Our long-time friend and industry observer Rick Gevers noted in the last edition of his excellent newsletter at rickgevers.com that there are some 45 local TV stations with openings for the position of news director. He notes that that might be a record in his memory, and it certainly seems like a high number to us.

That being said, we’re not surprised that at present, it might take some stations longer to find the right person to fill those positions. We’ve noticed a few trends lately that the broadcasting business might want to pay more attention to in seeking the next generation of news leadership. At the same time, we have seen folks applying for these positions have had to adjust their thinking about what being an “upwardly mobile” newsroom leader in 2025 is.

Let’s begin with Edward R. Murrow’s proviso, which perhaps started this kind of message best when he said: “This just might do nobody any good.” (Fortunately, George Clooney found a way to turn the great man’s words into a Broadway production.)

A person would be forgiven for not seeing the position of becoming a local television news director as the opportunity it once was. The business has been going through a fundamental transformation for years now. It has forced news directors to be “agents of change” almost constantly. The diminishing business metrics have forced every newsroom to be more efficient (the great corporate speak for “doing more with less of everything.") And running the business aspects of a news department means that news directors get far less time today to actually direct the news product.

That reality has made it more likely than not that a current news director will make decisions about life/work balance focused more on the quality of where they are and who they are working for (both individuals and corporations) than might have been the case in the past. Climbing the corporate or market-size ladder doesn’t have the automatic appeal that it did in years past, and often, such a move doesn’t come with the bump in compensation necessary to offset the higher cost of living that is the case in almost every city or market of significant size.

Another factor we’d point out when considering the position of News Director is that there is less creative fulfillment in the position these days. Larger broadcast groups have worked to create a McDonald ’s-like franchise model for local news operations across their enterprises, so the ability to affect meaningful change in many stations is limited. Chances are that as news director for a larger group, you will be following a “playbook” from the corporate office and thus it will be much harder to try anything truly different–at least in any meaningful way.

And, of course, in terms of actual compensation, news director salaries haven’t kept up with the pace of the rising cost of living any more than any other salary in a newsroom. We just had a conversation with a news director in a medium market who pointed out that they couldn’t make a move even if they wanted to because they are holding a 2% mortgage on their home and wouldn’t be able to afford a new position in a different city because they wouldn’t be able to buy a house with mortgage rates now just over 6.75%. So much for a salary increase in a new job equaling a better quality of life.

On the other hand, we see fewer opportunities for aspiring news directors to get the training and experience needed to be truly equipped to handle the broad responsibilities of the position. We will continue advocating for development programs like The Carole Kneeland Project for Responsible Journalism, which wrapped up its latest training conference in Austin last weekend. The Poynter Institute is another source of some great training opportunities for newsroom leaders. We have benefited from participating in both programs and highly recommend them.

We would like to see either the NAB or the RTDNA or perhaps both team up to create a version of the NAB’s Broadcast Leadership Training program for newsroom leaders. In case you aren’t familiar with it, the NAB’s “BLT” program is an Executive MBA-styled one-year program designed to equip individuals with the fundamentals of purchasing, owning, and running successful radio and television stations. This intensive course turns out many future general managers. Given that it is an expensive investment, including monthly travel to sessions in Washington, DC, perhaps the year-long training of a news-centric “BLT” type program could be done on a state or regional basis in conjunction with state broadcast associations.

Television urgently needs its next generation of qualified news department leaders. This is especially true given that shrinking newsroom staffs have curtailed on-the-job learning opportunities, preventing many in the current pool of experienced news directors from identifying and training their successors. If our industry wants to have a pipeline of qualified managers to lead the largest departments in almost every station (at least in terms of expense and employees), this kind of investment in training and development is needed. And it is needed now more than ever.

Or, to quote Murrow again–from later in that same famous 1958 speech: “If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us.”