Is It Finally Time To Change How Newsrooms Are Managed?

There’s one newsroom role I worry about above all others when there is an opening. Newscast producers? No. It’s harder than ever to find people to fill these roles, but we’re scrappy, creative and always figure it out. Reporters? I’m worried, but they’re not at the top of the list, though they likely will be eventually. Sports? Ha! That’s one job that still draws huge interest and robust applicant pools. The real challenge is finding a good news director. In fact, that has me flat-out panicked. I was a news director for almost 15 years. I walked into the job a vibrant young man with a plush head of hair. By the time I was done, I was bald and felt like a hobbled old man. This was in 2014, and looking back, that job was easy compared to today. So many things that were simple back then are infinitely harder now. We ask a lot from the people we task with leading one of the more challenging missions and collections of people possible. The job is 24/7 now in a way that is much more demanding than when I was in the chair. News directors need to be craftier with how they spend money, act as counselor-in-chief to an ever-younger staff, master artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, serve as ethical gurus when the lines on many of our platforms are becoming blurrier and stay in touch and visible within the communities they serve. Also, don’t forget about those ratings—not just TV ratings, but streaming numbers, digital metrics and social media reach. And we wonder why we don’t have people lined up out the door for this job. In all seriousness, I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had with news directors in the past couple of years that involve me saying, “I’m worried about you.” I recognize the look: tired, stressed out, short-staffed over budget. Sometimes they are genuinely fearful about the future of a business we all love and see as a calling. So, is it time to rethink a role that has become impossible for one person to do? I think it is. Let’s start with what’s truly needed from local news directors. I argue two factors rise to the top clearly above the rest: people and strategy—not logistics and budgets. What I hear over and over again is that people in newsrooms need more care and guidance than ever before. Many are younger and less experienced than those who’ve occupied these roles in the past. They are also under a lot more pressure. Along with “come to the meeting with a good idea,” they are tasked with overwhelming content distribution duties and face a public that is increasingly hostile to the work they do. These people need support and direction. They need someone who has time to notice, care and come up with a plan to help them. Other newsroom managers are also under a lot of pressure and need a news director who is available and present. Every news director I’ve ever worked with means to do these things, but it’s impossible to do this consistently. Strategy is the other area that loses out to the chaotic and unpredictable days of a typical news director. It’s not because they don’t want to focus on strategy, but more often because they can’t. How do we reach audiences and impact our communities in the much more sophisticated way needed as a result of changing consumer habits? How do we lean on new technology to recalibrate our newsrooms in a way that allows us to redirect resources to things that are mission-critical? People and strategy need serious work for a newsroom to reach optimal levels of success. The news director needs to be freed up to focus on these critical areas. One partial solution I’ve had the privilege to be part of is rethinking the assistant news director role. For generations, there has been a clear number two manager in most newsrooms, a sort of “news director light.” But this isn’t enough to meet the needs of the current newsroom environment. When I arrived at Graham Media Group last spring, the group was already in the midst of a newsroom management and workflow revamp. The one piece that intrigued me most was the elimination of the assistant news director role and the addition of the manager of content and coverage (MCC) role. The thinking was to have three MCCs and empower them to make real decisions throughout a broader section of the day, taking pressure off the news director. The MCCs focus their day on ensuring the content engine is running smoothly, with one on the clock hours before the start of the morning news and another staying on until just before the late news. We were very intentional in looking for people with different backgrounds and experiences. Some come from digital, some from linear producing and some from traditional reporting. They drive the process from planning through distribution, with much more focus on the front end, allowing for more optionality on the back end. Has it been perfect? No. It takes a while to move past the native role or platform. The news director must get comfortable giving up some control. The three MCCs need to embrace the idea of working as a team, not as individual managers. Having the MCC truly be an advocate for the consumer and where they may be at different points in the day is critical. Moving digital and social distribution to earlier in the day has been tough, but it’s improving. In a short period of time, two people who were in the MCC roles have been elevated to the news director role. They are prepared from day one in a way I rarely saw in the old assistant news director model. One other management role I increasingly see as a must-have is the executive reporter. This is a seasoned journalist elevated to help other reporters improve their journalism while also teaching them new skills that help with storytelling creativity. News directors would love to do this, but timewise, something has to give, and it’s often the close contact with the people tasked with putting together the stories we deliver to our audiences. This has created a big void. In a newsroom with MCCs who have reporting backgrounds, this is somewhat less important. In the absence of that, I see it as critical. Someone needs to be guiding the story and not focusing solely on the newscast. This also brings a field voice into the leadership team, which has been a huge void in most newsrooms. Tackling these issues not only opens up time for news directors to focus on the responsibilities that will ultimately perpetuate our business, but it also allows more focus to be placed on improving the quality of our content while getting it into the hands of the consumer more quickly on the platform of their choice. This is something the future of our entire business ultimately depends on.