admin – Page 49 – Survive Your Job In Television News

Attention, hornet’s nest! Signs the place you are considering working for is bad, bad news.

When we outlined how to tell when a station is a great place to work, we got a few messages asking, “How do you tell when a place is really bad?“ Fellow journalists, this is a tricky one! We may all be great at digging up dirt, but in many cases the leaders of the hornet’s nest, hell holes are better at covering it all up. There are a lot of bad shops. So many, in fact, you might say to yourself: “I’ll just go to the crappy place if it’s in the city where I want to live.” Whenever possible avoid the hell holes. It will increase your chances of actually keeping your job for more than 2 contracts. Trust us, moving gets old after a while.

Now the all important list of tell-tale signs that a station is a hell hole:

1. Chronic 3rd or 4th place in the ratings

2. Goes through news directors every 2-4 years

3. People in the business cringe when you tell them the general manager and/or news director’s name

4. Managers who tell you they plan to showcase you as the key figure or example to “set the new standard of excellence” at the station

5. Consultants come in regularly to re-define news philosophy

6. Management holds “emergency” meetings to discuss last night’s numbers on a regular basis

Explain this list you say? Sure.

First, you should always check out the ratings of the station you are considering. If it is a chronic 3rd or 4th place station you need to understand that turnover is easily twice as high as other stations in town. Chronic 3rd and 4th place stations almost always do one thing very well. Jump the gun. They constantly change philosophies and shift their balance of power. The news director who hires you will likely not last the term of your contract. Hired guns are often brought in to clean house. Then “The Fixer” shows up, and often works you to death then brings in fresh faces to make his/her mark on the station. The odds are very high you will get axed by one of these management teams. If you do survive you will then face the company man/woman who will do anything corporate says and is often an expert at shifting blame. This type of ND likes to prove he/she has a set by gunning for at least one old timer to prove he/she really isn’t a puppet. The higher up you are on the food chain, the more you are at risk. So, bottom line, even if you do survive you will become a paranoid nutcase and will probably shorten your life expectancy and/or develop bleeding ulcers!

This can happen a lot at second place stations as well. But, if the news director has been in place for 4 or more years, odds are higher that upper management thinks the person has a clue. That’s what you are looking for as long as you can handle that particular person’s style.

Which leads to our next point: If people in the business cringe when you tell them who the general manager and/or news director is, beware! Do some research and find out why though. You may have just met a person who got fired and has an axe to grind? Keep in mind that every news director and general manager has enemies. That’s why you need to ask for specific reasons why these people are hated. That will help you figure out if you met a few immature folks or if there is a legitimate cause for concern.

If you are told that you will be the new “gold standard” for quality at a station do not go there. We made this mistake several times. (Hey, it stroked our egos!) We learned the hard way that this sets you up for a very lonely and paranoid existence. Most of the time management will hold you up as the poster child for all that is good. Instantly you are as hated as the “Internal Affairs” detectives on every cop show you’ve ever watched! Part of working in news is dishing about how much you wish management would change things. If you are the example of what management wants, then to everyone else, you are management without the salary or backing. It just plain sucks and you don’t want to live it.

In the article “Interview the Station“, we recommend you ask management to clearly define its news philosophy. Here’s a more detailed explanation of why. Many stations don’t have a true, clear, news philosophy. That’s why many stations pay a lot of money to consultants. To be fair, some stations use consultants as another way to coach and define their philosophy. But in most cases the only time you hear anything about a news philosophy is when the consultant comes to town and gives all of the staffers a seminar. This is not ideal because you end up having to prove yourself to essentially another set of management. Consultants are often telling upper management whether your bosses suck. They often will judge you on one or two newscasts in a year, so you cannot have a bad day when they show up. They will let upper management know if they think you suck also and it could mean demotions or worse. So how do you determine if the station consulting team is a potential disaster? First find out how often they are at the station and whether they do one-on-one training with producers, reporters and anchors, each time. Once or twice a year usually means the consultant is an extra set of eyes for corporate. More than that means they are actually teaching the staff what to do because management isn’t getting the job done. That sets you up for a scenario of having to humor an additional set of “bosses.”

