Better understanding success and satisfaction of local television news directors

By Chip Mahaney

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is Part Three of a four-part series examining the role, pressures, and professional realities of local television news directors.

I wanted specific data on news directors’ attitudes toward their job satisfaction and success, as well as their feelings of job stability and security, a topic not yet studied in the academic literature. But I’m a 40-year journalist and news leader, and not a professional researcher, and this was my first attempt at survey research. 

I’m thankful for RTDNA and Rick Gevers for publishing the link to my survey in their email newsletters and on their websites. The surveys were collected in the final weeks of 2024 and early weeks of 2025.

The responses were fewer than I had expected, with 43 beginning the survey and 23 continuing through the most critical questions, weeding out anyone who wasn’t a current news director working in a U.S. television newsroom. But the 28 who completed the survey left behind quantitative data and high-quality qualitative data, too, in the form of comments.

The respondents leaned toward being an experienced group, with a mean of 12.25 years as a news director and 6.25 years in the newsrooms they currently lead. Overall experience in all journalism jobs was also high, with a mean of 27.07 years. All but one of the respondents who completed the survey are between 30 and 60 years old and are almost equally split between men and women. While no known dataset tracks the average age, experience, and tenure of today’s news director roster, based on my own experience and knowledge, I suspect the respondents to my survey are older and far more experienced than the overall pool of news directors.

The respondents came from 9 of 13 RTNDA geographical regions in the United States. The regions not represented were the Great Plains, New England, and the NY/NJ/PA corridor.

About three-fourths of the respondents lead medium- to large-sized newsrooms, with 26 to 100 employees. Also, three-fourths of the respondents work in Nielsen DMAs ranked 1-100. Those respondents may be the same people, since the larger newsrooms are almost always in the larger DMAs.

Using a 5-point Likert scale, with “5” indicating the most favorable and “1” the least, I asked two questions about respondents’ feelings of satisfaction and success in their current jobs. 

The news directors were evenly split here, in the general sense of satisfied vs dissatisfied.

I then asked for one or two reasons for their response. Here are the six positive responses, either directly quoted or lightly paraphrased for clarity:

• Coaching – getting everyone to improve. Producing content that is relevant and useful to our audience/readers.

• I like my job, my team

• Great working relationship with my General Manager and corporate team

• Lots of hands off from the GM. Love working with new journalists

• I have a really positive and supportive (but also realistic) GM, and we’ve been working so hard on the culture here that is really is now a great place to work, not only for the employees but for the managers.

• Helping young journalists compete, building staff and structure, while dealing with the possible death of broadcast.

Here are the four mixed responses:

• Love the job; there are many challenges to doing it well that you have little or no control or influence

• It’s a huge challenge, getting everyone on the same page while managing radio, TV, and digital stories while prioritizing quality.

• I love the job, but the corporation does not provide enough pay or support.

• Industry and leadership changes have led to some dissatisfaction, but overall, I’m happy in my current role.

Ten of the responses were marked either positive or mixed. Thirteen of the responses were judged negative, which could mean the three respondents who marked “neither satisfied nor dissatisfied” all gave negative written details.

Here are the negative responses:

• Lack of support from General Manager

• The amount of corporate oversight has never been worse. The expectations of doing our job and being on 24/7 coupled with corporate reports and initiatives changing on a whim. 

• The job continues to get harder and journalism schools teach less and less. Also, less qualified candidates can find jobs in larger markets.

• Underfunded and overworked

• Financial uncertainty, expected to do the same amount of work with fewer people

• Not enough corporate support/direction, inexperience of journalists

• Lack of resources, lack of support

• Too far candidates applying for open positions and even fewer qualified candidates. 

• Salary parameters for hiring staff is very difficult and the demands are more. 

• Pay and work/life balance sucks

• Station culture is a boy’s club, new ideas aren’t welcomed

• Corporation’s lack of journalistic integrity

• Employees who don’t like the direction of leadership vision can easily complain to HR, and it becomes a challenge for the ND. News is 24/7 and many of today’s new hires don’t understand hard news, want to ask tough questions. They want to be a celebrity, not a journalist. Industry has changed.

Because a news director’s sense of job satisfaction and success is often tied to how they feel working for their supervisor (usually, the station’s general manager), I asked a similar question of the respondents, only this time the response is based on how the news director estimates how the supervisor rates their satisfaction with the news director. 

These numbers reflect a much more positive outlook than the previous set. Here are some of the positive responses the news directors gave for their scores, either directly quoted or lightly paraphrased for clarity:

• I’m driving positive change in the newsroom.

• My supervisor thanks me for a job well done and trusts me with important station information.

• High ratings, quality work, low drama

• I’m a good partner so that the GM can focus on sales.

• I have a wonderful and supportive general manager who consistently praises my work. 

• He is a new GM and doesn’t know much about news. He is able to focus on other departments knowing that the news department is being managed well by news managers.

And here are a couple of the negative responses:

• It’s more about money than ethics.

• The GM is a bully, disorganized, and unethical. We don’t get along.

These responses lead to one final question from this survey: “Do you fear losing your job without notice?” This is a common theme in this essay. 

Even in this limited data set, and even with most news directors sensing that their supervisors are satisfied with their performance, there’s still concern about an unplanned job loss, like what baseball managers and city managers experience.

Chip Mahaney has more than 40 years of experience in television and digital journalism, including decades in newsroom leadership and talent development. He is currently a Media Executive-in-Residence for the Journalism Division at Southern Methodist University, where he teaches and helps build broadcast and sports journalism programs. A former TV news director, Chip has trained and mentored thousands of journalists and has long served the profession through RTDNA leadership and Murrow Awards judging.

COMING IN PART FOUR: Recommendations for further study and better understanding.