Women Move Up in TV Newsrooms   

But it's not certain that many of them will make it to the top.

More women than ever are taking over the management of local television newsrooms, but this trend doesn't mean female news executives have as much power in the business as men do.

"We have a long, long way to go before we dominate newsrooms," says Joyce Reed, news director at KWTV in Oklahoma City. "But we've come a long way since 1976 when I was the only girl in the newsroom.''

Reed is one of the most experienced women news directors today. She has been running newsrooms for nearly 15 years in Springfield, Missouri, El Paso, Richmond and Kansas City. Surveys continue to show an increasing number of women following Reed's trail and moving into supervisory positions as news directors, assistant news directors, executive producers, newscast producers and assignment editors.

A study by Ball State University for the Radio-Television News Directors Foundation reported in August that 17 percent of the nation's local TV news directors are women and that 41 percent of newsroom middle management also are women.

Barbara Frye, director of talent placement services for consultant Frank N. Magid Associates, listed 70 women news directors (or 16 percent) in the top 100 markets at end of the summer. That's a 5 percent increase in less than a year, a figure that surprised Frye.

"I think what's caused that number to jump is there's been a lot of movement and expansion in the past year-and-a-half or so, where the demand [for news directors] has outweighed the supply,'' she says. "A lot of those openings have been filled by assistant news directors or executive producers, and a lot of those people are women. There's also been an incredible number of news directors [mostly male] who go on to be general managers in the past two years, something like 39 or 40, and that has left huge holes that also had to be filled. So, out of necessity, women have been moving up.''

That's what happened in New York, where three women who had been assistant news directors were promoted at their stations over the past year. In some cities, such as Oklahoma City and Birmingham, Alabama, the majority of the news directors in the market are women.

ýith more women than men continuing to enter the TV news profession and attaining management responsibilities, one could conclude – as the Ball State/ RTNDF survey did – that a lot of women "are poised to move into the top positions in the broadcast news industry.''

Not necessarily so, say some women news directors. "There are a lot of things that will affect whether a majority of the top management positions will be held by women,'' says Marci Burdick of KYTV in Springfield, Missouri, who has been a news director since 1985. "How long will women stay in the profession, for example, and will the speed with which they are now being promoted continue?''

Joan Barrett, who got her first news director job two-and-a-half years ago at KPNX in Phoenix, says the rate of the upward movement could slow if more men become producers of daily newscasts. "Producing puts you quickly on a management track, and you can now find more women producers than men,'' Barrett says. "If that changes, it will definitely affect the future job prospects for those women.''

But for many women news directors, the climb up the ladder has been a long one. It took Willy Walker 17 years to work her way through producing positions in Columbus, Baltimore and Washington before getting her first news director job a year ago at WBMG in Birmingham.

"This is still a man's business,'' Walker says. "Men are chosen with a lot less scrutiny. Women are checked and double-checked and triple-checked. Men also tend to land on their feet a lot more quickly if they fail.''

Walker, an African American, says it is even more difficult for minority women. "There are very few of us,'' she says. "Women and especially minorities just don't get the respect or the support that men do in this role.''

Burdick also sees a double standard. "I get a lot of calls to assess my interest in jobs [in bigger markets],'' she says, "and some are just absolutely transparent. Many of them are strictly for EEO reports. I remember one in particular last year where I was asked a question like whether my husband could move with me. This was clearly a question that would not be asked of a man, even if it was legal to ask in the first place.''

If the percentage of women executives in the newsroom continues to increase, one may logically presume there also will be more women moving further up the station management chain to general manager. "But that may not necessarily be true," says Barrett. "When you think about glass ceilings," she says, "I think that is where the real glass ceiling in the industry is – for news directors trying to become general managers.'' l