In case you hadn't noticed, your News Director might also be looking for a job

"Get me outta here" is the time honored battle cry of newsroom staffers who can't wait to find a new job.

But guess what? Your News Director might also feel the same way.

Ever check the "moving on" section of tvjobs.com? Scroll down a little more and you'll see the list of new News Directors who have changed addresses. Hmmmm, lots of moves there as well. Basically, the average ND stays at a job between two and three years... just like most reporters.

And if your ND is looking for a job, this might explain a few things. A few things to look for that are clues he might be sending out tapes as fast as you are:


-Your News Director used to be very involved in the operation, but has grown distant and doesn't seem to care much.

-You find him making copies of the latest ratings book.

-You notice he doesn't have a good relationship with the GM, corporate, or both.

-He is increasingly frustrated with cheap ownership, and not shy about saying so.

-Every time a new piece of large equipment arrives, he takes the box home. Packing!

-He takes an odd day off in the middle of the week. Interview!


Yes, News Directors also want to move up the ladder, just as much as you do. If you're a reporter in Palookaville and can't wait to move on, do you think he wants to stay in Palookaville as well? He has dreams and goals too.

There are other reasons NDs move on... helicopter General Managers, companies that throw nickels around like manhole covers, frustration with the production department. On the other side of the coin, you may work for a good company that promotes from within, and your ND may have been promised the next step up the ladder when a spot opens up within the group. So if you see an announcement about another ND within the chain moving on, don't be surprised if your guy fills that spot.

All the more reason I warn you guys to have an "escape tape" ready to go. The new guy might come in and clean house, or just not like your style for whatever reason.

Just keep in mind that News Directors move on as well... so don't be surprised if you run into yours at the post office.

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In today's newsroom, you need a "cut man" in your corner

The alarm clock goes off, and the reporter slams the snooze button, fighting for every last minute in the safe cocoon of his bed. He used to throw back the covers and jump into the shower, ready to seize the day and tell the world a story. But now the career has turned into a job, one that has become increasingly painful. Not because he hates reporting. On the contrary, he loves being a journalist.

It's because he's taken too many shots at work. All of them psychological.

He finally drags himself out of bed, walking like an old man of 70, and later feels his blood pressure rise steadily as he pulls into the station parking lot. He feels like a quarterback who's gonna get sacked, and most of the shots he'll take will come from the blind side.

Not from management. From other members of the staff.

Every boxer takes a lot of hits, hence, the need for a "cut man" who can patch things up between rounds. The most famous would be Mickey from the Rocky movies, a guy who could not only repair physical damage but rebuild confidence after shots to the psyche.

Newsrooms can be a lot like a boxing ring, if you're in a dysfunctional shop. And many times said dysfunction has absolutely nothing to do with the News Director. Co-workers can be the most vicious people you'll encounter along the way. They might be jealous, afraid you're trying to take their jobs, hate the fact that you were born good looking, or just resent the lack of dues you've paid. Doesn't matter.

They love to blitz from the blind side, hitting you with a cutting remark that will ruin your day, stick in your craw, and gnaw at your confidence.

If this happens to you on a regular basis, you need a cut man.

As creative souls we are wired differently than the rest of the world. Most of us can be very sensitive when it comes to our work. We might have all sorts of awards and make a great salary in a nice market, but we still cringe when someone says something nasty. And we'll often take that comment home and let it ruin the rest of the day.

That's when you call in your cut man. Someone who can build you up and remind you you're talented. Someone honest enough to give you constructive criticism when you need it, while also telling you that you knocked out a great story when it happens. Someone you can talk with about anything, someone who always has a shoulder to cry on, someone who knows what makes you tick.

I'm not talking about Mom or Dad. They think their kid should be at the network from day one.

Your cut man might be a close friend, or another co-worker who values your work and friendship.

And by the way, you can be a cut man yourself. If you see someone getting psychologically beaten up day after day, step in, fix the cut, and shove them back in the ring with more confidence that what they had when they left.

Sometimes life in a newsroom can be a breeze, and sometimes it can feel like a street fight. You may think you can survive on your own, but you really can't. A good friend is your strongest defense against those things that can bring you down.

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What you can learn from the Oscar nominations: or, what you think the public needs to know isn't necessarily what they want to know

While at my very first job we got into a newsroom discussion about stories from the Middle East. Some people in the newsroom thought the stories were very important, and should be considered lead stories. Others, while agreeing this was the case, made the point that the viewers, for the most part, wanted local news and didn't care much about a war that had been going on since the beginning of time.

Finally, someone made the point (okay, that someone was me) that we could take any network feed on the Middle East from the past year, run it, and no one would know the difference. In other words, the story was always the same. It had become video wallpaper.

Which brings us to today's Oscar nominations. (I know, you're wondering how I can tie in war coverage from the 1980s to the Academy Awards. Patience, grasshopper.)

So I look at the nominees for Best Picture, and I've seen a grand total of one movie and five minutes of another. You guessed it, I saw Moneyball. As for the others, I hadn't even heard of half, and had no desire to see the rest.

Hollywood, in case you didn't know, had a bad year in 2012. They raked it in with Harry Potter, Bridesmaids and the Hangover sequel, but had a down year overall. One of the problems with Hollywood is that they put out too many "lecture movies." In other words, movies that are trying to make a point. Hollywood, is, of course, very political, so they often try to sneak in some jabs at a certain political party. Which, of course, turns off half the country. Few of the movies on the Best Picture list made a lot of money. Doesn't mean they weren't good movies, it's just that people didn't have much desire to see them.

