WSAV

An Overall Toxic Work Environment

Not an enjoyable or supportive environment to work in.

This newsroom will suck the life out of you. Managers are disorganized and will spring last-minute, unrealistic demands on reporters that should have been planned days, weeks or months in advance.

Managers, photographers and most producers are lazy and only care about filling their show. Managers have questionable news judgement and will often force stories that are not newsworthy or force a turn of any headline-grabbing, salacious story. They'll also often force things to be day turns when they shouldn't be.

If you're an MMJ, prepare to be sent to unsafe situations by yourself. Prepare for solo live shots on the side of the road. But management will gaslight you by dropping "safety is our top priority" every now and then. When you bring concerns to management they’ll tell you what you want to hear in the moment, but will never take any action.

It's an overall toxic newsroom and abnormal work environment. Higher ups will talk about you behind your back, openly in the newsroom while you're not there and send passive aggressive emails to the entire staff that are clearly targeted at one person. The newsroom is DEAD silent during the day. Nobody wants to be there. People frequently and predictably call out sick. It's not a collaborative place to work where creativity and communication are valued. Everyone is just looking out for their self.

This station is stuck in the past of doing things how they've always been done, instead of being open to new and innovate ways to tell/present stories. This station has driven numerous passionate and talented journalists out of the industry. My advice is to run in the other direction. The only redeeming quality of this station is the location it's in, but you'll be lucky if you even have the energy to enjoy it on your days off.

An Overall Toxic Work Environment

This station is not run like a newsroom should be run. The staff does nothing but create more drama which creates a bad work environment.

DO NOT WORK HERE! If you're looking for your first or second job this is not the place. The newsroom is run by a bunch of people who don't care to put out a good news product. I'm shocked that the viewers actually watch. Most people who work here have been here for 10-20 years but the reporter turnover is high. Apparently this station use to run somewhat decent but now it's all down hill. A number of reporters/producers don't even fully finish their contracts. The number 3 station is quickly catching up so I won't be surprised if the ratings change.

We don't chase stories and we rarely show up to breaking news scenes that we should be at. The call can come over the scanner and nobody pays attention. They will depend on the freelancer to go get video and sound and won't have a reporter presence on scene. There are good stories that we miss all the time or we report it the day after when it's old. If you're looking to get more live experience you won't get it. Want to go live for breaking news? Nope, you won't get anything for your reel and we have shootings all the time. Ask for a photog and you'll be told no unless you're a favorite. The photogs are lazy and we only have four. There is no set nightside photog so the MMJ will have to pick up every story that pops up.

The producers only care about filling time but will never drop a story to put something new in. They rerun stories from the night before and they'll even pull stories from Friday and over the weekend to fill up the Monday shows with old news. I have no idea what our ND does all day but he doesn't contribute to the every day news process only sending out a few emails a day with small updates that should probably make the shows but it never does. He'll leave that up to the EP who could care less. If you don't work dayside don't expect any attention to go to the morning show or nightside shows.

Because of the pandemic all reporters and photographers are working at home and I can say we all love it because we don't have to deal with the people at the station, but there are no resources to make sure you get your work done at home effectively. There is a constant battle of trying to make this station better and catch up to the number one but nobody cares to put in the work. If you like storytelling you won't get better here. If you have a problem plan for it not to be solved.

My best advice to you is run in the opposite direction of this station. The market does offer some bigger stories sometimes especially in 2020 with the election but after this dies down you'll struggle to find good stories. You can honestly do whatever story you want at this station just so you fill your time. You can say the sky is falling just to get something in the show.

Lastly, negotiate your contract! There are several reporters here who get the run around. Most signed for 3-2.5 years but others were lucky and got 2 years.

Racial Discrimination, An Overall Toxic Work Environment

We are the only station in the market that doesn’t make reporters go live every day or respond to breaking news. The assignment editor is so unorganized to the point we miss a lot of stories in our market.

Most of the stories we cover should be on Facebook. A lot of the content is not real news