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Despite the many professional rewards and personal gratification, working as a journalist can be a very demanding job. Tight deadlines, heavy workloads, and the inherent exposure to human suffering and natural disasters contribute to a profession with one of the highest burnout rates. Matthew Carluccio, an award-winning Executive Producer at NBC, has spent three decades managing broadcast news production. This includes production roles on Dateline NBC, Sunday Today with Willie Geist, and several NBC News Specials. He has learned firsthand that managing stress is crucial to a healthy work/life balance and can reduce emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion.
According to the American Press Institute (API), 70% of journalists have experienced work-related burnout. The progression from thriving to surviving, and from struggling to crisis, can occur relatively quickly compared to other occupations. Carluccio believes that in fast-paced newsrooms, it is critical to balance stress. But first, you need to recognize the situation, identify the causes, and assess what you need to do to regain a healthy pace at work, at play, and at home.
Recognizing the signs of occupational stress
One sign of occupational stress is feeling consistently drained, emotionally and mentally. The tension may be due to covering traumatic events at work or an inability to disconnect when off the job. Often, the first signs of workplace overload are a shorter temper with coworkers or irritability with friends and family. The symptoms can worsen when journalists are assigned higher workloads and unrealistic deadlines.
More commonly, Matthew Carluccio has observed workplace stress in subtler forms. The signs may include an inability to concentrate, a loss of creative thinking, or a sense of dread or anxiety when the employee thinks about new assignments. It is when stress becomes unmanageable that journalists need to guard against self-sabotaging behaviors such as increased alcohol use or leaving the profession entirely.
Identify your workplace stressors.
Being aware that you need to handle the stress in the newsroom better doesn’t help if you can’t identify the stressors. Most journalists have a passion for their work. But, this good career mentality can lead to perfectionism, not setting appropriate work/life boundaries, or working even harder for bylines, promotions, or industry recognition. If you’re going to reset your work/home quality of life, you’ll need to let go of approval-seeking or other professional validations first.
Recognition and advancement are not requirements for a successful career in journalism – especially at the expense of your health. Each person must identify the workplace factors that may be driving them to work constantly in high gear. While deadlines, travel assignments, and a high-stress office environment may be part and parcel of the job, be creative in ways to lighten your load – including having a conversation with management before things spiral out of control.
Regain balance with healthy career goals.
To reestablish life balance as a journalist, seek out sufficient support to ensure you can stay true to both what you value and what you do day-to-day. In the media industry, there are many challenges beyond the fast pace of workflows. Adapting to new technologies, variable pay scales, and the ever-changing industry standards are just a few. While you can’t change the organization you work for, you can ask for support on the job and at home.
Matthew Carluccio suggests that if journalistic burnout is on the horizon, then an assessment of your career goals may be necessary. Ask to be reassigned to stories with longer lead time (more research-heavy) and/or extended deadlines (a slower pace). Promote a culture of teamwork instead of competition among your coworkers. And never discount management’s willingness to listen. Avoid the water-cooler naysayers and speak with a supervisor about how you can maintain both a productive work life and a healthy home life.