Erica Hill has started her latest News Director gig at Nexstar’s KTLA.

Hill was the ND at The Firm’s KTTV and left the station to sit on the beach. She’s now back in the water and she sent and internal email to the staff about her excitement to be heading up KTLA news.

FTVLive obtained a copy of the email.

From: Erica Hill-Rodriguez
Date: 5/16/23 11:11 AM (GMT-08:00)
To: KTLA News

Subject: Greetings and Thank You!

Greetings KTLA team!

I want to thank all of you for the very warm welcome yesterday. It was lovely to meet all of you. If I missed you yesterday, please stop by at your convenience to say hi!

I am incredibly honored to be your News Director. KTLA is a station that has been close to my heart for so many years. I have always inspired by the KTLA legacy, the commitment to excellence and the creativity of this operation. It’s all of you who have built that success and culture through your commitment and amazing talents. I am looking forward to being a part of LA’s Very Own with you.

As I mentioned yesterday, I will soon be scheduling some 1:1 meetings and group sessions to get to know all of you better and hear from you on what makes KTLA such a special place. We will also be working together on a shared vision and mission statement for our newsroom and how we serve this dynamic community. That vision and mission will be the lens within which we operate and will guide our editorial decisions. So be thinking about your ideas around that – I’ll want to hear from you in our conversations.

To start the discussion, I’ll share with you some of the values that are important to me as your News Director:

 1 – Excellence in journalism - We have the most amazing jobs and with that comes tremendous responsibility to get it right, to make a difference, to hold the powerful accountable, to be useful and memorable, to deliver impactful journalism and to hold ourselves to the highest standards of integrity and accuracy.

2 – Our audience - it is not about us. We must evaluate everything we do through the eyes and expectations of our audience. That requires a relentless understanding of the lives and the issues that affect the community we serve.        

 3 – A healthy newsroom culture – This is OUR newsroom and so it’s up to us to cultivate and maintain the working culture we value. We are here to do important work and so we must support one another, have constructive conversations, and maintain our culture of excellence. Toxicity has no place in our newsroom.

 4 – Our purpose - I truly believe that we each must find and remind ourselves about the meaning in our work. What we do MATTERS. We have a tremendous responsibility to seek the truth and tell it as fully as possible. We get to come in every day with the opportunity to inform, enlighten, and even improve the lives of our audience. That is what gets me up in the morning and I hope it does for you too! 

 I am so looking forward to getting to know all of you and work with this incredible team! 

 Thank you
Erica Hill-Rodriguez
Director, News and Content