![]() It already seemed odd bc the station obviously took a “play it safe, no hype” approach to weather. ![]() There was another night I was put in the 11 to talk about a minor tropical system near the Carolina coast with minimal impacts. “WELL I DIDNT SEE THE SCHEDULE” his tone never changed and he never apologized for him not checking the schedule. I remained calm and politely explained I had been scheduled for weather over a month ago. I got a VERY hostile phone call from the new interim ND asking where I was and why I wasn’t on the web. for my weather anchoring duties per the schedule sent out and approved weeks earlier like always. One Saturday I was getting myself ready to come in at 2:30 p.m. This served to let the newsroom know that on weekends I would not be able to work the web days ideas bc I would be coming in to do the nightside shift weather for the 6 and 11. The chief met did try to help me by giving me air time and sending a weather center schedule out to the newsroom weeks ahead of time. No one else could speak up and if you did you knew they were probably talking about you as well when you weren’t around. We had the two popular kids… and they were kids, 10 years younger than me, constantly talking bad about every employee who wasn’t around to hear them and laughing at each other’s quips. The chief had some fear and would have fits of anger when bad weather actually verified and hit the area. Even the amateur weather folks on my page called me out and knew what it was before it hit. ) Was told to publish a graphic titled “Derecho Not Likely” days before a derecho hit, causing one of our production members to come in crying from dodging downed trees and debris from the “no big deal ” derecho. (The thing is, the weather is somewhat dramatic at times. For the record there were several storms and events that ended up warranting the attention I tried to give them but were instead shot down bc my style was too dramatic. But as soon as he left there was an effort to punish any attempt of doing any sort of weather without stepping on the other meteorologists’ toes… to the point that any post I made on my own social media had to be pre approved by the chief met which was humiliating. The old news director told me about it the first time it happened and told me he showed them the record traffic live on our site and all of it weather related. That didn’t stop the anti-weather crew the EP and assistant EP from going to the ND behind my back and complaining that I wasn’t doing my job. During severe weather events we got record high views and clicks. ![]() I had made weather a huge part of our website and helped bridge the gap between the newsroom and the weather center. There was no communication of the new ways or ideas we were bringing to the web. I got in trouble when I didn’t do things the way they originally trained me but I was also being yelled at for doing things the old correct way. When I asked the new digital manager what was going on, she bit my head odd, yelling “IM MAKING AN EXECUTIVE DECISION!” Fair enough, but with the old ND gone no one really understood that she was throwing out the entire playbook and I was… well confused. I would get berated in the past for not publishing a VOSOT as a web story or publishing a packaged story in time. So I witnessed someone coming in and suddenly experimenting with their own ideas of what our jobs entailed. But when the new digital content manager was finally hired, she completely changed the way things were done. During the 4 months it took to.hire a new digital manager I alone kept the site up and running the way I was trained. After a year the digital.manager left and a new one was hired. I was trained a specific way, they had a very very specific way of what to publish and how to do it. The other 90% of the time I was hired to publish and edit news stories, converting them to newspaper type writing and getting the stories published to the web site. But not long after starting work there, I was asked to fill in on weather some already which I loved. I was hired as a web producer but with the understanding that I was a meteorologist at heart and was just wanting to get my foot back in the door until it came time for an opening in weather. Sinclair was coming in and I think they wanted out. After Bill Foy left, Randy Smith also left. While working for WSET this person experienced: I worked for interim ND Len Steven’s for a while but he was kind of a bully along with the rest of the two main producers in the newsroom.” “I worked for Bill Foy, who was a great guy and terrific news director.
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