What drives success and satisfaction among local TV news directors

By Chip Mahaney

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

Even if baseball fans all think they could do a better job than their favorite team’s manager, the impact of the manager’s leadership cannot be understated. The same goes for city managers and for local television news directors.

From personal experience working in the industry, both as a news director and as a corporate leader overseeing product across multiple newsrooms, I know that any change in leadership at the news director level can set a news organization back by 9 months or more.  Unless there’s a trained and mentored successor ready for promotion, recruiting alone to replace the outgoing news director can take 45 to 60 days, and sometimes up to 6 months. Then often, there’s relocation; moving in; learning the new community and company; building connections; surveying talent, strategy, and execution. The cost of replacing a news director is high, even if an internal promotion is warranted. News directors set critical vibes; any disruption, even just to vibes, can create discomfort and unsettlement, and disrupt momentum toward newsroom or station goals.

From an efficiency and excellence standpoint, leadership stability makes sense to keep the newsroom focused on high-performing daily news coverage and attainment of goals related to content, audience growth, and revenue.

Here are four broad recommendations for further study and support: 

1. Like the extraordinary data generated by Papper, Henderson, and Morabito, on behalf of RTDNA, as well as the weekly chronicles of news director movement from industry insider Rick Gevers, I recommend creating an annual tracking study of news director movement, tenure, satisfaction, and success. The Gevers weekly newsletters track each actual individual job movement, but he says there is no central database or searchable record to pull up bulk data or do further analysis. A central data repository built from data captured from Gevers’ weekly dispatches would help researchers and the industry better track and understand trends in news director tenure and movement. Also, given that the data from my survey is skewed in favor of news directors with what I expect is far more experience than the average news director, further research needs to include a purposeful effort to attract younger news directors with much less experience.

2. Begin a broader academic study on the news director position holistically, much as has been done in the city manager/public administration field. As long as the local television news directors manage their markets’ largest newsrooms, their success in the position remains of vital interest to journalism companies, newsroom staff, and even people in the local community who rely on local news. Such a study could break down the types of skills, aptitudes, and attitudes a current-day news director ideally ought to have before they take on the position for the first time. RTDNA is one organization that could seek and provide funding to sponsor such research. Likewise, several journalism non-profit funders might be interested in providing support. Also, it’s possible that one or more of the mainline local television station group owners would offer support for the research in exchange for some additional data that might be offered to them exclusively, based on the needs and goals of that specific company. Additional partnership and support could come from for-profit consulting and coaching firms that advise TV stations on talent selection and development, content, ratings/metrics, and revenue. As discussed above, even experienced journalists who ascend to the news director position don’t have direct skills or personal work experience in many of the journalism positions they will now supervise. Those news directors who moved up through the ranks of producers or assignments/digital editors may have never been a field reporter or photojournalist, or vice versa. More critically, these news director newbies rarely have sufficient training in management or leadership. A deeper benchmark study – across relevant outside industries – should identify the most important business/management/leadership skills that might lead to longer and more successful tenures, and less turnover. 

3. Such research could lead to sophisticated training, up to and including graduate education that offers a certification or degree. Many universities offer auxiliary education, either inside individual colleges/schools/divisions or in a division built for continuing and professional education. A cross-disciplinary program connecting a university’s journalism school with its business management or leadership school would be a place to start. A remote, online training program would be a must. Because journalism is typically a lower-pay profession with limited high-end salaries, and because profit margins for local television stations have shrunk from perhaps 50% a quarter century ago to perhaps 10% today, cost is a major concern. It’s quite possible the aspiring future news director would need to foot the bill for their own training, and of course, they would be doing this training while also doing the full-time job they are currently in. Add on any outside responsibilities like a family, and one can see that a program like this – while highly useful if not outright necessary – would have to fit carefully into the rest of a candidate’s life and budget.
   
