They couldn't find anyone else.
Here's a taste of what I told them:
When I was in Syracuse (just one winter, 125 inches of snow is a serious wakeup call) I hired a young reporter right out of college. Until then I’d never had a Facebook page. Until then I’d never hired a reporter based solely on his web resume. Until then I hadn't met Ray Villeda.
Believe it or not, Syracuse, despite the university, is not a destination market. And although the Orange are great at basketball and host one of the best J-schools in the nation, most of those kids are looking to get away from the eight month winter by the time they’ve finished four or five years of college. Ray, however, was different. He went to Ithaca College…(Ithaca is in the banana belt of Central New York…they only get about 70 inches of snow). Ray had no commercial television reporting experience but I hired him anyway. Sure he made mistakes but he was my project so we worked on writing, editing, presentation and six months in, he was leading newscasts with his stories.
It nearly broke my heart when I had to tell Ray and eleven of his-coworkers that it was over. Last in, first out. That’s the union way. The choices I made were dictated by a collective bargaining agreement and at the time, I almost quit TV news for good because it made me sick. I had hired some of the people we laid off that day and most are no longer in the news business. Ray’s story has a happy ending though. He worked at another station in Syracuse for a year and is now at WFSB in Hartford.
Those of us who remain, whether we’re managers or not, have a responsibility to work together as news gatherers—news is a team sport. I subscribe to many online resources to help me navigate the pathway of management and one I love is written by Jill Geisler, who lives in Milwaukee but is a leadership mentor at the Poynter Institute. She was the country’s first female news director of a major market network affiliate, and built an award-winning newsroom culture at WITI in Milwaukee, her home town. Hers was a teaching newsroom, where coaching and collaboration were as important as ethics and enterprise.
Here’s what Jill says about working in newsgathering today:
Your organization has cut staff, salaries and benefits, and it has asked employees to take on more work. If I ask about morale, the answer's obvious: It's taken a hit. But let's talk about how morale is measured and managed.
Morale can be measured across multiple dimensions. Consider who on your team might say:
I get satisfaction from my job.
I feel valued in this company.
I'm compensated fairly for my work.
I have a chance to grow.
People look out for each other here.
I respect and trust my boss.
I believe in what we do.
I think the leadership of this organization is moving us in the right direction.
When a substantial number of your co-workers find it hard to agree with a substantial number of those statements, morale is suffering.
What can you do about it?
First, take note that only one of those morale metrics deals directly with money. Make no mistake, money matters, and I never had a co-worker who demanded a decrease. Cuts hurt. But they're not necessarily fatal to morale.
That may come as a surprise to managers and employees who think money changes everything and assume that lowered wages and benefits dramatically impair engagement.
Bottom line? If you believe low morale is tied to dollars alone, you'll miss important opportunities to boost job satisfaction in ways that don't take a dime out of an anemic budget.
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