What to Do After News?

New Directions

By Jill Geisler

The hours. The egos. The budgets. The pressures. And those are the fun parts of being a news director. For some, a job they love becomes the job they nonetheless choose to leave. Walking away isn’t easy, as those who’ve done it will attest. Perhaps that’s why when these news directors broke away from their newsrooms, they kept a connection to news:

Joan Barrett: Looking for More Balance
The death of a friend influenced Joan Barrett’s decision to leave KPNX-TV in Phoenix, where she was vice president of news for four years. She had come from Carole Kneeland’s innovative shop at KVUE-TV in Austin, where she was executive producer.

As a freshman news director in a highly competitive market, Barrett often faced problems by asking herself, “What would Carole do?�? Sometimes she’d just call and ask her. But Kneeland, the legendary mentor, lost her nine-year battle with breast cancer in 1998. As Barrett mourned the loss of her friend, she reflected on her own life. She loved her job; but worried she wasn’t giving enough of herself to her husband and two young children. Carole had challenged her many protégés to love news but not be consumed by it. What would Carole do?

Barrett agonized over her decision, but in the end, she left her newsroom to work for the Broadcast Image Group. And she quotes Carole Kneeland: “When you sit on your porch in your rocker, what do you want on your lap—a stack of award-winning Beta tapes or your grandchildren?�?

Janet Evans: Mastering a Juggling Act
Janet Evans is a news addict: “Even to this day, the sound of a scanner puts me over the deep end,�? she confesses. But she left her job as a radio news director in 1997—and says she should have done it two years sooner.

Back in 1990, when she moved from reporter to news director at KLBJ in Austin, TX, “I was totally into the job,�? she recalls, “my job was me.�? Sixty-hour weeks were common; so was working weekends. Management duties isolated her from former buddies in the newsroom, but she saw it as part of the price of leadership. A supportive boss and RTNDA colleagues were her sounding boards.

In late 1991, she and her husband adopted a son. Soon her personal and professional lives clashed. “It seemed every time I wanted my life to be there, my work crashed in,�? she says. But she kept on trying.

Over the next few years, Evans says she “juggled plates,�? but the juggling act got tougher: “I thought I could do it all, but I was always feeling guilty.�?

In 1997, she decided it was time to make a change. She considered stepping back into reporting. Then her husband, an architect, got a job offer in Dallas. The time was right. She resigned. They moved. For a year, she took things easy; a little free-lance work, a little substitute teaching. But news addictions aren’t easily cured. In 1998, she accepted a job as news director of IT Network, in Irving, TX, an audio-text provider of news, sports and feature reports for 700 newspaper clients around the country.

Evans is happier than she has been in years: “It’s the radio I love,�? she says, “without the stress.�?

Tom Dolan: Planning for Life
Tom Dolan’s old news cronies surely would have voted him the least likely person to struggle with the family/work balance.

Big stations and big challenges filled the first two decades of his career. Fresh from college in 1970, he worked the assignment desk at powerhouse WPVI-TV in Philadelphia. Through the 1970s and 1980s, his skills as a producer and manager took him to KGO-TV in San Francisco, WABC-TV New York, WCAU-TV in Philadelphia, and WLS-TV in Chicago. Someone always wanted him to come in and help build a stronger newscast. “I was completely available to these people,�? said Dolan, “No dog, no fish...I could move to where I was needed.�?

If Dolan produced news well, he produced his life even better...or so he thought. He drove a Fiat Spider, became a gourmet chef, traveled and dated. But at his 40th birthday party, he looked at his eight brothers and sisters, their spouses and children—and realized his life needed reformatting. Dolan says he “consciously positioned myself�? to get married and lead a less-driven life.

He took a news director job at Phoenix station KSTP-TV (now KSAZ) in 1992 and enjoyed sunshine, golf and, yes, got married. He became a father in 1994—the same year his station was sold, its affiliation changed, his newscasts, staff and workload multiplied. He gave it his best; but a year later, with another baby on the way and his workload no lighter, he chose to produce a new chapter of his career.

Dolan now works for the Broadcast Image Group of San Antonio. He recruits news managers for TV stations. He counsels them, too—about the lesson he says he learned a little late: keeping balance in their lives.

