Why Are 20-Somethings Leaving TV News

Why Are 20-Somethings Leaving TV News? The Generational Influence.

By Chuck Underwood

A white paper discussed at the 2003 annual conference of the Society of Professional Journalists, in Tampa, FL, on September 11, 2003

Contacts:

Chuck Underwood, Cincinnati. PH: 513 - 221 - 1973. EM: cunderwood@fuse.net

Kenn Venit, Connecticut. PH: 203 - 627 - 6047. EM: kvenit@pop.snet.net

Chuck Underwood, founder and president of the Generational Imperative, Inc. (TGI), is a business consultant to major corporations on generational issues. In addition, he is an award-winning broadcast journalist and television producer with network, national syndication, and international credits. He has researched the generations for 17 years and has become one of the nation's leading experts on generational study. Mr. Underwood's company conducts proprietary generational research. As it relates to this white paper's topic, his media clients include individual stations, cable system operators, advertisers, ad agencies, PR firms, and print media.

Mr. Underwood is represented by speakers' bureaus on both coasts. You may reach him in Cincinnati (513-221-1973) or email him at cunderwood@fuse.net. His new company website will be online in November, 2003 and will be reach'able at either www.genimperative.com or www.thegenerationalimperative.com.

At the request of television news consultant Kenn Venit, panel moderator at the recent national conference of the Society Of Professional Journalists, Mr. Underwood submitted the following paper regarding the conference's discussion of the subject, "Why Are 20-Somethings Leaving TV News?"

The following is copyrighted and may not be published or reprinted in full without the advance written consent of Chuck Underwood. Verbatim lifts of any portions of this paper may be attributed as quotes by Chuck Underwood, unless otherwise attributed herein.

BACKGROUND.

Generational study - examining the differences in core values, beliefs, and attitudes from one generation to the next - is a somewhat new discipline, only about a decade old in terms of intense and widespread study. But it is already well-documented that generational values exercise as much or more influence on our day-to-day decisions than do the conventional demographic factors of age, income, gender, and education.

Corporate America is rapidly embracing generational study in two primary areas: (1) managing the generations in the workplace; and (2) generational marketing and advertising strategies.

In the workplace, the generational issues are these: (1) how can an employer recruit and retain the best employees? (2) How can the employer maximize employee loyalty and productivity? And, (3) how can the employer achieve inter-generational cooperativeness amongst all employees, when their generational core values and beliefs are often quite different?

GEN X.

With this backdrop, here are some generally-embraced truths about Generation X, the Americans born between 1965 and 1981 and whose current age is 22 to 38. As it pertains to this panel discussion of the Society of Professional Journalists at its 2003 national conference, they are the current 20-Somethings in television newsrooms, although a new and very different generation - the Millennials (please don't call us Generation Y!) - is just now entering adulthood and the American workplace.

About Gen X (by the way, Gen X is not a derogatory term; it was popularized by a GenX'er, Doug Coupland, who made the point in his book Generation X that his generation is comprised of so many individualistic personalities that they cannot accurately be given a single name; hence, you might as well draw an "x" through any attempted name):

GenX came of age in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. What they experienced during that period, and what they were taught by parents and teachers, have molded the core values they'll embrace for life. And those core values guide the attitudes that will influence their career, consumer, and lifestyle choices. As history and research have chronicled, this is how it happens for all of us. And as the times and teachings change, new generations - with new values - are created.

And what X'ers witnessed during their formative years was failure after failure of adult institutions: the scandal-driven resignations of a U.S. Vice-President (1973) and President (1974); the "quitting" of a war in Vietnam by the U. S. military (1975); the economic splat of the world's superpower when a handful of obscure Arab nations launched an oil embargo (1973/'74); the failure of the institution of marriage, when the divorce rate of 1971 was 165% higher than it had been only ten years earlier, and remained high; the layoffs of many of their hard-working and company-loyal fathers in the '70s and '80s by executives who shipped production jobs overseas in order to save their own corporate jobs in this country; the conversion of television news from "reporting the facts" to what X'ers perceive as fluffy show biz; the vulgarization of radio, as deejays desperately resorted to shock to win the ratings war when the number of stations in each market began rapidly multiplying in the '70s; and, a similar strategic vulgarization of television programming beginning in the '80s when cable suddenly increased the number of channels available to the viewer. This cumulative formative-years experience has molded a deep cynicism and distrust of adult institutions - especially the mass media - amongst X'ers.

