knbc assignment desk

The Assignment Editor 2.0: More Collaboration, Newer Tools

Back in the late 1990s and early ’00s, when Cater Lee was a reporter for the likes of KNBC and KCAL in Los Angeles, the assignment desk was centrally located in the newsroom. Its editor likely spent extensive time across their day scrolling through police scanners, reading press releases and fielding tipster calls to identify news stories. From it emerged a dictation of Lee’s day.

Purveyors of the newsroom’s assignment desk today, however, are typically less head coach and more quarterback, fronting colorful offenses filled with audibles, option plays and other collaborative trickery that’s designed to always push the ball forward. In other words, story dispersal in a newsroom has increasingly become a team effort, with reporters and producers having more of a say in what makes it to broadcast. Digital technology has also chipped away at the relevance of many dinosaur-era tools assignment editors used to rely on so heavily.

But as the job changes, assignment editors remain a dedicated folk, dug into the frontlines of journalism’s war with mis- and disinformation, while doing their best to help generate broadcasts with wider-reaching community impact. Always, they’re relegated to behind-the-scenes grunt work, and rarely do they get their due.

Julie Wolfe

The capable assignment editor, she observes, will “know all the information”: facts to support a package’s viability, sources that a reporter can contact to round it out, and whether a story is worth any airtime to begin with.

A presence like that in a newsroom matches the significance of an engine in a car, as one assignment editor puts it. Wolfe says assignment editors are like “orchestral conductors,” while additional metaphors that float through interviews stem from human biology. One editor calls the assignment desk the newsroom’s brain; others liken the role’s import to that of the heart or central nervous system, for it’s the assignment editor who pumps data to the farthest reaches of the newsroom, which of course now stretches well beyond the walls of an office building.

Social’s Key Role

Along with an innate sense of what makes for a quality newscast, to effectively manage the assignment desk, editors need top-flight organizational and communication skills, just as they have for decades. These days, familiarity with the social media universe is of equal consequence.

“Twitter’s huge,” he says. “When it comes to breaking news, often we’ll see it on Twitter now before we hear it on police scanners, which is just incredible.”

Darren Whitehead, digital desk lead at another Tegna NBC affiliate, KUSA Denver, says Colorado police scanners are encrypted, but monitoring Twitter helps him pick up the slack.

“Most of the ways that the police departments and fire departments are communicating with us is they’re putting out [updates] on social media, and usually it’s not immediate, it’s well after something has happened,” Whitehead says. “We get calls from people in the community being, like, ‘What the hell is going on down the block from me?’ Then we have to call [the responsible agency], and then they tweet out to everyone — without calling us back — all the information.”

Assignment editors set up Tweet Deck channels, or Social News Desk dashboards, where they follow various government agencies, other news sources like the Associated Press and additional relevant accounts where prospective stories may pop up. Dataminr alerts help inform assignment editors, too; neighborhood-focused Reddit forums and community-based apps like Nextdoor can sometimes supply story ideas as well.

Then, there are community-related Facebook groups, which one assignment editor says she joins using a public profile associated with their news team position. Another longtime story assigner says she taps younger newsroom colleagues to examine Instagram, Snapchat and other social media platforms they might be more comfortable navigating through.

Scrutiny’s Imperative

Like in the past with press releases — though assignment editors still lift stories from those on occasion — they can’t take what’s written online at face value. The same can be said for what citizen tipsters tell the assignment editor over the phone or in emails, as well as what public information officers say.

“People ask me what the hell I do, and I always tell them, ‘Well, the assignment desk is usually ‘first response,’” Whitehead says. “You gotta sift through the bullshit.”

While they may have always prioritized backing up facts, with sources, data and other means, assignment editors in 2022 say there is an added emphasis on getting story facts unquestionably correct.