You also need to find out if the station you are considering is reactionary rather than pro-active. The number one clue: Constant meetings involving news managers, the general manager, and often promotions and sales managers to decode last night’s ratings. You find out if this is the case by asking. Executive producers will often tell you if you ask. Regular staffers will tell you this also. (Yet another good reason to get several names and make after hours calls to get the scoop!) Reactionary stations panic over their ratings and are often disorganized with little vision. They break into a panic during breaking news. They are often poor planners. They tend to look for people to shift blame onto, other than management itself. Basically, these stations exist in “cover your ass” mode 24/7. That means longer hours for you and more potential to trip on a political hot wire and get cut off at the knees. All stations have meetings to go over numbers. If a station has a particularly bad day, expect to see a meeting. The stations you need to worry about are the ones that meet every Monday, each week or every day during a ratings period without exception. They are not sold on their product and ability to pull off quality news and promotion. They will constantly switch things around on the fly to look for a hit. You are constantly at risk of being labeled the problem child. The odds of making it long term at that station are not good. Avoid the situation if you possibly can.

One last thought on hell holes. If you do mistakenly get into one and really don’t want to move remember, these places do tend to go through managers quickly. With a little luck you can hang tough and survive until a good manager shows up. Just be prepared to take a lot of antacids while you wait it out.

What’s with the question? Make sure there’s an answer.

We recently got a Tweet from a frustrated journalist who had just watched a live shot from another station in another market. In that live shot the anchor asked a question to the reporter, and the question was not answered until the tag. The story came across as oversold and uncomfortable.

Sound familiar? The flow from anchor intro, to reporter live shot, to pkg, to live tag, to anchor tag is delicate to begin with. Then a whole bunch of writers step in, each with their own voice and tweak. The finished product often becomes forced and everyone looks uncomfortable or worse yet, detached from the information described. Then comes the big kicker: The consultant comes to town and tells the ND that the field crews and anchor desk must interact and seem engaged with each other. So what is management’s solution? Require anchors to ask reporters a question going into live shots. Then comes situations like the one at the start of this article. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are solutions.

First, the one question you never want to ask: “Joe are you live at the scene now?” Before you chuckle and roll your eyes, I lost count of how many times I had to copy edit that type of pitch question out of intros. It was constant, in every market size. Also, make sure the reporter knows the question is coming and what it is. That way the reporter doesn’t seem clueless. Remember, IFB can and does go in and out, you want the live shot to start out smoothly. The reason managers ask you to use a question in the pitch line is to make the interaction between the anchor and reporter seem like a conversation. When you think about it, most conversations do begin with a question and an answer. The person answering expands on the answer then, asks another question to move the conversation along.

With that in mind, here are some techniques to keep anchor questions required in the intro from seeming forced:

Reference live surroundings in the question
Provide perspective through the question
Write what a viewer ask

Now let’s delve deeper, so these are clear. Remember this exercise is supposed to help the anchor and reporter talk with each other, instead of at each other. It is one of the many ways you create flow within a newscast. So when writing the question in the pitch line, a natural way to transition is to ask about why the reporter is live at a particular place. Things like, “Joe can you walk us through the situation where you are?” makes the anchor seem authoritative and the reporter seem like an expert eyewitness. Another way to reference live surroundings is to give anchors the freedom to know they can ask about what they see in the live picture with the reporter. This is effective during fires, standoffs, fairs, holiday parties, political events… you get the idea. You can also have the reporter tell the producer if something interesting is going on, right before taking the shot. Then the anchor can ad lib with that information. Something like, “Joe, we’re hearing another fire truck just arrived, where is it and why was it called in?” If the live surroundings are stagnant (which is often the case) you can have the anchor ask something informative about the area like, “Joe, that’s usually a quiet neighborhood how are families there reacting to this situation?” All of these scenarios give the reporter a reason to reference why he/she is live. That is part of the natural flow of a conversation. Think of it like this, if you bump into a friend at the store, you often say “Hey, what are you shopping for today?” The person answers usually by pointing to the aisle he/she either just went down or will head down next. The key for this type of pitch question is to transition to what is immediately next in the live report.