Because GenX is the first generation of kids with dual-career, and hence dual-income, parents, their childhood spending power was enormous, and marketers began hurling every conceivable advertising and marketing ploy at them as soon as they were old enough to spit up. Because of this, GenX is more media-savvy, street-smart, and sophisticated than any other generation of retail customer, radio listener, and TV viewer in history. Even more than the savvy Boomers, X'ers can smell hype from a thousand miles away. And after all these years of having it hurled at them, they hate hype. They aren't just cynical of media hype; they actual deride it, laughing with their friends at what they perceive to be lame attempts to trick them into listening, watching, reading, buying.

GENERATION X VIEWERS AND "THE NEWS".

This cynicism is especially acute when it comes to television news. GenX, in big numbers, is not watching TV news and isn't reading the newspaper; the research is well-documented and undisputable.

It has reached such crisis proportion that a significant number of major newspapers across the country are launching separate GenX publications, at substantial expense. How can we connect with GenX? is the billion-dollar newsroom question.

I recently (August, '03) conducted proprietary research with multiple and nationally-projectable focus groups of GenX'ers, and part of each session was dedicated to X'ers' attitudes towards "the news".

GenX considers television news, as it's currently presented just about everywhere, irrelevant to their lives because of story selection. They're interested in their neighborhood, not the West Bank. Their children's schools, not the bloody fatality on the interstate. Job security, not a "local-angle" story connected to tonight's prime-time episode of (fill in the name of a show; Survivor, perhaps?), which X'ers easily see through as a program promo, not a news story.

They also sense that news anchors are so tied to ratings success, and are promoted more as celebrities than journalists, that their ethics and trustworthiness are subject to compromise.

They consider TV news untrustworthy because they smell hype and shallowness in its presentation. My focus groups chuckled at what they view as the lameness of reporters announcing they are "live from the newsroom" (what, as opposed to dead from the newsroom?). They dislike the inane anchor by-play, and they feel a "Breaking News" lower-third graphic more often than not really isn't breaking news but is instead just more ratings skullduggery. Remember, this is the generation that grew up singing along with Don Henley's blistering attack on TV news, entitled Dirty Laundry:

"See the bubble-headed bleach-blonde, she comes on at five... she can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye... it's interesting when people die"...

"Is the head dead yet? The boys in newsroom got a running bet"...

"We all know that crap is king, give us dirty laundry".

Don't shoot the messenger. That's not me talking. It's Generation X (whose opinions on TV news, by the way, are virtually identical to Boomers, whom I also focus-grouped).

Now, to the specific question I've been asked to address: Why Are 20-Somethings Leaving TV News?

WHY ARE 20-SOMETHINGS LEAVING TV NEWS?

Because news organizations have really missed with GenX viewers, 20-something newsroom employees - reporters, producers, writers, shooters, and others - don't enjoy the peer prestige that Boomer newshounds enjoyed when they entered the profession thirty years ago, when local news was growing in importance and impact. When Boomers entered it in the late '60s and early '70s, TV news was considered urgent, relevant, honorable, and glamorous (television was still awe-inspiring), and their fellow Boomers looked up to them. I know. I was one of those reporters.

Not so with GenX. Not today.

Peer respect is especially important to X'ers, who as a generation feel they've been largely ignored by older generations (latchkey kids ring a bell?) and so grew up with the cohort attitude that "all we have is each other" (witness the theme song for the sitcom Friends: "...the job's a joke, you're broke, but I'll be there for you"). To X'ers, what-their-friends-think is a very big deal. This is why advertisers consistently use peer strategy in concepting their spots and ads that target GenX.