Jamila Elder

“There are some stations that report solely off of what they hear on the scanners. We are not that station,” says Jamila Elder, assignment editor at WRAL, Capitol Broadcasting’s NBC affiliate in Raleigh, N.C. “You dig deep, you reach out to your contacts and you wait until you get [your information] confirmed, even though your competition station may be reporting it. As an assignment editor that’s very frustrating because we’re very competitive; you want to get the information and you want to get it first, [but] we would rather wait and get it right, than to report it first and get it wrong.”

Experience Matters

In many cases, as one assignment editor puts it, newsies “fall into” their positions at the assignment desk. The experience they bring with them, often as a reporter or anchor, serves them well in the role.

WXIN-WTTV Indianapolis assignment desk personnel (l-r): Adam Bartels, Ruthanne Gordon, Tim O’Brien and Sabrina Adams. (Greg Wilkerson photo)

Prior to Ruthanne Gordon becoming senior planning manager for Nexstar’s WXIN (Fox)-WTTV (CBS) Indianapolis, she was an assignment editor for 33 years. Before that, she was a reporter and anchor for more than five years, bringing with her to the assignment desk an assortment of connections from her front-of-the-camera days that she continues to call upon. Her phone book has only ballooned bigger throughout her 45 years in news.

“I have quite a Rolodex,” Gordon says, “I think that’s what they wanted when I came to this position as senior planning manager.” Cops she first met doing stand-ups, she says, “are now the commanders here in town, so I’ve kept those cell numbers, and that’s where I have an advantage.”

Working as a journalist before manning the assignment desk also helps cultivate that vital instinct of what makes for a compelling newscast. However, the assignment desk is also a prime location for industry newbies to break in and learn — a lot — on the fly.

“You gotta pay your dues by working the weekends,” Elder says. “That was where I learned the most because you don’t have a lot of managers, so you have to make those on-the-spot decisions. So, I was able to make those mistakes on that weekend shift, but I was also able to learn from those mistakes and learn how to make good news decisions.”

“This is a great way of starting and learning,” Gordon says of the assignment desk gig. Calling it a way to “fast-track” those new to the industry, she adds: “You can jump off of this and go produce a show [or] jump in a truck and go do an interview.”

Kendra Gilbert, senior assignment editor at KING, had no experience in a TV newsroom before hopping into the assignment desk chair at a station in her home market of Fresno, Calif. Fresh out of college, she struggled to find work in print journalism, her focus of study in school. But that degree still meant she could sniff out a good story and, combining that sense with strong organizational and communication skills, she was confident she could fill the seat just fine.

Kendra Gilbert

She’s held an assignment editor position at one West Coast station or another for nine years running. She says to excel in the role one has to be comfortable working in “a fast-paced environment,” and have the ability to “turn on a dime” and “focus on one thing and switch to another.”

Collaboration Grows

Elder statesman Gordon says of the assignment editor job demands: “It keeps me young.” Both she and the more youthful Gilbert say the position has also become more collaborative in recent years.

“We do sort of have that gatekeeper role,” Gilbert says. Still, she continues, “there’s always this two-way exchange of information between the desk and the reporters.”

Assignment editors consider reporter strengths, areas of interest and experience when deciding in whose hands a story will be entrusted. But they also field pitches from reporters and engage in broad conversations about the day’s items of interest with various members of the team.

“Nobody runs on their own in here; we have a tight-knit group [and] we back each other up,” Gordon says of the group at her Nexstar stations. “If we have spot news … we all jump in, and that’s the key to a really good assignment desk. You give and take, and you have that flexibility that at the end of the day, we’ve covered it, we’ve got it, we’ve got angles that nobody else has thought of.”

Not only does the team effort behind story assignment potentially add layers and depth to an eventual package, but it reinforces the integrity of the news it delivers across an entire broadcast, day in, day out.

In the constant struggle to identify mis- and disinformation, while also presenting stories in appropriate context, “that is where a collective, collaborative culture of a newsroom saves you,” KING’s Wolfe says. “If you are, as a team, having editorial checks, conversations, diverse viewpoints, bringing different people in, then you can catch those things and catch yourself and find the right story.

