The Latest – Page 2 – Survive Your Job In Television News

The “News Nightmare”. What to learn from recurring bad dreams.

Mental health is a growing concern among TV news journalists. Old time journalists often were told to grit it out, suck it up, understand the stress and anxiety of the daily deadline pressures and, frankly, awful crime stories are part of the job.

Surviving as a journalist should not mean constant suffering though. Yes, part of the job is seeing horrible crime scenes, covering stories that showcase the dark parts of humanity in stark terms, and uncovering corruption. Yes, journalists know that goes with the territory. But that simply doesn’t mean stations and broadcast groups should just tell staff to handle it all on their own.

I keep saying that journalists are the commodity broadcasters sell. You must realize the people covering the news are the company’s most precious assets. No journalists, no newscasts = no revenue.

Top News Talent, which I just recently co-founded, hosted a discussion on Clubhouse on mental health. Specifically the recurring dream many producers have that they cannot get their newscast done on time. This is the start of many discussions we hope have to help raise awareness that journalists in TV news do take their job home with them. It impacts their personal lives as well. From this discussion, with therapist Matthew Nordin, we learned some very valuable lessons.

These dreams can be a sign that the journalist needs a mental health break. Maybe it’s a mental health day. Maybe more.
Recurring dreams can signal that you’re struggling to cope with something you covered, wrote about or the circumstances in your newsroom.

For those of you having these recurring dreams, some crucial takeaways:

There are coping mechanisms to help you distance yourself a bit from the daily stress. A big one Matthew mentioned is “soft belly breathing.” It sounds too simple, right? But it’s based on science. Your mind is powerful enough to use this simple technique to reset your stress levels in a powerful way. Here is a video showing you how to belly breathe. And an audio version and interview.
If you ignore the dreams, the stress usually increases. There is a risk of developing actual PTSD.

Journalists and managers also need to be aware of secondary trauma. Let’s define it in simple but crucial terms: by covering traumatic events regularly, the journalist also becomes impacted by the events. Over time this can lead to PTSD if not addressed early and often. Partner this with newsrooms that are understaffed, work hours that make it hard to sleep at night (overnights), keep a regular sleep schedule (covering for sick calls on different shifts), and 10 hour shifts on average with little to no breaks, and the journalist is already more prone to anxiety overload.

Companies offer EAP programs. This allows anywhere from 4 to 6 visits with a therapist, for free, depending on your company’s plan. A crucial thing here, when you call to set up the visits, know your station, your boss and your parent company do not know you are seeking therapy. Some employees really worry about this. It is truly anonymous. When you call to use this valuable benefit, have your health insurance card handy so you can ask them to look for a therapist who also takes your insurance in case you end up needing more than the standard sessions alloted. If that is not possible, ask for some names, then you can look them up. Matthew tells us Psychology Today is a great resource to check out potential therapists. From here you can find out if they take your medical insurance for after the EAP alloted sessions.

Matthew also told us there are ways to get therapy and not have it cost a fortune if you do not want to use your medical insurance or you cannot find a therapist who takes your insurance. This is key, the services we are listing here, link you with therapists that essentially donate their time to give back, in a sense. They passionately want to help more people afford therapy, Here are the two links to these services: https://www.opencounseling.com/ and https://openpathcollective.org/.

A last note to individual journalists: PTSD can set in within a month of suffering trauma. So if you cover a story that really seems to impact you more than most, it’s preferable to not wait and see what happens. Get counseling quickly to try and prevent PTSD from setting in. That said, Matthew points out that if you’re already a mindful person who’s really in touch with your body and emotions through yoga, meditation, etc. you may not need a therapist. This is where knowing yourself and your limits are really important.

For managers and broadcast group leaders, try and create an environment where staff can tell you the stress of the job is getting to be too intense, before it gets to the point the person must quit their job. Ask regularly, how staffers are doing. If you can bring in counselors not just when something tragic, like a school shooting, standoff or death of a staff member happens. Offering a chance to talk with a counselor more regularly, can help immensely. It also could show that you value mental health and might lead to more staff telling you if they need help. If you can advocate for more mental health coverage, including HSA $ for mental health treatment or mindfulness coaching, you not only prove you care for your staff, you have a powerful recruiting tool.

