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When she was hired as the new News Director at WOI (Des Monies) April Samp said, “It's no secret that the station has struggled over the years for multiple reasons,” then adding, “and we're ready to bulldoze that image. If people give us a chance, I think they'll be pleasantly surprised.

The station was owned by Nexstar at the time, but then Tegna took over and Samp was fired after 5 years at the station.

"We just don’t think this newsroom is going to be successful under your future leadership,” an interim general manager told her. No further explanation.

The Des Monies Register writes that WOI spokeswoman Ann Bentley, based at Tegna headquarters in Virginia, declined to comment, saying it's company policy not to comment on personnel matters. But Samp, 44, who has since left the broadcast news business after 25 years, believes her age, sex and advocacy for equal pay for female employees led to her firing.

Samp says she had wanted to be a news director ever since her first reporting job, which was at crosstown station WHO-TV.

Samp says that fixing low and unequal pay were battles she had been waging since soon after becoming a News Director and that she was able to resolve some individual cases, but there were still systemic disparities.

Some women who reported to her were "grossly underpaid" compared with the market average and to men in the same jobs, she alleges.

So she hoped such concerns would finally be addressed under Tegna's leadership.In a letter to the new managers, she shared some of them, including about 11 open positions she wanted filled. But she said she got little response. In October the company fired the female general manager and brought in an interim one, Susan McEldoon, based in Houston.

The fired manager was the first of three higher-paid women in their 40s who would be let go in three months, Samp says. The others were a sales manager and herself. No men were fired.

Samp said, she regularly raised concerns to McEldoon and the corporate news director and senior vice president about what she calls "Tegna's discriminatory pay practice." She says while a female anchor could make $80,000, a male counterpart would earn $115,000.

The senior vice president responded, "The Brinks truck isn't backing up to this place anytime soon," says Samp.

The contract of a female anchor Samp calls a key employee was coming up for renewal, and "I was relentless in encouraging the station and Tegna to pay her accordingly," Samp said in a written complaint to the Iowa Civil Rights Commission.

"All I got was pushback and eventually retaliation for speaking up about the pay discrimination," she said.

The Iowa Civil Rights Commission has granted Samp the right to sue, and she plans to do so later this week.