“That’s why I think having a diverse newsroom is so key, because different people are going to see different things and think about different questions and weigh that story against their own experience …. Whether it’s a big newsroom or a small newsroom, getting people together to talk about stories is just really, really important.” she says.

Decentralized Approach

One would be hard-pressed to find a more profound example of the increasingly collaborative nature the assignment editor’s job has assumed over the past handful of years than the organizational structure at Lee’s Southern California Spectrum News channel.

In an effort to cover the market’s five counties, across a sprawling megalopolis, her channel employs an assignment editor manager and four individual assignment editors, each of whom are primarily stationed in different parts of the region: north, south, east and west. They report to the station’s office in El Segundo once per week on a rotating basis, but otherwise they’re out in the field, working closely with reporters as they scour for stories and continually develop relationships with sources.

Lee says the more decentralized arrangement allows for her newsroom to be less “reactive” — as others have been historically — and more “proactive,” engaging in “enterprise storytelling.”

“Of course, we still react, because there’s breaking news,” Lee says, “but when there is real enterprise storytelling, you’re working in advance, working your sources and your community and really becoming experts on the ground, and it’s been an amazing collaboration.

“That’s what has gotten lost, is the idea that, really, journalists should have their ears on the ground, they should be developing beats and sources, and they should be working with assignment editors — story planners — to figure out the best way to tell those stories together,” she says. “It’s been a really exciting team approach to newsgathering.”

Seeking Deeper Impact

Whether they’ve been part of an experiment in cutting-edge structural invention or traditionally clock into the newsroom and sit at a stationary desk throughout their shift, assignment editors bear the brunt of the responsibility to shuttle broadcasts away from coverage of police blotter-discovered stories, such as shootings, robberies, and fires. Today’s consumers are craving more from their TV news, and stories with farther-reaching impact have to be sought out by those tasked with assigning them to reporters.

“We definitely are trying to be mindful of stories that are affecting more people in our community,” says WRAL’s Elder. “Gone are the days of ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’ That was old school.”

Still, it’s not entirely true that crime and property destruction should completely be dismissed. “When it comes to your family’s safety, the safety of your business, being able to walk down the sidewalk in your city, that is super-relevant to our viewers,” Wolfe says. “The idea that crime is not relevant is the wrong approach. The right approach is: How do we add information and context? How do we stand for truth and hold people accountable? What does the data tell us about that crime? That’s where the impactful stories are.”

Weighing all these factors in choosing stories, maintaining a constantly updated contact database with identifying tags, ensuring that reports are factually concrete and so many other responsibilities, the assignment editor job is certainly not for everybody. But those who do it well can honorably take tremendous pride in their work, which, if nothing else, is undeniably relentless.

“You should never be bored on the assignment desk,” KING’s Gilbert says. “It’s not a place where you can complete one task and then kick back and say, ‘I’ve done it for the day.’ You should always be busy.”

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Corrie Harding says:

March 8, 2022 at 9:11 am

Great write up. I would add one piece of perspective on the ‘parts of the body’ metaphor. In my experience, the Assignment Desk can be the hands reaching out in the dark, or the ears listening for the important ‘sounds’ or the ‘eyes’ looking toward the horizon. All in addition to being part of ‘the brain.’ Ruthanne nailed it. The key is that a video based, broadcast/digital newsroom must have a desk, producers, reporters, and managers that act in a symbiotic relationship. Each must be able to quickly shift based on the news department’s overall vision, and always support each other.

LeCouteur says:

June 13, 2022 at 9:24 am

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Annenberg’s mega story behind its Media Center Assignment Desk

Freelance assignment desk editor, jacki cisneros went from finding the news to becoming the news..

Photo by Jameela Hammond

The names Gilbert & Jacki Cisneros are displayed on the Annenberg Media Center assignment desk. On today’s Trojan Tales, Jameela Hammond reveals the backstory.

JACKI CISNEROS: I feel like in actuality, I may have put that out there in the universe.

That’s Jacki Cisneros. Her name is on the Annenberg Media Center assignment desk. Back in 2010, I worked with her on the assignment desk at KNBC. We worked the dreaded overnight shift.