As for those anxiety dreams we all seem to have? The first step is making your bedroom a sanctuary for sleep. UC San Diego created this great infographic on how to achieve this.

Matthew also provided this amazing list of resources to check out, that can help with many aspects of our lives. After all, journalists are first and foremost human as he eloquently points out.

More to come. 🙂

Why Can’t Journalists Want To Make Good Money? Let’s Take A Closer Look At The Expectations Broadcasting Groups Need To Let Go Of To Survive As An Industry.

For months, articles have been posted on LinkedIn and publications that report on media, about the growing decline of applicants for TV news jobs. I have written quite a few myself and touched on something important that needs to be said in more blunt terms, so it hopefully resonates better.

Journalism can be a vocation that warrants, even commands good pay. From the time I entered J-School, aspiring journalists were told this is a calling. This is a vocation. This job is hard and you will pay your dues and you may never make a lot of money. But you will love the job. There is nothing else like it. Or is there?

A lot of outlets allow you to tell stories, research issues, explain concepts to communities and most importantly help you advocate for others. The vocational element of journalism is not the top sell anymore. Read that again. This calling is rapidly losing appeal. There are other outlets that can and will feed journalists’ souls.

Broadcasting companies push this it’s a calling, vocation attitude. It’s a reason given for not being able to pay well throughout newsrooms. It is time for broadcasting groups to understand that several generations’ worth of the workforce, don’t agree. They want good pay and feel the training they got warrants the money. It is also easier than before to look up and understand the huge pay differences between newsroom employees, station managers, and the executives telling you, not to push too hard on the money, it’s a calling and privilege to be a journalist. I am asked all the time if that is true, shouldn’t that apply to the executives as well? In addition, many stations are making good money, even though the pandemic. Journalists understand this. They know there is potentially more money available, but the corporate level is not releasing as many funds as it could. One of the most common reasons given is because the company has to research and create digital platforms. While true, there is a missing link that needs to be stated clearly.

Executives need to understand, the commodities that make the company profitable, are the journalists. They to a large degree are the product, because their critical minds, fact-finding training, and ability to boil down complex material so the community can absorb the information is what the executives sell. Journalism has to be done well, to make it viable long term. Cheapening the product has led to issues with credibility and frankly relevance. Put it on any platform you want. If the product is weak, it will not sustain anywhere. Discerning minds are the most precious resource a newsroom has. Invest in the brains of the room.

Going to more digital products makes sense, but you still need skilled professionals with the ability to share information in a relatable way. In fact that commodity is still absolute. The platform is secondary. So it is frustrating to see the same issue happening with digital producer pay. Many make even less than the TV content generators. Yet this is the platform of the future. Please explain the logic?

Journalists should not be shamed for asking to make a livable wage and rewarded for the training they received. In fact, it’s time to do more comparison research to see what other content creators make and raise producers, reporters, and digital content creators’ salaries. The initial sting is going to be cheaper than the cost of letting this issue continue to fester. Journalism has suffered enough. Credibility is too at risk.

Journalists can and should want to make good money. They take on a lot of responsibility and sacrifice a lot of time with their families. Being a doctor and a politician are vocations too. But you do not see people in these roles struggling to pay their bills each month. It’s time to pay journalists their worth, recognizing this reality instead: Journalists are experts, skilled, highly marketable, and extremely important to a well-functioning society. Let that role reflect more in their pay. The pandemic has created an opportunity to restructure. Why not start to design these changes now?

Stressing me out! How to give yourself breathers during intense shifts.

I posted a question on @Survivetvjobs Twitter line. Within 24hours it had more than 29 thousand impressions. Talk about hitting a nerve. It was “Hey TV news journalists what do you do to relieve stress?”

TV News is a stressful career no doubt. Now with more MMJ’s, less writers and more responsibilities than ever before it can sometimes seem unbearable. So let’s talk about how to survive your daily shift better.

