Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and the Newsroom

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

We spent the past few months, off and on, having a series of protracted meetings, demonstrations and conversations with a major US network news organization.

Which one does not matter, because in truth, they’re all in about the same place.

The relationship began when I wrote to the President of the network and suggested that it might be a good idea to talk.

He agreed, and that led to a series of meetings over there.

They told us that they were already well advanced in training their own people.

They had, in fact been doing this for two years already.

And how many VJs had their trained and fielded so far?

5.

But not all of them were doing it full time.

Fine.

We took them through the paces, took them to bootcamps we were running for other news operations, on and on and on.

They nodded and said they were impressed.

In the end, they said they admired all they saw, but they were going to do this ‘internally’.

Well, good luck and God speed.

A few years ago, I had a meeting with Les Moonves at CBS News.

He asked what I would do with their news operation.

I told him.

He said, ‘I understand this, but to do that would be to restructure the entire news organization’.

‘Yes it would’, I said.

‘I am not prepared to do that’, he responded.

‘You’re going to do it, now or later. But eventually you’re going to do it’.

The people who run the networks already know what has to be done.

The people just below them just can’t bring themselves to do it.

They keep hoping something will change. Somehow, through some miracle, things will get back to ‘the old days’.

The old days are dead.

And soon, so too will the network news operations be dead.

Just like the newspapers.

It’s hard for them to deal with all of this, but now, having done this for more than twenty years, I can see that there are stages that they have to pass through.

The first one is denial.

That’s one we are all familiar with.

Then comes anger.

Just go read the comments on B-roll.net.

After anger comes bargaining.

This is where we are with the latest round with the major network:

‘OK. We’ll train a few in house, just to be on the safe side.. OK? Satisfied?’

Next we’ll soon see depression at the TV news networks. You already see it at the newspapers.

The Washington Post? The LA Times? Even the once mighty NY Times? Anyone want to buy stock in any of those papers?

Anyone want to take a survey in the newsrooms?

Finally, we will come to acceptance.

But by that time, it is going to be too little, too late.

In 1969, Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross introduced the idea of the Five Stages of Grief in her book On Death and Dying.

As the news business dies, we can see that she knew far more than she realized.

The stages, it seems, are applicable to industries as well as people.