DAVID REESE: The desk is where all the information comes into a newsroom.

That’s David Reese, former KNBC assignment desk manager.

REESE: Whether it be from the public, or from the police, or from the wire services or whatever, we are 99% of the time, the first to know something’s going on.

David has remained friends with Jacki since we all worked together at the ranch (our nickname for Channel 4 news). Jacki was a freelancer, so she only got work when the station needed her.

CISNEROS: You’re always thinking about, you know, the next the next week or the next gig… and so there’s some anxiety that goes with that.

REESE: I was not budgeted to have her on the desk, but she needed to eat, so I told her, okay, I’m going to schedule you but I’m going to schedule overnights. So I’m gonna hide you on the desk in plain sight on the overnight shift. You know, Jacki is a good person. And, you know, her husband had lost his job recently.

Adjusting to the overnight shift meant going to bed earlier, which turned into figuring out what she and her husband would have for dinner...

CISNEROS: He didn’t want Kentucky Fried Chicken. And then I was like, “Well, then you’re on your own because I’m going to bed. I’m getting my Kentucky Fried Chicken and then going to bed. I’m tired. I gotta go to sleep.”

Gilbert decided on L&L Hawaiian Barbecue, and while he was there, he bought 10 lottery quick picks. The next morning, Jacki got to work 30 minutes late. Everyone in the newsroom was joking that she’d won the jackpot because the winning numbers came from her hometown.

CISNEROS: I’m the only one that lives in Pico Rivera and I have been around and worked at three TV stations at that point, like every... People knew. I lived in Pico Rivera.

Jacki learned that the winning number came from L&L Hawaiian Barbecue… and it dawned on her that when she woke in the middle of the night that she remembered finding teriyaki sauce and rice from Gilbert’s dinner on the counter.

CISNEROS: So I called him at now, what, 2:45 in the morning and said, “Where’d you get? Where’d you... Where’d you go for dinner?”

She told Gilbert to find the lottery tickets.

CISNEROS: First I tell him the mega number, which was eight. I always remember eight the rest of numbers. I don’t remember so much, but I remember the eight. And he goes, “Okay, I’ve got two of them with eight.” So then I start reading the numbers, and he kept going, “Uh huh. Uh huh.”

Jacki continued to read the numbers to Gilbert as the newsroom watched her in anticipation.

CISNEROS: Finally, I said, all the numbers, and he’s like, “I think we won.”

They won a whopping 266 million dollars! One of the first things they did with their winnings was to establish the Gilbert and Jacki Cisneros foundation. Its goal is to increase the education level of Latino students.

CISNEROS: That has been transformational for a whole family. And it’s awesome to see. I’m going to get all teary eyed because it’s really awesome to see. And that will be impactful, but not just them and their siblings, but then their kids.

They also donated to each of their Alma Maters. Jacki went from being in the first Annenberg graduating class to now contributing a $500,000 donation to get their names on the centerpiece of the newsroom — the assignment desk.

CISNEROS: I felt like it was so perfect like this. I went to SC, and I’m gonna be in the middle of it. And that’s, you know, I can only afford this I can only afford to have it named after me because I won as an assignment editor.

Jacki continues her work as president of the Gilbert and Jacki Cisneros foundation. As for her husband, he is now former congressman Gil Cisneros of California’s 39th district.

Working with Jacki, she often wished she would win the lotto. This just goes to show that dreams do come true.

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Career Spotlight: Assignment Editor

By NBCU Academy

What does an assignment editor do? A longtime assignment manager for NBC4 Washington shares how his team covers breaking news.

At the heart of every newsroom is an assignment desk, where assignment editors figure out what news stories to cover around the clock. They make constant phone calls, listen to police radios and sift through emails to get news tips and background information from officials and the public. They contribute to editorial meetings with reporters, editors and producers. But breaking news can rewrite coverage plans at any point of the day.  

