WCPO

Racial Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, An Overall Toxic Work Environment

Toxic doesn’t even begin to explain my experience here. During my time working here, Several coworkers took sabbaticals for mental health reasons, which shows how much of a toxic environment it was. At one point, people were having mental breakdowns & leaving on a weekly basis . Little to no concern for safety. A photographer was shot at, while covering a crime scene. However, managers still expected him to cover crime in sketchy areas alone despite him suffering from PTSD.

Managers have unrealistic expectations for reporters, especially MMJs.

Lots of incompetence and green producers & photogs which leads to mistakes on air.

A long time well known anchor is a major bully, who management is fully aware of, but won’t do anything to stop it. She will literally talk shit about reporters / producers very loudly in the newsroom and nothing is ever done to put an end to this toxic behavior from someone who’s supposed to be a leader in the newsroom.

Unfortunately, I felt like the station sensationalized certain stories. At one point, WCPO just covered enterprise stories, but There was a push to cover more hard news. That transition was a whirlwind because many didn’t know how to do this. We’d either chase stories we saw the competition working on or “beefed” up simple stories to make it seem harder. It felt like they’d make things up or over exaggerated things, all for the sake of pleasing higher ups.

If you want to truly grow as a storyteller, this isn’t the job for you. They’re too busy chasing scanner traffic. You’ll only chase the latest death and destruction.

News director had favorites and if you weren’t part of that list, good luck trying to grow or move up within the station.

I also wasn’t paid well. The job isn’t worth all the stress for the amount of work and suffering you have to deal with.

There are some genuinely good and talented people there, but the overall toxicity of the newsroom just overpowers that.

Content strategy is very confusing. Very choosy when it comes to covering crime or breaking news. Executive producers are not helpful. Schedules never released on time. Communication is minimal. Work flow is disjointed. Training and on-boarding is self-guided. Management will not help you and want you to come up with your own work flow. It's left up to the staff to train new additions to the team.