Television News Producer

Television News Producers are the people behind the Anchors on TV. If you’re a Television News Producer, you plan the way a news story will go, handling everything from putting together clips, to finding a Reporter to go on the scene. You also create the overall plan for the visual experience that is the news.

To be a Television News Producer, you’ll need to have a Journalist ’s nose for a story since you help find, report, and research the stories that appear on the news. You also need to be a good Writer, since you are sometimes the one making the script for the show. In the cases that you have a staff of Writers, you turn into the Editor, making changes and giving stories the OK to be read on air.

Then you manage the whole bunch of content that is queued to go on air, meaning you decide what order the stories will go in. Plus, within each story, you decide what clip will go where.

An example of putting clips together is when you watch the news and see the Reporter “on the scene” replace the Anchor in the studio. As the Producer you have the final say about what that order is. To do this well you need some technical knowledge, either so you can create that order yourself, or so you can see oversee the technical employees who create it.

That brings you to another role of yours, managing people. You work with Writers, technical support people and Anchors to create the best and smoothest running show possible. This requires great communication skills—there are a lot of people on a news set, and all look to you for direction.