Now, let’s talk about using questions for perspective. This is where pitch questions can often go wrong, like the scenario at the beginning of this article. You must ask a question that provides an immediate answer. No waiting until the package or tag. If your reporter is at a boring scene and is doing a story that’s been done over and over, use the pitch question to help show what’s new. Use something like, “Joe, before we were told the tax cut would be small, why is it possibly going up now?” Or “Last night we were told this was an accident, why are investigators calling it intentional now?” You are showing that the anchor remembers what he/she tells people and that there is something new. Again, before you snicker, sit down and watch a newscast. It is excruciating how often anchor intros are written in ways that make the anchor seems clueless about the subject, especially when it’s an ongoing story. The cheap copout way to write an intro is to fake that the subject is new by providing no perspective. If you are struggling with ways to justify why this information is being given to the viewer again, let the anchor be the antagonist of sorts and ask that very thing of the reporter. “Joe, we’ve been talking about this political issue for a week, why do families need to hear about it tonight?” That’s a natural question someone probably asked in the editorial meeting when you decided to cover the story. So let the anchor ask it of the reporter in the intro.

Which leads to the kinds of questions viewers would ask: Put the viewer benefit, front and center. (If you don’t know what viewer benefit means read “What’s in it for me.”) Now consider this: Anchors are considered the voice of the audience. They are the people who can ask what viewers want to know, but don’t have the means to ask. Use that connection between anchor and audience to craft questions to the reporter. Let your anchor be gutsy with questions like, “Joe, a lot of people think this tax cut is a joke, is it?” Or “Joe, does this really mean (star player) is walking away from the team?” Or “Joe, there have been a lot of break-ins in this area lately, what makes this one different?” Again, think about bumping into a friend and briefly catching up. Most of us have similar things to say each time, so our friend prods with questions to see if there are any changes. People expect to hear some of the same information, but appreciate anchors asking what is different.

Finally, understand that questions can be a crutch. It is such a common technique, that it can be over used. But if done correctly, it will not seem forced. Remember, asking questions is human nature. So don’t fear questions, just make sure the reporter gets to the answer right away.

Stuck working? A Holiday Survival Guide.

You know you’ve been in this business a long time when you’re scheduled to work a major holiday and you don’t even flinch.

But for many young journalists just starting out in broadcast news it is a shock to the system. You can imagine why. They’ve just left an institution where they didn’t just get Christmas off but often wrapped-up final exams in mid-December and didn’t have to return to campus until the day after the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.

For young journalists who are close to their family — and let’s hope most of them are — not being able to take part in Christmas traditions that have been repeated year after year since they were born can be emotionally wrenching.

And I want to include Jewish, Muslim, and journalists from other religious traditions in this, too, because from Hanukah to Yom Kippur from Ramadan to the Day of Ashura, all of these observances have one thing in common: coming together with family.

But entering journalism can mean putting the wider society and your profession above these traditions. After all, even on these holy days, the killings won’t stop, cars will still crash into other cars, and houses will catch on fire. Our communities need someone to document these things and tell the stories of the people whose lives have been forever altered.

So if you have to work on a major holiday during your career – and if you’re a journalist, you will – I humbly offer you Matthew Nordin’s Holiday Survival Guide:

1) Clear, doable story ideas: Don’t wait until Christmas morning when you show-up in the newsroom at – ahem! – 9 a.m. to worry about what story you’re going to turn. Maybe there won’t be any breaking news in your market that day. Go to the news director or executive producer at least two days in advance and get them to approve Story A, Story B if the first story falls through, and Story C if the first two fall through. Better yet, start shooting interviews and b-roll for Story A as soon as you get approval. It can be almost impossible to get an interview on Christmas Day. All the people you usually want to talk with on-camera who need someone’s approval to do an interview on an average day still need it on Christmas. And they don’t want to call their supervisor in the middle of her family opening presents to ask if they can go on Eyewitness News.

2) Plea to managers: Yes, I know your brand is “On Your Side.” But unless you’ve got your team of reporters executing stories that meet the brand days in advance, let’s cut the reporters a little slack here. Trying to solve someone’s problem on Christmas Day is going to be next to impossible when all corporate offices and City Hall are closed. The viewers who do tune-in Christmas Night will want to catch-up on the major events in your community that they might have missed. I doubt they’re tuning-in to see how you’re holding a major retailer accountable for selling the Smith Family a bad flat screen TV. (Don’t worry, news directors. The consultant won’t be dialing-up your show on the Internet on Christmas Night either.)

3) Bring your lunch/dinner! Early in my career, when I had to report on Christmas Day, I made the mistake of thinking I could just roll-up to McDonald’s or Wendy’s like any old day of the year. Nope. Have a good meal prepared for yourself that’s microwavable. Make sure it’s better than your average lunch/dinner at work. Treat yourself since it’s a holiday. It’ll make you feel better.