Getting a good routine down as best you can is number 1. You want the grind to sort of become normal in a way. So the first few months, you should keep a journal on what worked and didn’t as you try and navigate getting through your shift. Also use the search section of this website to look up producing and/or reporting for all kinds of articles on how to make your job easier.

You need to focus on hobby’s that give you joy when you are not at work as well. Many of you listed great options there.

I also want to give you some simple, easy to implement stress relievers you can use each day, at work.

Practical things you can do, right away to add calm to your day

Schedule breath breaks. Then actually take them
Mini lap break
The running joke is very important
Chat line
Inspiring quotes
Random acts of kindness to your coworkers
Celebrate little victories
Realistic goal setting
Write down the small things eating at you, then throw the paper away
Use EAP plan

Let’s dig in. I know many of you are saying you do not have time to run to the restroom most of the time. But breath breaks can be super short. Set up “times” for these like once I finish stacking my rundown I will do this for myself. Once I finish this interview I will do this for myself. Make it a habit.

If you are religious, think breath prayer. It is amazing how taking 30 seconds to do one can help. If you are not religious taking three long breaths and imagining letting go of the stress in part of your body can really help. I love the Calm app for this reason. Check out the breath bubble video on YouTube since it can be a game changer during work. Sneak into an edit bay and try it.

Mini lap breaks are also really important. You need to get the blood flowing to keep a clear head. So standup and walk a lap around the newsroom or better yet around the station. Even if you have to be on the phone. If you are a reporter put the phone down and walk a lap. You need to reconnect with your environment. Producers need to disconnect from theirs.

Running “inside” jokes among your shift are important. If you don’t already have some, try and foster that. They need to be kind and silly, not picking on a staffer. I had coworker who loved a certain salad with chicken. We would sing silly song about 15 minutes till salad time (usually sung right after a manager yelled at us for something) and would put pictures we printed off the internet of salads with chicken to set on her desk. An anchor I worked with loved Halle Berry. So we would tape pics of her up on his computer monitor before he got to work. It became a competition of who could find the most random pic of her. Things like that. A director hated the easter bunny but in a silly way. So we would put pics of bunnies up on his monitor in the control room. He would then write silly notes on them like “nope” and then repost the pic on someone else’s monitor.

Some companies have also started chat lines, because of COVID. A chance to have some sort of running dialogue like you used to have sharing pods with others. This can be great too. Take turns picking a topic for the day that is light. You can do this with group texts if need be. Who can find the silliest dog meme of the day? (See now my pic above makes sense lol) Subjects like, who really drank from the water hose? What is the worst vacation you’ve taken? Did you try the latest viral recipe on Tik Tok? This quick connection can help keep tension down for the entire group. Just make sure everyone knows this line is for small talk only.

For years I have kept some inspiring quotes that resonate with me on sticky notes either on my desk or in the notes section of my phone. They also really help. Especially if it is one of those days when it all seems to pile on. These quotes provide a quick reminder, this too shall pass.

When is the last time you did a little something to cheer up your coworkers? Simple things, like leaving a piece of candy on their desk? A quick text saying the MMJ’s live shot rocked, or the producer had a killer cold open really helps ease your stress and the other person’s as well. It also fosters a newsroom where people support each other, and frankly the staff has to do that most of the time. Newsrooms are not naturally positive environments. The deadline pressure and competition to be first etc goes against that principle a bit. If you foster mutual respect with simple gestures, it really can help bring everyone’s stress down and increase the “We are in it together” bond.

An anchor I worked with used to bring a cake in once a month to celebrate all the birthdays of the month in the newsroom. It was a huge hit. An EP I had used to leave me silly sticky note messages randomly on my desk. A director I worked with used to leave me copies of articles about gardening, since we shared that hobby in common. It has been years, and I remember each of these simple acts of kindness. The gestures matter. Do them, and hopefully over time you will start a phenomenon in your newsroom.

