Station's Ratings
News Dirctors
Reporter Job details
Yearly salary
Contract2 years
Paired with a photogN/A
Station market rank#3
Suh Neubauer
Is pleasant during the first month, but quickly begins criticizing your work in a non-constructive way. During the pandemic, she did was not seen at the station more than 5 times total in over a year. She neglected to come into the station on Election Night. When she would sometimes volunteer to finish up a script, web or video edit for show, she often would forget to complete the task and other editors, reporters or producers would have to hurry to pick up the slack before show. Was known to go back on her word unless a conversation took place over email or text, since there was evidence. I don’t think she ever even watched the show — sometimes thing would go wrong and nightside staff was seldom contacted for advice, support or news directing. If you did not take care to be friendly with her, she could show her toxic side.
An Overall Toxic Work Environment
Although this is a known starter station, it should not have been completely run by 22-year-olds fresh out of college. There was very little direction or thanks from management. New hires were seldom trained, and would face criticism first without previous guidance. New ideas were often shut down. Overall, there seemed to be an unspoken “us versus them,” since the news staff was often left to their own devices to run the station.
Most of the equipment is either out-dated or simply not taken advantage of. The studio itself is entirely green screen — even the desk — and the walls and ceilings of the building are probably another cause for concern. One winter, the snow on the seldom-maintained roof melted and started pouring through the ceiling tiles into the control room. Management refused to come in to help, as it was a holiday. News staff had to tarp all of the control panels and equipment despite the electrical hazards, and we only thanked by management for being a source of revenue for the station.
The only positive aspect of working at Fox 40 was my coworkers on the news team, as we were all in the same age group (Early 20’s) and experiencing the same turmoil that was WICZ. Although essentially filling three roles in one, working minimum wage 40 hours a week, will be a résumé booster, it is not something I would wish on anyone fresh out of college and looking forward to getting started in their journalism career. This station killed my spirit for television news, and I hope that something changes with management to prevent the same from happening to future employees.
Anchor Job details
Yearly salary
Contract4 years ago
Paired with a photogN/A
Station market rank2
Suh Neubauer
She struggles to communicate and tends to disappear. But generally a positive presence who wants the best for her people. Good experience overall.
An Overall Toxic Work Environment
A lot of people sitting around, equipment and resources aren't great. The experience is great. Good place to get a good demo and a good grip on every aspect of the newsroom.
It's a little run down and a run down part of the country. But it is a good experience overall. You probably won't be there for more than a year or two.
Suh Neubauer
Uninvolved/ gone for long periods, no station direction, unorganized.
This station is completely unprofessional. There is an overall lack of interest in the broadcast by the management and even the news director. There is NEVER any news meetings, nobody pitches stories, equipment always broken. This led to the staff not caring: there is no accountability, production staff talks constantly over the headsets about unrelated topics, shows suffer. One May, the Prompter stopped working. The engineer couldn’t figure out the issue right away so nobody did anything. We went without the prompter for the WHOLE SUMMER. It wasn’t until around September-ish that it was finally fixed. We film on tiny SLR cameras and 40$ plastic tripods. It’s embarrassing cover stories next to real stations.
