Photographer Quits Station Calling News Director a Bully in an Email (Updated x2)

Karen Kelly

Well, that's one way to quit your job.

WSPA (Greenville, Spartanburg) Photographer Jennifer White quit her job and called out News Director Karen Kelly in an email as she walked out the door.

Kelly, who has been ND at station since October 2012 was called a "Bully" by White in the email.

White blamed Kelly for bad management and chasing staffers out the door.

FTVLive reached out to White and she did not want to comment on the email.

Here is the scathing email obtained by FTVLive.com

Date: February 28, 2014 at 7:20:48 PM EST
To: kkelly@wspa.com,
jenn white <jennsphotos@####.com>
Subject: read me immediately!

Karen,
     This is to inform you that I am officially resigning from WSPA immediately. While I have been out these past 2 weeks in my mobile newsroom, I was digging deeper into my career and realized that the only impact WSPA has on my career and life is negative. Why should you care?…well in the past week, it’s seems you have run off THREE other employees and my fact checking shows that including myself leaving now…that makes FOUR employees. Since I've been here a little over a year, I have watched a number of very talented journalists and one hell of a talented EP leave this establishment which is the best reality check anyone could give. Now i’m not quoting any officials here, since we’re not allowed, but I’d be trying to figure out what the problem is. WAIT! Let me put it in perspective for you. YOU, KAREN KELLY, are a bully. You are degrading to your employees. You put down every idea people bring to you, then turn around and play it as your own. You don’t respect any of us in the newsroom, which is why no one respects you. I’m holding YOU accountable for the bad morale and the fact that everyone in the past year has left…be proud…it’s all because of you. I have never seen so many people making tapes and trying to get the hell out of a tv station like I have here. The best thing for WSPA would be for you to leave, but I doubt that will happen so sit back, pop a bag of popcorn, grab a dozen donuts and watch the talent fly out the door to their next station, because you sure as hell don’t appreciate anyone.
What’s working? NOT ME! AND NOT HERE!

Jennifer White
EX-photojournalist at WSPA
“why compete when you’re beat”

Update: When FTVLive got a copy on this email, we contacted Jennifer White to ask if she wrote it? She said she did and asked where we got a copy of it? Obviously, we would not burn our source and say how we obtained the email. We asked White if she wanted to comment and she said that she did not, since she was now involved in legal proceedings with the station. She asked us not to run the email and if we did not to use her name. She claimed it would hurt her court case. We wrote back saying, we would not censor the story and the email was out there and would be brought up in the court case anyway.

After we posted the story, White then contacted FTVLive again and wrote "I guess I should send that email to her now since it's going viral?" So now she is claiming that she never sent the email to the News Director, but she does not deny writing it and we can state for fact the email was sent to some other parties. 

In other words, someone is now trying to get the toothpaste back in the tube. 

Update X2: Jennifer emailed FTVLive again to say that we made some inaccuracies in our report. We will include her email below since she said she is "cool with it."

Well I know you are going to post everything I send to you and that's cool. I'm getting a lot of calls and one request to be on a talk show already so this may benefit me in the long run. I wanted to get a few things corrected on your recent update. I DID write that letter. And I DID send it to some people. The times on the email are completely wrong and the way the email looks that you posted is wrong as well. I've never denied I wrote the letter...and I admit I sent it to other people. That's fact. I'm not in a court case with the station...that should be retracted (FTVLive note: she did state in an earlier email if we posted the email it would "affect her court case") . I'm in legal proceedings but not with wspa. If you have other questions please feel free to ask. If you're gonna write a story about me, I would like you to at least have the facts right. And I'll look forward to seeing all of this posted as an update as well. Thanks for the props and for making this go viral!
Jennifer

You're welcome Jennifer, glad we could help.