KRDO

Sexual Discrimination, An Overall Toxic Work Environment

Mike Rausch and Cindy Dixon need to be fired. Mike will take credit for every great story that you do, but will also blame and chastise you when viewers leave us nasty comments. Cindy is incredibly two-faced and will smile to your face, but will tear you down in closed door conversations. They have a horrible problem at being direct and lack the initiative to make KRDO a great station. On Mike's LinkedIn profile, he claims to be "One of the Nation's Most Successful TV News Executives," but a News Director is not an executive position, and being the ND of a mid-market station is not exactly top notch. I have never met a man in my life who has that big of an ego, and really has nothing to back up his talk. The producers hate him. His reporters hate him. The anchors can't stand him. The entire station can't stand him. Mike has a history of being a terrible people person, but has never been held accountable for the careers he has ruined. If you make even the slightest mistake, be prepared to hear slander, lies, and outright untrue things said about you around the grapevine. And, we all know who is behind it. If you want to work for a child and a yes man... work for KRDO and the team of Mike Rausch and Cindy Dixon. But you would be wise to save your career and avoid this sh**hole.

This place ruined my love for an industry I once adored.

Sexual Discrimination, Racial Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, An Overall Toxic Work Environment

Morale is very low and it has affected our product across the board. Mike tries, but he can't help himself because he is a very terrible people person. He thinks his words mean well, but they bring people down. However, he has a history of this at other stations, and hasn't been held accountable. The station, meanwhile continues to suffer.

It felt like Mike never had my back...regardless of the situation. I finally got sick and tired of it. Mike has also belittled some of our other employees to the point of tears.

This is not how you lead a station. Mike has to go.

Sexual Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, An Overall Toxic Work Environment

For the last two years, we have been understaffed to the point that producers like myself have been extremely overworked to the point that some are producing as many as 16 shows a week. On top of that, we are treated like slaves by the management team of Mike Rausch and Cindy Dixon. During news meetings, Mike spends most of his time talking about himself instead of putting forward enterprise stories. When he was the News Director for WFTV, ratings declined 39 percent. KRDO has also suffered under Rausch's tutelage.

The people that work at KRDO are tremendous, but management is extremely lackluster. Do not work for KRDO until Mike and his associates are given the boot.

Mike is also very disrespectful to women in the workplace. Don't make the same mistake many others have. Work elsewhere.

An Overall Toxic Work Environment

Wasted a good amount of time here.

Don't work here until Mike and Cindy are no longer employed.

Sexual Discrimination, Racial Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, An Overall Toxic Work Environment

Mike Rausch is an experienced news director and has good ideas, but the way he presents himself is very arrogant, misogynistic, demeaning, and snobbish.

Some days were good, others were disastrous. Turnover has been extremely high lately because employees are treated so poorly.

Many departments have gone understaffed for years because management does not know how to treat people, nor have they made any attempts to change their demeanor.

However, this has gone on for so long, that any change would not seem genuine. Don't work here.

An Overall Toxic Work Environment

Morale has been in free fall since Mike Rausch arrived in October 2016 due to his pompous and outright disrespectful attitude. The newsroom has been a living hell since. We had a feeling this sort of environment would come upon us after a report from the Los Angeles Times said in a 2002 release that Rausch, as news director at KATU, agreed to have one of his reporters speak at a funeral for two girls who were kidnapped and murdered in Oregon City, Oregon, while a video of the ceremony was posted on the company website. Reporters are not hired to write columns or commentaries. They report stories, which are meant to exclude opinion -- not that Rausch would care, though. Ethics? That word does not register in the Dictionary of Rausch (DOR). The management team at KRDO also agreed to send out a drone to get exclusive coverage of the 117 Wildfire, which caused air drops to be halted as a result. Flying a drone near firefighting aircraft not only endangers pilots, but when aircraft are grounded because of a violation, the safety of firefighters on the ground is also compromised, and firefighting aircraft are not available to protect nearby homes and property. KRDO did issue a statement on the matter. "Prior fires in the same vicinity this year did not have TFRs in place." A TFR stands for Temporary Flight Restriction. A translation of that statement really means "We assumed there was no Temporary Flight Restriction because there wasn't one for the other fires which occurred in the same vicinity." It sounds very similar to the dog ate my homework sort of excuse that never works. Rausch has shown that he has a long history of not having principles. He doesn't care about his employees in the newsroom, and apparently, he doesn't care so much about the lives of our first responders, either. Mike has run a once proud station into the ground, ran out many talented people, and has purposefully torn down many of our producers and reporters to tears, often over issues that have required no such reaction. The least he can do is treat his people like people and not garbage disposals. Mike has also pinned reporters against one another. A simple misunderstanding has almost resulted in physical altercations because people are so wound up that they nearly go ballistic on one another. It is the most toxic work environment I have ever experienced, and anyone else who comes out of this place unscathed deserves a medal in my humble opinion. I grew up in poverty, and I was much happier living in the slums than I was working for KRDO. Think about that for a second. I was happier poor than I was working for this place. That will tell you a lot about what Mike has done to this once glorious station. Mike is also extremely egotistical. Look at the man's LinkedIn Page. He describes himself as a success catalyst and one of the top 100 TV News Executives in the United States. The ratings of this station and Rausch's track record say otherwise. The editing equipment in the newsroom could use some work. The editing team has been unfairly blamed for a lot of the issues, and it could be fixed if KRDO invested in better equipment. They have the money for it; it is the initiative that is lacking. The producers are overworked, and some have trouble getting out of bed in the morning because they dread having to deal with Mike that much. All of the producers are on salary, so no overtime, and some work as many as 14 days consecutively with no days off, there are four months out of the year that you are not allowed to take a day off, and the comments from viewers are absolutely horrendous. The least I would ask for is support from Mike and his assistant Cindy Dixon, who is nothing more than a female "yes man." People have also been passed over for promotions and are choosing to leave as they see no room for advancement. Yes, long story short. This place needs a lot of work. I have received several calls from former co-workers who applied to KRDO for employment. I have told them that they are better off working somewhere else because their love for this industry will be destroyed if they end up here. One individual still decided to give it a shot and told me over the phone about their interview with Mike. "Mike's a jerk." If that is how Mike comes off on the phone, trust me, it is much worse in person.

I think I have said enough. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE I URGE EVERYONE TO READ THE REVIEWS ON HERE. IT SPEAKS VOLUMES.