Louisiana Association of Broadcasters

WGNO-TV, the Nexstar station in New Orleans, is looking for a hands-on, aggressive, innovative, creative, and dynamic Assistant News Director.  We are home to Mardi Gras, The Final Four in 2022, The Super Bowl in 2025, College Football Playoffs, Jazz Fest, and dozens of other high-profile events.

The Assistant News Director will work closely with the News Director. The role will require building out a high impact team capable of producing new and expanded newscasts and local programming on WGNO (ABC), WNOL (CW) and our digital assets in the market.

Candidate must have a proven track record of creative producing, showcasing stories, owning the big stories, and a passion for weather. The successful candidate will have experience leading others and the ability to coach and grow a team.

Requirements:

Essential Duties & Responsibilities:
• The Assistant News Director assists the News Director with all aspects of news, weather and sports programming & production, and serves as the News Director in his/her absence.
• Assists the News Director with management of all aspects of the News Department.
• Assists with planning, staffing, training, and performance evaluations for the News Department.
• Consults on decisions regarding hiring, evaluation, promotion, and termination of employees.
• Develops news coverage strategy and executes that vision for the station and its website.
• Critiques newscasts daily to correct errors, improve coverage, and provide mentoring feedback to news staff.
• Assigns projects to staff and verifies that deadlines are being met.
• Ensures achievement of viewer ratings goals.
• Ensures achievement of digital goals.
• Determines programming and evaluation of equipment needs to produce quality programming.
• Responds to coverage questions.
• Lead a team that produces urgent newscasts in a fast-paced work environment.
• Coach and train a team of Producers and MMJs; support a positive work culture.
• Collaborate with Newscast Producers, Crews, Digital Producers, Editors, and the Assignment Desk to select and cover stories.
• Strong news judgement and working knowledge of current events and community issues.
• Produce and write as needed.
• Provide regular feedback and coaching on newscast with staff, both as a team and individually.
• Perform other duties as assigned.
• Rotate as weekend on-call manager.
• Coordinate schedules with News Director and other news department managers.

Requirements & Skills:
• Bachelor’s degree in Broadcast Journalism, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and work-related experience. Bachelor’s degree preferred; equivalent experience required.
• Excellent communication skills, both oral and written.
• Must be able to interact well with video journalists, anchors, videographers, news managers, production, and engineering staff.
• Supervisory experience preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to track and select trending news stories.
• Strong news judgment, journalistic integrity and understanding of viewer needs and expectations.
• Strong organizational skills and detail oriented.
• Ability to work in a rapid, fast-paced environment.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
Work Environment:
Deadline driven environment can be stressful. Must be willing and able to work all shifts, including nights, weekends, and holidays and be on call as needed.

Contact:
Apply online at: https://nexstar.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/nexstar