They want a career they can be proud of. But too often, Xers enter the TV newsroom hoping to make a positive difference in their community but instead experience disappointment when they're exposed to what they perceive to be the current-day corruption of journalistic principles.

Item: a GenX reporter for a major-market TV station was ordered by her news director to "ambush" a respected Media Relations Director of a local social-services agency by surprising her on the sidewalk with a rolling camera and hot microphone and grilling her without notice about a story. What the reporter whispered off-mike to the Media Relations Director goes a long way in explaining the GenX attitude towards TV news careers: "I'm sorry I'm doing this to you. This isn't why I got in this business. My boss thinks this is the kind of visual that will attract viewers my age, but what he doesn't get is that we hate this stuff."

BALANCED LIFE.

20-Somethings also have another core value that might work against a TV news career:

Their parents, by and large, are the workaholic Boomers. And when coming of age, they often saw their parents' - or their best friend's parents' - long work hours result in divorce, drug abuse, stress, illness, and undeserved layoff. And so GenX molded a VERY strong core value that they will "work to live", NOT "live to work". They're happy to work hard, they want to succeed, but they place a higher premium on their personal lives and personal time than Boomers did at that same age. X'ers protect their personal time. In an office environment, for example, X'ers are noted for wanting to leave right at 5:00pm. They'll put in one hell of a focused and productive effort for their eight hours, but they want to leave at five. They like to have their evening and weekends for themselves. This, of course, clashes with the abnormal work schedule of the TV newsroom.

They also feel the station's corporate parent is wringing every possible penny of profit - and every possible ounce of personal energy - from its news staff. Early hours for the morning show, late hours for the late 'cast, hanging around to do a live shot in the late news even though many of those live shots make no sense to them. Hey, next month the station is adding still another half hour of news.

X'ers want to create the kind of normal family life for their children that many of them never enjoyed as kids. They prefer consistent hours, a reasonable number of hours, and they don't want to be ambushed by regular overtime demands by the boss. They're willing to work hard. And occasional overtime. But they work to live.

GENERATION GAPS IN THE NEWSROOM.

New item. A major-market News Director told me this: "I have a 61-year-old anchor and a 27-year-old producer, and they're at each other's throats every day about what to do and how to do it. Help!"

This brings up another deterrent to 20-Somethings: generational differences in the newsroom. From what I've learned as a generational consultant, few, if any, management personnel in the television industry, most of whom are either Silents or Boomers, have undergone training sessions on managing the generations, and so consistently scratch their heads about GenX workplace attitudes. That bewilderment is understandable because GenX DOES have a very different set of core values and beliefs, especially as they relate to work and career. And GenX does have an attitude, too. But it's just as difficult for X'ers to understand Boomers and the older Silent Generation as it is for the older ones to understand them. Other industries are hiring generational consultants to bridge those generational gaps: between younger and older, between Boomer boss and Xer employee, and so on. But not, it seems, the television industry.

And you need to know this: the GenX culture is "If I'm unhappy here, I'll just leave and find a job elsewhere." Boomers were just the opposite at the same age: "If there's something at the station that's wrong, I'm gonna stay here, get in my boss' face, and fight like hell to change things!"

Boomers grew up feeling empowered, feeling - and proving - they could effect change when needed (witness the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Movement, War Protest Movement, Ecology Movement, Sexual Revolution).

Conversely, GenX grew up feeling DIS-empowered: "Mom and Dad are divorcing, and there's nothing I can do about it", "Our government and corporate leaders are corrupt and there's nothing I can do about it", "My dad was just laid off and there's nothing I can do about it".

So, when a GenX'er is dissatisfied, he/she is more likely than Boomers to quietly find another job, rather than stick around and fight for change. In my interview with an X'er female manager at a major-market ad agency, she reflected on her own GenX and said, "I think we're a generation of quitters - with marriage, jobs, everything." Remember the old TV commercial, "I'd rather fight than switch"? Well, a significant number of X'ers would rather switch than fight. Makes it a little tough on the news director, who sometimes doesn't see the departure coming.