Celebrate the little victories. Did you consistently finish your newscast an hour early this week?Treat yourself. Did you break two stories this week? Time to spoil yourself. Did you notice a coworker had an awesome week boosting ratings, owning a story etc? Tell them awesome job. This reduces stress immensely. Honor your goals, and honor the hard work of those around you.

Set realistic goals. Working in news will always be messy. It will be hard consistently. Once you accept that fact, then decide on simple ways to improve your work, your attitude and even your stress level. One step at a time is key here. Saying I will take a newscast from worst to first in 6 months for example is too much. Fixing a section of the newscast where ratings consistently dip, is more realistic at first. Reporters, you might not lead the newscast every night, but aiming to be one of the promotable stories for the day each day is a realistic goal.

This next idea is really important and really does require using a pen or pencil. When the stress is really building up during your shift, write down a list of your stressors. Get them on paper. Look at the list, then ball it up, rip it to shreds, do whatever feels right, and pitch the note. You can really digest those frustrations and look for patterns later. During your shift you need to be able to let them go, so you can focus and get the weight of them off of your shoulders.

Also I cannot implore you enough to use the EAP plan offered at work. This is the counseling service that offers anywhere from 3 to 6 free consultations with a therapist. This is anonymous. Your boss will never know. Every company offers this and frankly with the stress of TV News jobs every journalist should use this service. You deserve the chance to tell someone how you feel and why. It really can help you cope with everything you see each day. Especially now with so many heavy topics to cover constantly.

Please know you are not alone in this journey. Many of us understand what you are experiencing and there are ways to make your job more manageable stress wise. Try and foster connections with your coworkers who are living it too, and be kind to yourself as much as possible. If you need help, reach out.

How Do I Get My Worth? The Truth About How TV News Jobs Are Filled.

As an advocate for TV journalists over the last decade, I have been watching a new reality form in the broadcast industry. A reality you need to know about, in clear terms to protect your interests as you grow your career, and frankly try to survive TV news. Its time for candidates to align together more, to help everyone make more money.

As the broadcasting industry has grappled with how to modernize and be profitable in the digital age, it has greatly changed the way it recruits for strong candidates. Some of the changes are a good thing. More groups consolidated and realized they needed to centralize recruiting. That’s why if you look at LinkedIn most of the talent acquisition leads and recruiters you see from broadcasting groups have been at it for up to 10 years. No more. The jobs were not really around before, for news people. News Directors and AND’s bore the brunt of recruiting. Once the push began to increase digital imprint, digital products and frankly try and find out how to even make money in the digital arena, these news managers needed help. Too much to do, too little time to do it. Hence all these “recruiters” reaching out to you that you had not heard of before.

Many companies have done this “heavy lifting recruiting” wisely by also setting up targeted screening, to help weed out people who are not serious about being journalists. There are more ethics tests (YES YES YES) and targeted writing tests. Veteran journalists saw this happen before. In fact there is a set of ethics tests most of us had to take get jobs 15 to 20 years ago. Again a good thing.

Centralizing a lot of the recruiting, can also mean a few not so good things for the candidate pool.

Job Candidate Realities

Blow 1 interview may not get opportunities

More ghosting

Anti agent pushes

Less wiggle room on pay ranges

If you are wanting to put yourself out there and see what kind of job you can get, you HAVE to go through interviews with talent acquisition in most broadcasting groups. The ones that do not have full time recruiters, are outsourcing with headhunter type agencies. Again, not necessarily a bad thing, as long as you nail the interviews with these talent acquisition experts. Many of whom, do not have a news background. Again, some companies are working around that by creating sets of journalistic questions and targeted writing tests. The reality is though, there are specific things a candidate will ask about in terms of day to day responsibilities and support systems that you may not be able to get answers to easily in the interview process. While asking some of those questions, you might be miss read, and end up with a “meh” review by the recruiter. That can close a lot of doors.

If you have a bad day, and blow the interview with the recruiter, that person weighs in on your prospects with other jobs at that group as well. You need to know this, and not act like the interview with the recruiter is not really that important.