Charlie Bragale, an assignment manager who has worked at WRC-TV in Washington since 1988, has seen many changes in technology , but his assignment desk has always been crucial to newsgathering. He calls his assignment editors “off-air reporters,” talking to sources and conveying updates to news crews and production staff.  

“I compare the assignment editor to a flight controller. I’m trying to land five 747s, a couple of A380s and a couple 737s in a blinding rainstorm,” Bragale said. “100% of my day is talking on the phone, networking with people, trying to get people to talk to me and check in.” 

Bragale talks about the work of an assignment editor in the video above and shares more remarks below.  

What are some tips to being a good assignment editor?

Be curious, be a risk taker and instinctively know what you’re doing right. You see something, go chase after it. We don’t run away from bad news or good news — we run towards everything. 

Success is collaborating with everybody.  We’re just a cog in the wheels of what we do every day. Collaboration is key.  

Your workspace is surrounded by walkie-talkies tuned in to a bunch of police and emergency medical scanners. Isn’t it confusing to listen to all that at once?

Don’t be intimidated by this. This is just white noise. Just listen for keywords, the intensity in the voice, the impact of the event. 

What are some memorable stories you worked on?

I covered a guy who pulled out an AR-15 and shot up the front of the White House [in October 1994] — that was a [Saturday] afternoon, we were running AFC football.  

The phone rings, a guy with a heavy accent says, “Do you speak Portuguese?” And I was like, “Yes, I’m from Brazil.” A Brazilian tourist, videotaping the White House with his family, captured the moment that guy shot at the White House. Back then, we had no cellphones, so I sent a courier to pick him up and look at the video. One of my colleagues ran over, grabbed the video and took it downstairs. They broke into AFC football to show the guy shooting the White House — that’s how important it was.  

[On 9/11,] we knew about the planes that struck the World Trade Center. But then I heard a plane hit the Pentagon. I heard that officer, the chill in his voice — we knew it was [a related attack]. We were ready, directing people everywhere, because we knew Washington.

You’ve worked at the same assignment desk for 36 years. What keeps you going?

This is gonna sound mushy, but I grew up here in Washington, two blocks from the TV station. As a child riding my bike through this park, past Channel 4 to the Catholic school on Massachusetts Avenue, I would always tell my brothers, “One day, I’m going to work at that place.” To represent the community and work at this incredible organization, in my job which I love, is an honor. 

Gallery: Scenes from Charlie Bragale’s Career

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Local News Close-Up: L.A. News Battle Begins Before Sunrise

Stations use all available dayparts, platforms to connect with Angelenos

Mornings are a massive priority in the Los Angeles TV scene. In January, KCAL launched a 4 a.m. to 11 a.m. monster block , matching the hours KTTV is live on weekday mornings. KTLA does them one better, or perhaps two, with the 4-11 a.m. block and local news continuing until 2 p.m. 

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The morning program is such a focus at KCBS-KCAL that the stations hired a second news director, Matt Goldberg, just to manage that daypart. “It’s a new structure,” Joel Vilmenay, KCBS-KCAL president and general manager , said. “I don’t know if there’s one like it anywhere else in the country.”

Nielsen’s No. 2 DMA features ABC-owned KABC, CBS-owned KCBS-KCAL, NBCUniversal-owned KNBC and Telemundo station KVEA, Fox-owned KTTV and KCOP, Nexstar Media Group’s The CW station KTLA, and Univision’s KMEX, KFTR and three radio stations. 

The market’s primary pay TV operator is Spectrum. 

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The writers and actors strikes are over, which means many of the businesses that support TV and film production, including restaurants, hotels and dry cleaners, are seeing business on the uptick. The I-10 freeway reopened much earlier than expected after the horrific blazes that struck it November 11. 

Still, the general managers said the local economy is, like Los Angeles’s infamous traffic, stop and start. “It’s hard to tell what the new normal is,” Drafs said. 