Irv Kass: Starting a New Business
Irv Kass says his seven-year run as news director of KNSD in San Diego was “the best job in TV news.�? He had a pile of Emmy awards, healthy ratings and a great general manager. Yet in June of 1998, Kass chose another career.

He had wrestled with the idea for a year. First, he talked with his wife and daughters, then his father (an accountant), then close confidants. He wanted to start “a different kind of news consulting firm,�? emphasizing news success through high ethical standards and community service.

“When Irv came forward I was not surprised,�? says Neil Derrough, KNSD’s president and general manager. “It made me all the more determined to make it right for him.�? Making it right included challenging Kass to make certain he was “emotionally and intellectually ready�? to leave a job he loved. He was.

At RTNDA98 in San Antonio, the former news director walked the aisles of the exhibit hall…this time selling instead of buying. IKC—Irv Kass and Company—had just been launched. Its founder was working the room, looking for old colleagues and new clients.

Dave Kurpius: Going Back to School
Dave Kurpius reported and produced news at WMGT-TV in Macon, GA. In 1990, when the news director’s post opened, he walked into his general manager’s office and said, “I want that job.�? He got it. The 28-year-old rookie manager enjoyed the teaching, the coaching, and just about every aspect of the job “except firing,�? he says.

But Kurpius had another dream. The son of a professor, he hoped to go to graduate school. A little over a year into his tenure as a news manager, he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

One mentor tried to talk him out of it, telling him he had a great future in news management. But Kurpius took a personal inventory. He was young and single, not yet tied to a community. “I figured, if I don’t take the risk now, the opportunity could pass me by,�? he says.

He took the risk, starting graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin in the fall of 1991. He earned his master’s degree in 1995, his doctorate in 1997.

Today, Professor Kurpius teaches broadcast journalism at Louisiana State University. Each year he visits several TV news operations, just to keep plugged in to the business. Often, someone at a station will ask his advice on moving from the newsroom to the classroom. He warns them it’s not easy, but adds, “Be willing to take a risk. Bet on yourself.�?

Daniel Webster: Working for the Man Upstairs
Daniel Webster worked for some of the biggest names in the news business. Today he works for God. The former news director is an Episcopal priest, ordained in 1997.

Webster’s road to the pulpit travels through many newsrooms, starting in the early 1960s, when at age 15, he worked the weekend assignment desk at KOGO-TV (now KGTV) in San Diego. “I thought it was more important than high school,�? laughs Webster.

Fast forward through 25 years: he worked local TV news in Omaha, Tucson, Phoenix, Albuquerque and Los Angeles. He did stints in Washington for NBC, Conus and USA Today’s short-lived TV news magazine. In 1989 he returned to local news as news director of KUTV-TV in Salt Lake City, where he tried to build new systems and strategies, in an uphill battle against the market leader. Internal politics at the station made that challenging, he says. But he found comfort and peace at the local Episcopal church, to which he had just converted.

When the Associated Press asked him to come to Washington head up a TV marketing division, Webster had to weigh leaving both his growing newsroom and his church community. “I prayed on it,�? he says. He chose AP, and a welcoming Episcopal congregation in Washington, where his faith flourished and another journey began. In 1993, he left AP to start his seminary studies in Austin—and even then, did occasional work for friends in the news business. After graduating seminary, he did media relations work for his diocese, a kind of priest with a press card.

Living now in San Francisco, married to a female Episcopal priest, he keeps connected to journalism through a legion of old colleagues. One of them, Liz Hart of Don Fitzpatrick and Associates (the West Coast TV news headhunting firm) got married in October. Presiding at her wedding was friend, former news director and priest: the Reverend Daniel Webster.

Jill Geisler is an associate at The Poynter Institute, based in Bayside, WI. She is former news director of Milwaukee’s WITI-TV.

Jill Geisler: Becoming a “Nicer Person�?
It was a night of hugs and handshakes; a warm May night in the heart of Milwaukee’s Hispanic community. When the United Community Center presents awards, its gymnasium-turned-banquet hall fills with mariachi music and heartfelt gratitude. I was called to the stage. An abuela (grandmother), and a niña (little girl), representing the past and the future, made the presentation: a framed photo of a neighborhood mural, bright with colors and rich with faces. Etched below was my name and the words: “Friend of the Hispanic Community.�?

