The Inbox....
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Today in the Inbox we want to share a couple of emails that came our way.
The first email is from a big market News Director that wanted to respond as to how the Nextstar GM in Salt Lake City whined that his station wasn’t covering the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg the same as the other station in the market.
For some reason, the GM sent the email to all the News Directors that work at a Nexstar station.
Here’s the email we received:
I was appalled at the vitriol coming from this “General Manager” after a commercial break was missed in the 6pm news. Why not just call the news director, rather than firing off an email? Managing by email is bad form “Richard”. Or better yet, make your expectations clear from the onset so this doesn’t happen. Take some responsibility since you’re running the station. But a closer examination of your resume shows you have no interest in broadcasting or news. How is it you got this job? Maybe go back to Subway franchises and burger joints where you can fire off grammatically incorrect nastygrams and no one will call you out.
The second email is from a newsie that just wonders if you guys are feeling like him:
Does anyone else out there feel scared and numb about what's happening in our industry? I know there are many feelings when it comes to losing your job, but this current overall feeling in news is just so heavy for those of us still employed too.
Today, I had three total strangers e-mail my individual newsroom inbox. They all had the same things in their messages. They were looking for jobs in TV news, and one was willing to move across the country if I could get her even something part-time.
On top of these e-mails, I'm also talking with friends from college and who I've made over the years in the industry who are either concerned about cuts in their newsrooms, or in some cases, they'd already been cut.
We've all watched what played out at Meredith and in other places, and we just have to wonder if it's a sign of more to come.
I feel so heartbroken that I can't help anyone, and I also feel sneaky for doing research for myself in case my company decides to cut back soon.
With so many media professionals out of work, all of the PR and marketing jobs are being gobbled up the second they're posted. There's nothing out there. What's worse is the local newspaper also had cutbacks recently, and so those journalists are also searching for whatever jobs are out there.
I think what's scared me most about the current climate in news is that this is the first time I've asked myself, "what do you do after you get out of TV, especially if you are forced to part with your career in a layoff situation?" It sent chills up my spine when I realized that the skills I trained for and went to college for really have no application when it comes to other things like I.T. or finance or science-related jobs like medicine.
What do we do? Where do we work? How bad is this going to get?
2020 is the worst year ever
