tornado. You were there and it is telling the neighbors how they can help out.

For me right now, I can go to a small business, and I know because of our TV broadcast we can make a difference for that small business. We can get more customers to their door. We can talk about how great they are. Otherwise, people might not have known about that business. So, it really is an opportunity to help out your neighbor. You’re just doing it in a way that’s maybe much different than work in the nonprofit world or kind of something like that.

What do you hope to be the arc of your own career? What are your ambitions?

Oh, that is a fantastic question and that is something that I’ve pondered since my return to TV news. And I really just love telling people what’s happening in the world and making them laugh. So, if there is a way that I can do that in a larger setting, I think of things like how impactful The Daily Show was for me watching Jon Stewart and then Trevor Noah, stuff like that. Even like Saturday Night Live Weekend Update. I remember in college thinking, gosh, I learned something, and I laughed. How can I do that type thing? So, I hope to do that on a larger scale, inform people, but also remind them like, hey, I’m human too, you’re human. Here’s what’s happened and here’s what’s up.

Well, Julie Baker… you can find her on TV screens in Colorado Springs on KXRM, on Instagram as AndJulieBaker. Julie, thanks so much for being here today. Appreciate it.

Thank you for having me.

You can watch past episodes of Talking TV with far less levity, but where the host is almost always being himself, at TVNewsCheck.com and on our YouTube page. We’re back most Fridays with a new episode. Thanks for watching this one and see you next time.