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The latest RTNDA/Newhouse School at Syracuse University study of television news departments is must-reading for all station owners. Veteran researchers Bob Papper and Keren Henderson have produced an eye-opening look at growing problems that have been ignored for far too long.
Bottom line: News directors report that employees are becoming burned out. Stories of being “stretched too thin,” “exhaustion,” “quiet quitting” and “contract breaking” abound. Many newsrooms seem to be operating in crisis mode with a host of personnel problems piling on top of each other.
News directors are trying to face the problems head on by taking a wide range of steps, from changes in scheduling to team-building exercises to, in some cases, more money.
Going beyond the study, it’s easy to see that news directors can only do so much to help because it is not within their power to address the root causes of so much employee discontent.
One cause is that we have a new generation of employees unwilling to become chattel for the sake of building a career in journalism. Old timers might be proud of having paid whatever price it took for success, but that doesn’t mean today’s staffers should be blamed for wanting more normal and balanced lives.
The bigger issue though, the elephant standing in the middle of the room, is that many news departments are simply understaffed. Over the past 15 years, the ratio of news employees to the