TV News Layoffs Change Industry
Television News Reporters and Anchors Leaving Journalism in Cutbacks
Sep 19, 2008
It is an unprecedented purging in the TV news business. The brightest, most talented and most experienced journalists are being unceremoniously told they are no longer needed. Their only crime is they make too much money.
TV News Layoffs
Dozens of layoffs are reported in the TV news industry every week. This is happening all over the country in markets big and small. Most recently, KLAS-TV in Las Vegas laid off 17 journalists including three who appeared on air. A memo from KLAS general manager Emily Neilson obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal blames an economic downturn and says "a significant recovery is not expected for at least a few years." Neilson calls the layoffs "a gut-wrenching experience for all of us."
Reporters Leaving Journalism
Television news reporters are a tough lot. They are used to instability and job hunting. The truth about TV news jobs is that it is an ungrateful industry. It uses journalists up and spits them out. The one redeeming reward was that experience paid dividends. The wave of layoffs nationally proves that is no longer true.
Anchors Leaving Journalism
Experienced television anchors have tolerated the difficulties of TV news for years because of the considerable rewards. It was worth the moving, the long hours, the horribly disturbing stories and the missed holidays with the family because they were compensated by an appreciative employer with generous compensation and work that served a public good. All that changed.
TV News Cutbacks
Donald Winslow of News Photographer magazine notes that "there's a slow but noticeably steady influx of 'backpack photojournalists,' the 'one-man-band' that's been talked about for so long. And in a reverse of tradition, at least two newspapers have hired veteran broadcast television photojournalists to leave television news behind to come over to 'the other side' to shoot video for the newspaper's Web sites."
TV News downsizing
Many experienced TV journalists have had enough. They can either be paid less to do more in an industry that doesn't appreciate them, or they can move on. Many are choosing to move on. They are snapping up jobs in media relations, print journalism and new media. These industries are eagerly hiring these veteran professionals and it is having a noticeable impact. TV news reporters moving into Internet journalism are providing a much needed dose of journalism ethics into the industry. This is giving it a new measure of legitimacy.
Journalist Demographics
Experienced TV journalist are now considered a disposable commodity. Years of service mean nothing, salaries are dropping and the increasingly commercial nature of TV news questions its value serving the public good. In fact, the most experienced and highly paid TV journalists are the ones first targeted for layoffs. Employers want to cut their high salaries out of their budgets and don't seem to care how the loss of years of experience negatively impacts their news product.