   A certificate of completion or accomplishment would be a great asset to present as a credential toward winning a first or future news director job. Existing professional credential programs like PMP for project managers, SHRM for human resource professionals, or CMP for meeting planners might provide useful templates for designing a similar certification for news directors. Again, this might be a useful role for RTDNA, pushing forward its 75-year legacy as a champion of electronic news and newsroom leaders. RTDNA maintains close relationships with several leading U.S. journalism schools, which might make a partnership easier to build.

The Poynter Institute has, for much of its 50-year history, invested heavily in newsroom leader training. While their week-long seminars (Poynter Leadership Academy, Essential Skills for New Managers, and others) have been fundamental to my own personal career development, Poynter does not currently have a mechanism tying their programs together toward a marketable certificate, and they do not currently teach the depth of skills in areas like financial management or human resources that a certificate program would likely offer.

For even more sophisticated training, there is already a model program, but for broadcast meteorologists. Mississippi State University has, for decades, offered a remote meteorologist training program for people who want to get into TV weather. Often, the students are working journalists who earn an undergraduate degree in journalism or communications and start their career as a reporter or producer. Then, by some happenstance, like filling in to cover a weatherperson’s absence, this employee found a passion for weather. The Mississippi State Broadcast and Operational Meteorology Endorsement program is 3 years in length, requires 17 courses and 53 credit hours. Students who don’t know anything about the science of weather learn what they need to get an academic certificate and the credentials to apply for a seal of approval from the National Weather Association. This trade organization represents operational meteorologists.

4. The previous recommendation requires significant planning and resources, but there are also short-term solutions. One solution would be for researchers to study onboarding for all-new or newly hired news directors, which could lead to focused best-practice training during the first 30 to 90 to 180 days on the job. Twenty years ago, former CBS and CNN correspondent Deborah Potter authored an RTDNA booklet, Incoming: Advice for the Newly Named News Director, which provided a series of astute bullet-pointed checklists to help a new news director adapt more quickly to their new job, their new boss, their new newsroom staff, and their new company organization. Even though this book precedes any newsroom focus on digital content or streaming, or social media, many of the leadership and management ideas in Incoming still hold up. The book sorely needs to be updated to the current age. Both RTDNA and Potter have told me (a few years ago) that the opportunity is open for some enterprising scholar or practitioner to do this. 

Another short-term solution could come from more sophisticated mentoring programs. These exist inside some companies. Also, programs like Poynter and the Carole Kneeland Project offer mentoring or peer-to-peer support as an ongoing part of the learning after their in-person training (a few days) concludes, and all the participants return home to their own offices and newsrooms.

All this and change too

All these recommendations come with an additional caveat: the business of news is changing rapidly, and news directors must learn how to keep up. A news director who doesn’t understand the seismic changes in audience interests and consumption behaviors, or in technology, or in journalism values, can render themselves irrelevant and incapable of doing their same jobs five years from now without the curiosity and the capacity of looking around the corner and leading their teams to what’s new and what’s coming next. That’s a different skill set altogether. Some current and aspiring news directors are extraordinarily curious and excited about the future. Others desperately need training to at least develop a series of habits or skills to help them look forward as they need.

In conclusion

As someone who has seen journalism grow and evolve first-hand over the past 40 years, and as someone who believes our greatest days as journalists are still in front of us, I hope we can help people in the essential role of news director feel like they can do better and lead better. 

It would be fun to expand a broader and deeper study of news directors to include similar positions like baseball managers and city managers. I suspect the data would be more aligned than not.

More importantly for this project, even the limited data from my survey shows that many news directors have serious concerns about their own job security and satisfaction. Even those who say they love their jobs are concerned about the future. As reported above, the mean number of years of experience as a news director was in double digits. These people have long ago figured out how to do their jobs, at least at a level to stay employed in their first news director job, or have successfully been hired for news director jobs multiple times. And yet, they have concerns about the jobs they’re in right now. Purposeful research and focused training should go a long way to increase tenure, reduce turnover, and promote better feelings of security and satisfaction for people who hold these important jobs and those who want them next.

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.