Over a week ago FTVLive showed you a very cringy recruitment video that was posted by The Firm’s KMSP (Minneapolis).

That video has brought in a lot of comments to FTVLive from “real” Journalists.

One Journalist sent an email with the subject title “The KMSP video is a problem, but it's not THE problem.”

I think the Journalist has a great take and I wanted to share it with you.

Scott,

The KMSP recruitment video is cheesier than a large pizza and makes amaetur community theatre look like a Tony-winning play.  But I don’t think the fault lies with KMSP for making the dumb video.  The fault lies with news directors, general managers, and anyone else who controls the money that flows in this business.

The former news director who criticized the KMSP video said, “It will take time and money if you want journalists.”  That’s 100% true.  This same former news director also admitted their small-market station paid full-time reporters $12/hour just two years ago.  I call hypocrisy on that.  Did this person advocate for higher salaries for their staff, or just sit by and shrug?

TV news is still woefully underpaid.  Just look at the median salaries in the RTDNA’s latest-available newsroom salary survey from 2021: $50,000 for a reporter, $38,000 for a producer, and $36,000 for a MMJ.  Again, these are median salaries industrywide, not just in small markets where you can earn more money stacking boxes for Amazon than you can as a legitimate journalist.

I’ve heard salaries are improving somewhat, but it’s clearly not improving enough to solve the recruitment problem.  It’s not like major broadcasters aren’t making money.  We are in an election year, after all, and those campaign ads bring in LOTS of money.  Some of that money can and should go towards better salaries for the journalists this business needs.  It’s a deliberate decision by news directors, general managers, regional/division executives, and CEOs to not pay better salaries.

What do we get instead?  Glossy and stupid recruitment videos, recruiters posting the same open jobs on social media, and news directors loosening their standards for the open jobs they have.  These methods are terrible and will not attract the best qualified journalists, but until the people in charge of news budgets decide to spend more money on salaries, it’s either sink or thrash wildly in the water.

...at least KMSP didn't mention ice cream.