There also is a lot more frustration for candidates because ghosting is getting almost epidemic in the industry. A lot of it, isn’t even intentional. There is confusion over who’s responsibility it is to keep up with the candidate and let the finalists know they did not get the job. Most groups are great about the early weeding process. If you did not make the first cut you will likely know. But if you get to a finalist stage, it can be very stressful when suddenly it all goes cold. Asking too much about what’s going on, could also hurt your reputation. Asking at all can even get confusing. Who do you contact, the recruiter or the news director?

Then there is a growing sentiment, once offers are about to be administered to pressure candidates with agents not to use them. You need to know this, because you need to understand why. This business is at a tipping point. When large companies try and prevent an important level of advocacy it is not to help the candidates have more fulfilling careers. It just isn’t. The biggest reason this is happening, is honestly to keep the train steamrolling down the track. The companies have drawn out the process to fill the openings with this centralized recruiting in some ways. Many companies don’t want to add a layer of who talks with the agent.

Another reason is a little less innocent. Many broadcasting groups are mandating pay ranges more at the corporate level than before. Read that line again, News managers are getting less flexibility over what they can offer in terms of pay, and how they spend their salary budgets. This is a big reason why you are not seeing higher pay for producers and MMJ’s especially. It takes a long time for companies to understand the wages are not sustainable for candidates when salary ranges are this centralized.

This needs to be crystal clear: The media expert groups you are seeing all over LinkedIn telling you they “represent you for free” or to sign up for “as low as 5 dollars a month” are usually paid by the broadcasting groups to fill jobs. They have to find candidates at or UNDER the pay range allowed by companies. So when you are asked for salary ranges, you can set yourself up for less pay. The role of that group is to fill vacancies, and get paid by the companies for making the connection.

These groups can be helpful in terms of finding openings. So if you sign up, counter this by telling those groups, you do not want to fill in an estimated salary expectation. If that is a condition upon being listed, say you will only accept higher end wages, even if they tell you to lower expectations. Whatever they recommend to ask for, add a little more money to your accepted range. Candidates need to push these groups to say, the only way these jobs are going to be filled is if you increase the salary range. They CAN advocate if pushed and some do a little bit. If you make more they will also. But this is key: If you just agree to the range they suggest, this helps companies keep pay down. In fact, this is part of the reason why pay increases are slowing down. Even if these companies say they advocate for you, remember if you are not paying them, companies are. If the majority of candidates use that knowledge to push for a little more than the usual “going rate” the pay ranges will need to be adjusted at the broadcasting group level. It helps these groups pressure companies to increase pay ranges also.

So what else is a job candidate to do? Get training on how to advocate for yourself. If you do have an agent, hold your ground and insist that the job offer goes to your agent first before you accept any position. The intimidation can seem scary, but remember, it is not in your best interest to leave your agent out of the process. If you are being told to leave out your agent, that should make you think, “What does the group not want me to get?” Often its higher pay. It also sets up conditions where if you are treated badly later, the company has to answer for it more. With the way work conditions are, you need to think hard about this. The companies offering to “represent you for free” or a few dollars a month will not help if you end up in miserable conditions. In fact, they don’t try to prevent that at all. It’s not their goal. Agents keep track of which companies treat employees best. Then they warn the companies being unfair to clean up their act. So keep that level of advocacy in mind.

Lastly, aim high on the salary when you get to the final stages. If you do not get the money right away, you won’t get it at all at that job. Never forget that. Even promotions have set “budget limits” if you are at the station or in company already. Get training on how to tell when you hit the right number. There are tell tale signs.

TV news journalists have to get bold NOW about what is needed in terms of pay, and hold firm. These companies will continue to stick with low pay limits if candidates keep settling for less money. You need to have realistic ranges, but you need to stick to the high end of those and not settle. Time to work together to force broadcasting groups to increase pay ranges. No matter if you go it alone, with a headhunting agency or with an agent. Every type of job seeker needs to work together to push for more money. The timing is right, because broadcasting groups see that there are so few candidates for nearly every position now. So seize the moment, and demand more money to take the job offer.