Anyway, back to the list of movies. One is called The Descendants. When it first came out with rave reviews, I went online to look up the plot. Basically it's about a guy who has a wife in a coma, finds out she was having an affair and decides to look up her lover while reconnecting with his daughters. Yeah, that's something I wanna plunk down ten bucks to see. Might be a really good movie, might even have a good message, but I'll never see it. I much prefer Harry vs. Voldemort, the Bridesmaids having a wickedly bad reaction to Mexican food, or the Hangover guys waking up in a drunken stupor. Call me shallow, but I want to be entertained for my money.

All of this brings us to news. You may have knocked out an award winning story, but if it's on a topic that no one cares about, it will be the video version of the proverbial tree that falls in the forest. As a producer you may stuff your newscast with every scanner tale you can find, but if you did it yesterday and the day before and the day before that it's nothing different than that 1980s Middle East war video.

When looking for stories, or when putting together your newscast, consider the viewpoint of the viewers. You may think a story is important, that the public needs to know it, but in many cases the public doesn't care. Most viewers have a limited amount of time for news, and if you waste it on things that don't really concern them or don't appeal, you're gonna lose them. If your newscast is filled with nothing but bad news, if it's as depressing as some of the plots of those nominated movies, why would anyone want to watch?

Make your stories count, make them appeal to the average viewer. At the end of the day, a viewer wants to watch stories that are interesting. You may think viewers "need to know" certain stories, but in many cases they don't necessarily want to know.

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Six degrees of separation is a good game to play in broadcasting; or, why you should be friends with the crash dummy in your newsroom

If you take nothing else from this post, take this: the person at the next desk is not your competition.

Oh sure, the other reporter sitting next to you is gunning for the same anchor job as you are, but he's not the enemy. In fact, he may be the key to your next job.

You all know that "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game, in which you can connect actors in one way or another to Kevin Bacon by linking them to other actors in other movies. Eventually, everyone is linked. It's a premise used by social networking, but in the case of television news, you need to take it to a personal level.

Example: I have a client who wants to go to Minneapolis. I don't know anyone in Minneapolis, but I have an old News Director who used to work there. I mention that I have a talented client who wants to work there. He tells me he's still good friends with a main anchor there, and he'll be happy to put in a good word for my client. That's several degrees of separation, but just like that my client "knows" someone in Minneapolis that he has never met.

Of course, most of you don't have mentors, agents, or guardian angels looking after you, so you have to play the game from scratch. You start on day one, job one, by being nice and making friends with everyone in the building. Doesn't matter if they're backstabbers or have the intelligence of a crash dummy. The business is unfair, and eventually some of those people will move up the ladder.

So now you wanna move to San Diego. That crash dummy got a job in New Orleans. You keep in touch via email, and mention you want to go to San Diego. The crash dummy mentions that his station just lost an anchor to that market, and he'll be happy to give the guy a call on your behalf.

But none of that happens if you don't befriend the crash dummy.

This business is very small. Sometimes it seems as though everyone knows everyone, especially if you've been in this business awhile. But we're all connected in one way or another. Give me a market and I'll probably find someone who knows someone who knows someone. That's how the game works when you need to "know somebody." You still have to get the job on your own, you still need a great tape, but a helping hand from someone you might not even know can get your tape to the top of the stack. Some anchor in some faraway place could walk into a ND's office and say, "My old News Director says he heard this reporter is really good." And that's all it takes.

And yes, the competition is at the other station, but there's no reason you can't be polite while competing. Making friends with people at the other stations is fine as long as you don't get too close and trade stories. Those people can also help you down the road.

The crash dummy may be the most brainless idiot you've ever met, but the crash dummy may have connections in the future that you can't imagine. Play the six degrees of separation game and improve your chances... just by being nice.

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Control freaks

Ever buy a lottery ticket? If you have, you realize that you have absolutely no control over winning or not. If the universe chooses to smile on you, you win. If not, you're out a buck.

But you have controlled the only part of the equation that you can control: buying the ticket. You've done all you can.

In some ways, job hunting is a lot like buying a lottery ticket. But the problem with many of you is that you think you can control more of the process, when, in reality, much of it is out of your hands.

Many people reach a point in a job search at which they ask themselves, "There must be something else I can do. I'm not doing enough or I would have found a job." But in most cases, you're already doing as much as is humanly possible.

Things you can control in a job search:

-The quality of your tape. Granted, most of us will overthink this to death, but you are responsible for the work that goes on your tape. If you've done solid work, it will come through.

-Sending your tape. You're really playing the lottery if you knock out a great resume tape and then fail to put it in the mail. You control where your tape goes. If you have an agent, you work with the agent to determine what desks on which your tape will land.

-Cover letter. All on you. You control whether or not your letter is a standard I'll-be-a-team-player-and-work-hard piece of bull, or if you've put on your creative hat and dazzled the News Director with your writing ability.

-Hunting for jobs. It's not enough to simply read the job postings. You have to work the phones, send tapes to stations even if there aren't any openings.

-Following up on positive responses. If a ND sends you a nice note and says, "Keep in touch," it's up to you to send him a new tape every two months.

Things you can't control:

-What a News Director is looking for. He needs a woman and you're a guy. He needs someone who is a great ad libber and you're not. He needs a feature guy and you're an investigative type without an outgoing personality. He needs young and you're old. He needs older and you're young. He needs a certain demographic and you don't fit. He can't afford you. He needs someone who is local and you're not. The list is endless.

-What the GM or corporate wants. See above. Many times a ND is overruled.

-Timing. A ND needs a reporter right now and your contract isn't up for three months.

Get the picture? Remember, while you are responsible for your own career, certain things are, and always will be, out of your control. All you can do is continue to knock out good work every day and hope the stars align. And also keep in mind that the best person often does not get the job. The person who gets the job is often the best fit. And that's something you can't control.

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