What TV journalists learned by working from home
Millions of people started working at home by late spring of 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic — including TV journalists.
Suddenly they were beaming into our living rooms from theirs, a situation that was strange at first but over time became kind of comforting. At least to those watching. And maybe to those oncamera, as well, once the technical challenges were met. At least we were still getting the news.
As things began to open up, many of those journalists marched back to the newsroom, leaving behind some nice lighting setups, flip-flops and easy access to snacks. But they took with them some lessons learned about working through unimaginable situations.
“I can tell you that working seven steps from the refrigerator was not the fantasy that I imagined it would have
been when I was 27 years old,” Cory McCloskey, the weather anchor for Fox 10 in Phoenix, said. “It was a little too easy to run over there and grab something to eat.”
There’s that, too.
Working from home ‘much harder’
It was a transition for everyone, and a
tough one. The difference with TV journalists is that they worked through the transition on the air, in front of whomever tuned in.
“It was so much harder to work from home, figuring out new technology, lighting, communication with the studio ...” April Warnecke, a meteorologist for “Good Morning Arizona” on 3TV, said. “But I think in the end it made us a stronger team.”
Warnecke’s husband, Mark
McClune, is a sports anchor for Arizona’s Family stations (3TV and CBS 5). Warnecke is back in the office — masked and distanced, but back — but McClune is still working from home, “tuning in for Cardinals or Diamondbacks press conferences from the laundry room,” Warnecke said.
“We’re lucky to work for the same company and understand each other’s challenges with all of this, but it will
never not seem completely odd to me to hear him asking a pro athlete questions from our living room.”
Odd, yes, but also efficient. That flexibility is what was so essential to making the whole setup work. When the situation demands it, you do what you must.
It’s ‘amazing what you can achieve while still wearing pajama bottoms’
“I think I had at least six devices going at once to make it all happen just on my end,” Krystle Henderson, a meteorologist for 12 News, said. “I really had to become self-sufficient and technologically savvy. I learned how to set up a remote studio, broadcast live from my phone and create and control my weather graphics from anywhere.” We adapt, in other words.
“It just shows you the technology at our fingertips and that we can still gather content and be a service to our community even if we are all remote,” Henderson said. “It’s also really amazing what you can achieve while still wearing pajama bottoms and fuzzy slippers.”
‘We need to make more of an effort to maintain a better work-life balance’
Iris Hermosillo, a meteorologist for ABC15 Mornings, found that the pandemic forced her to reevaluate some aspects of her life — and in a healthy way. Her husband also worked at home during the time she did. That had benefits.
“Working in TV news often means working unusual hours, so it’s easy to get into a routine of only seeing each other for an hour or two a day,” Hermosillo said. “So spending all of that extra time together while we were both working remotely was a reminder that we need to make more of an effort to maintain a better work-life balance, even now that we’re back to working in-studio (and) in the office.”
For Warnecke, being home with her husband had another benefit.
“I’m grateful to have been able to work from home when my kids were not in school at the beginning of this pandemic,” she said. “As a working parent, it would’ve been impossible to figure out how to home-school my kids while forecasting the weather from the station. It was still pretty darn hard from home!”
‘I was kind of making my own fun’
It’s interesting how the process evolved for different people.
“While we initially started with a simple setup that allowed me to access my weather graphics and to broadcast via a cellphone while sitting behind a desk, by the end I had a full greenscreen or chroma key in my home office,” Hermosillo said. “It was almost as if I was broadcasting from inside the studio.”
McCloskey went a different route. Literally.
“I was able to traipse around the neighborhood with my phone and broadcast from wherever I wanted,” he said. “I just started taking my phone out with me in the car. I would do my weather from all over the place.”
Producers weren’t sending him places, because there weren’t really places to go.
“I was kind of making my own fun,” he said.
McCloskey, like so many working at home, realized that while certain aspects of the setup were fine, something was missing.
‘I do better when I have some social interaction’
“I do miss the people,” he said. “Being on my own, essentially, except for whoever happened to be around the house, that was fine on a personal level. But as far as my job situation went … I really like to be out and mixing it up with people. I just like to wade in and see what happens. To be sort of lashed down like that is not as much fun for me.” Hermosillo agreed.
“I learned that I do better when I have some social interaction,” she said. “I’d describe myself as an ‘introverted extrovert.’ I’m not sure if that’s really a thing, but it’s the best way I can think to describe my personality.”
What that means, she said, is that she works fine by herself, and then gets to step in front of the camera “to exercise the extrovert part of my personality.”
But moving back to the newsroom, even with masks and distancing, was a revelation.
“I had gotten so caught up in the new routine of working remotely that I hadn’t realized how much I missed that social interaction,” she said. “It’s been nice to actually talk to my co-anchors from across the studio rather than just via text or through the camera.”