WHATEVER AND THE LOYALTY THING.

Item: same News Director mentioned above said this: "We had fabulous exclusive footage for our lead story at 5:00 but it never aired; the tape was ready but for some reason didn't make it to master control. I was out of town, so the next day, I asked my 20-something producer what happened. Not only did she not know what happened, she wasn't even planning on finding out until I jumped down her throat! Twenty years ago, the whole damned newsroom would've been embarrassed at 5:00 and would've identified and corrected the problem by 5:03. Where does this 'whatever' attitude come from?!!!!"

GenX, as a generation, will probably never have the same loyalty to a large company that prior generations had at the same age, because GenX went through its formative years seeing their own fathers - or their best friend's father, or their classmate's father - laid off by "the man" despite years of dedicated, diligent loyalty to the company. And it's now happening to them, and other American workers of all ages. In other words, the X'er experience is that companies cannot be counted on to be as loyal to the employee as the employee is willing to be to the company. Too many X'ers have seen only one-way loyalty, and they've grown up feeling - knowing - they must not be blind to that reality. This suspicion of big business explains, in part, why most entrepreneurial start-ups in 2002 were launched by GenX'ers.

So another very strong Xer value is this: "I can't trust the company to be loyal to me, so I have to look out for myself. I must constantly be mobile, I must constantly build my professional skills that I can take to a new job, and I must never be naively ambushed by the corporation. Given what I've seen all my life, how can I possibly trust the company?"

And that distrust, understandable given what they witnessed during their formative years, translates into less of a "company mentality" (read that, newsroom mentality) than older generations felt at the same age. This is why, in some newsrooms, the entire news staff no longer gathers around the three TV monitors in the newsroom right at 6:00PM (or 5:00PM) to eagerly see how their 'cast is faring against the competition. In the '70s, young Boomers gathered.

Boomer newspeople got into news embracing the very principled ideal of "journalism" to save the world. Xers, conversely, want to make a difference in their own local community - not the entire world.

But they still share the Boomers' attraction to the journalistic ideal. And so they become quickly disenchanted when they perceive TV newsrooms to be preaching bleeds-it-leads, or ambush, or "hype", while selling those journalistic principles - and thus the viewers - down the drain. Remember the X'er reporter above, who was ordered to ambush a news source: "This isn't why I got into this business".

GenX, often ignorantly labeled a generation without any special idealism, is more idealistic and principled than many older folks give them credit for.

SUMMARY.

Those 20-somethings in the TV newsroom are members of Generation X, which had a formative-years experience much different from those of prior generations. Thus, X'ers' core values and beliefs are much different from prior generations.

Job mobility, a fundamental distrust of employers, peer prestige, generation gaps, a desire for a balanced life, and many other career-related values and attitudes by this generation are recruiting and retention challenges that are not exclusive to the TV news department. But, with that said, this much seems clear:

In the eyes of 20-somethings, the TV news profession has lost the peer prestige and the perception of journalistic integrity and "making a positive difference" that attracted prior generations at the same age.

The content - story selection - of TV news is considered irrelevant to X'ers' own day-to-day lives. Its presented is viewed as gimmicky. And because X'ers have grown up with the media bombarding them with gimmicks and ploys to trick them into watching/listening/reading, they recoil against anything that isn't real and true, which is almost certainly why Coca Cola's news advertising slogan is "real" and Budweiser's slogan is "true".

The newsroom generation gap between X'ers and their older-generation bosses can cause X'er angst, and this generation prefers to quietly pack up and leave rather than confront the employer.

A significant number of them don't like unpredictable and all-consuming hours.

GenX feels, understandably so (and in my mind, rightly so) that it has been consistently misperceived by older generations. Contrary to the "slacker" label, they are willing to work very hard. They have high ideals, especially those attracted to a profession like journalism that is nothing but an ideal, a principle. But what a significant number of those GenX 20-somethings seem to find when they've gained some experience in the TV newsroom is this:

"This isn't why I got into this business."