Sinclair Throws Another News Department in the Scrapheap

Sinclair’s KTVL the local CBS affiliate in Medford, shocked its employees on Thursday morning with an announcement that it would be laying off most of its local staff and switching its format.

Sinclair told staffers it will be using The National Desk (TND) to replace the majority of its local news.

Beginning May 15, The National Desk will air during KTVL’s regularly scheduled news time periods.

Several KTVL employees speaking off the record said they were told Thursday that local news would largely be eliminated.

The Rogue Valley Times reports that Taylar Ansures, the station’s digital producer, said she could not remain silent. “I’m a journalist. It’s my job to inform the public about what’s going on. I went into that meeting with a lot of questions that they refused to answer,” she said.

Ansures moved from Redding with her toddler son for the job in November of last year. She has family in the Rogue Valley, and as a single mom, she was looking forward to the support. As an employee with the Sinclair company since 2021, she expected more than one week of notice, two weeks severance pay and an order not to talk. “I will never work for Sinclair again. A lot of what I posted as a digital producer, the stuff I put on our website or our social, it doesn’t necessarily reflect our stances as journalists. We dislike Sinclair propaganda as much as our viewers,” she said of the company.

Alumni of KTVL were also sicken by the news.

Sinclair continues to whack newscast in smaller markets that are much a part of a news void for local news.

The company puts a number of not-very-well-paid employees out of work. many of these employees are new to the business and are now looking for their next job while out of a job.