My husband, my sons and my boss applauded as I was thanked by a community for “telling our stories.�? I was touched, but also torn. At that very moment, I was thinking of walking away from my newsroom.

News directors leave TV stations all the time. But in a business of nomads, I was an anomaly. I joined WITI as a reporter in 1973. In 1978 I was named news director...and stuck around.

I liked to say I “bloomed where I was planted�?—amid plenty of change. Five owners. Three network affiliations. Newscasts that hit their highs in January 1994: number one ratings in the morning, noon, five and ten. Then the switch from CBS to Fox, to 7 hours of local news a day, and disappearing viewers.

Still, our newsroom remained a hard-working, fun-loving team whose passion for ethics and enterprise was rewarded by low turnover and the lion’s share of local news awards.

Our work came to the attention of people at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, FL. I was frequently invited to serve as a visiting instructor there, sharing WITI’s culture, systems and stories.My husband always said I returned from Poynter visits as “a nicer person.�?

But at the awards banquet, my husband knew I wasn’t feeling like a very nice person. Even as I mustered my best Spanish and my best smile, thanking “la comunidad,�? he knew I had a job offer from Poynter and a decision to make. My personal debate was tortuous: How do you walk away from colleagues whose careers you coached and whose babies you cuddled? A community with stories yet to be told. The news-junkie joy fed by deadlines and breaking news. The power, pay and perks of a vice president of news?

On the other hand, what about the 12-hour workdays? Kids asleep when mom gets home from work. Ever-tighter budgets and tired employees. Ratings schemes and resource shortages. And the worry...the nagging fear that the “lean and mean�? world of today’s newsrooms is devolving into “malnourished and malcontent.�?

Friends, mentors and family helped me face my terrible, wonderful choice. They reminded me that as a news director, teaching had always been my first passion, that true friendships endure, and that I could keep my commitment to telling a community’s stories by helping other newsrooms do it well. They reminded me that happiness was priceless. A few days after the big banquet, I accepted the unique faculty position with Poynter. I remain in Milwaukee, with an office in my home, I commute to St. Petersburg monthly, teaching leadership, ethics, writing and storytelling; coming home a nicer person with far more family time.

It took me a month to empty my WITI office of a career’s worth of memories—one box, one briefcase a night. The pictures and plaques surround me as I write. One honor hangs apart from others—a reminder of work done and yet to do. It reads “Friend of the Hispanic Community.�? Yes, this friend left a special newsroom where she was “planted,�? working now to help other journalists “bloom�? in theirs.

Look Before You Leave

Broadcast journalism doesn’t get better if good people leave it. That’s why every former news director we talked with offered strategies to help news managers stay the course, as well as what to do when your heart still says “go.�?

 

* Be a planner. Go ahead and set goals for your personal as well as your professional life; marriage, house, kids. Don’t put your life on “hold�? while chasing your career.
* Build a support system. News management can be a lonely endeavor. Find peers you trust, both in your shop and through professional affiliations. Help one another.
* Keep connected to the best bosses you ever had. Talk with them in good times and bad. They know you well enough to give you candid advice, and to tell you when you’re off base.
* Have friends and interests outside the business. Large doses of the “real world�? can add to your wisdom and subtract from your stress.
* Develop work strategies that give you better control of your time. Work at home one day a month. Check to make certain you’re not hoarding work that could be delegated. Create “ hiring teams�? of staffers to help with the never-ending process of tape review and recruiting.
* Be a saver. Take advantage of 401k and company stock plans. Too many people don’t opt for the one thing that helps them love a job or leave it: money in the bank.
And if you still feel the need to move on:
* Do nothing on impulse. Talk to mentors, get a career counseling, build a resume, review your options. Take your time and make a good choice.
* Be as honest as you can with those who matter most. Your family needs to share in your decision. Your boss needs to plan for a transition.
* Burn no bridges. Glance back as you leave the newsroom. A lot of good people still work there.

Back