4) Don’t gripe. Your producer has a huge hole to fill because there’s probably not a lot going on in your market. So don’t yell at him about having to make a smallish story into a package and going live during the newscast. We all want to go home. You’ll get there eventually that night.

5) Celebrate on your schedule. If you have a significant other, you can always have that big meal and gift exchange after you get off work that night. If you’re a young journalist and missing your family, consider asking your parents if they’ll hold-off opening some of their presents until you get home and can join them via Skype. Then they can watch you open the gifts they got you, too.

Finally, here’s a secret that will sound ridiculous to any well-adjusted person, which is perhaps why it’s coming from a television journalist, but working a major holiday isn’t all that bad. It’s usually a slower day. The managers are gone. The people who are in the newsroom are usually in a good mood. And you’ve got a comp day coming!

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Matthew Nordin is an investigative reporter/anchor at WXIX-TV. You can talk with him on Twitter @MatthewNordin.

Newsflash, your EP doesn’t have ESP! How to clue them in and form an alliance.

Being an EP is a weird little world. You are a manager for sure, with a lot of responsibility. But you sit in the newsroom all day long and work in the trenches. You have this element in common with another prominent figure on your shift, the anchor, but often the two don’t connect. It fascinated me as a producer for years. The EP and the anchor would rarely speak. I, the producer, was caught in the middle all the time, newsroom after newsroom. Then I became an EP and tried to change this relationship. What I found was fascinating. Time and again, my anchors assumed I knew everything going on in their world and they would actually avoid telling me about any issues. They even became frustrated if I regularly tried to check in to make sure I was aware of any needs they had.

I am guessing that being a manager made me seem a little untrustworthy. Understandable since EP’s do weigh in on annual reviews. But the anchors that did sit down with me and clue me into their expectations succeeded better at their jobs. The reason: I could fix problems for them. I was able to make my expectations crystal clear as well. To me, having both sides understand the other is only beneficial. So, anchors, here’s how to forge a relationship with an EP, since we unfortunately don’t have ESP and always know what you need:

Set up regular check in sessions to make sure you’re on same page
Compliment and critique
Be the key backup

First of all set up regular check in sessions to make sure you are on the same page with your EP. This is a two way street, but you have to ask for it. I used to try and sit down once a month and just ask my anchors how everything was going. Did they have any segments they liked? How was the writing? Were they getting enough time to ad lib? Were they getting enough guidance when given breaking news on set? Sometimes my anchors would candidly provide answers, which I appreciated immensely. Other times my anchor would say everything’s fine, then go off and bad mouth situations. Often they would do this just a few hours later and in the hallway where I could easily walk up and hear it (and often did). If you are given an opportunity to spell out your likes and dislikes, do it. Otherwise keep your mouth shut in the building! Not openly talking about what you need, and instead trashing the situation in the hallway makes you look immature. That means the EP will develop concerns over your ability to lead. When it’s time to get a new higher level show, that EP will not endorse you.

During check in sessions, you should complement and critique. It is very beneficial to know what’s working for you as well as what isn’t. Remember even EP’s need to know if something they are doing or their producers are doing is going great. Compliments are rare in most newsrooms. They help boost morale and help the EP figure out what your likes/needs are so they can pass the information down to appropriate staffers. As for critiques, I know what it is like to have a manager call you in and ask for a critique when you know they actually don’t want to hear it. These check in sessions should be clearly defined so your criticisms are understood to be constructive. Also, the EP has final say in whether some of the issues you bring up are addressed, how and when. Frankly, some things you bring up, the EP may deem not that important. Be professional enough to see that perspective as well.

Finally, EP’s need people to back them up sometimes, especially if they are making major changes to a newscast. Back the EP up. Tell the staff that change can be good. Be a cheerleader (see Smart Alliances). This will go a long way toward winning major loyalty from the EP. Remember, when you’re trashing major formatting changes, most of the time they already went up through higher channels than you and the EP. To rip them, especially in a group setting, is not in your best interest. This is where your leadership role really comes in for the newscast. Often if the anchor says an idea is worth a try, the staff supports attempting the plan. Your support will go a long way toward winning a major ally, your EP.