Amongst The News Staff

An insider at Nexstar’s WDAF (Kansas City) sends along the following email and has an interesting take:

Great Day KC, WDAF’s new lifestyle pay-to-play show launched on Monday September 13th. The three hosts of the lifestyle show have desks in the newsroom instead of creative services or the sales department. 

Although general manager Tracy Brogden Miller assured journalists in a Microsoft Teams staff meeting in August that there would be no crossover staffing between the newsroom and the Great Day show, the promises were broken almost immediately. For the two weeks leading up to the launch, news producers and photojournalists were asked by news managers to help provide content, guidance, and staffing for the new show. Stealing resources from the news department continues during the first week of the show. Journalists in the building feel deceived and ethically liable for what management is forcing them to do. 

The harm to the credibility of the WDAF newsroom and journalists who have worked so hard to maintain their journalistic standards is imminent. 

While I’m not sure where the staffers sit is that big on an issue, if there is room in the building, it might be best to get them out of the newsroom.

The bigger problem is having the news staff take time out of the newsgathering to help the pay-for-play show.

If you are putting a show on the air which often amounts to a locally produced infomercial, you should staff it with the proper amount of people that they are not pulling from your newsroom.

I understand that these lifestyle shows can bring in money to a TV station and that is all well and good. But, when you start asking Journalists to help partake in the production of the show, it clearly enters a very gray area.