In November, KTLA won the 6 a.m. races in both households and viewers 25-54, per Nielsen, with KABC in second in both and KMEX in third. KABC, known as ABC7, won 5 p.m. households and KVEA won the demo race. KMEX took both titles at 6 p.m. KCAL won both 10 p.m. contests, with KTLA in second and KTTV in third. 

At 11 p.m., KABC won households with 100,300, while KMEX scored 91,300, KNBC 58,000, KVEA 55,000, KCBS 51,500 and KTLA at 35,300. In the 11 p.m. demo, KMEX had 70,200, KVEA 34,700, KABC 26,800, KTLA 17,500, KNBC at 13,500 and KCBS at 12,200, according to a station source familiar with the numbers. 

Cheryl Kunin Fair is ABC7 president/general manager and Pam Chen is VP/news director. “In front of and behind the camera, we have stability,” Chen said. “We are experienced in this market, and we reflect the audiences we serve.”

GMs on the Move

Steve Carlston became senior VP and general manager at KTTV-KCOP (known as Fox 11 and Fox 11 Plus, respectively) just over a year ago, after 11 years running KNBC. Carlston referred to “a big palette to paint on” in terms of the Fox stations’ local presence. 

Bobbi Gearhart joined as VP/news director in June . She said her top priority as she joined the station was Good Day LA . “We have incredibly authentic anchors that are super-relatable,” she said. “We set them up to be themselves.”

Earlier this year, Brooke Thomas and Bob DeCastro began anchoring Good Day LA from 4 to 6 a.m., Melvin Robert and Jennifer Lahmers from 6 to 9 a.m. and Araksya Karapetyan and Sandra Endo are on 9-11 a.m. 

“It’s a great place to wake up, shake up the day, and get things going in a positive way,” Carlston said. 

He mentioned a new lineup coming to KCOP in the new year, and KTTV doing a fully local version of the 11 p.m. West Coast Wrap show it currently shares with KTVU San Francisco. 

‘FAST’ Forward

Todd Mokhtari took over as KNBC-KVEA president/general manager in 2022. He’d been news director there from 2012 to 2019. A major focus is FAST channels, one for KNBC and a regional one for Telemundo in California. There are unique newscasts in the 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. slots on KNBC’s channel. “Expect us to start doing more,” Mokhtari said. 

KNBC debuted a 3 p.m. news last year, when The Ellen DeGeneres Show went off the air . Annabelle Sedano anchors. The station has the live feed of NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt at 3:30 p.m. and on delay at 6:30 p.m. 

In May, Marina Perelman was named KNBC VP of news , and Miguel Gaytán took on the role at KVEA. 

Mokhtari spoke of the combo “taking advantage of what no one else can do — attract a Hispanic and English-speaking audience. When you combine the two stations into one, you really see the power of it.”

Vilmenay started at KCBS-KCAL in October 2021. Mike Dello Stritto was named VP/news director in 2022, and Matt Goldberg started as VP/news director, with oversight of the morning show , in September. 

Dello Stritto incorporated the assignment desk editors into newscasts. Mark Liu appears in the morning show and Mike Rogers in the evenings, discussing stories with anchors. Vilmenay mentioned their “depth of knowledge and ability to report and convey information on the air.”

Fully 33 staffers have been hired at KCBS-KCAL over the past year, the bulk of them on the morning show. That includes Jamie Yuccas and Rudabeh Shahbazi , who anchor 7-10 a.m. 

KCAL also brought back NHL action, with a half-dozen Los Angeles Kings games on its air for the first time in 24 years. “It’s exciting for our team,” Vilmenay said. 

KTLA is local from 4 a.m. until 7:30 p.m. weekdays, those hours stocked with local news, except the 2-3 p.m. Off the Clock , hosted by Megan Henderson, Chris Schauble and Henry DiCarlo, and 7 p.m. show L.A. Unscripted . “It’s a show about what makes Los Angeles, Los Angeles,” said Drafs. “If you live in Los Angeles and want to know everything that’s great and cool, that’s what L.A. Unscripted should do for you.”

Erica Hill-Rodriguez came on as KTLA news director in May. 

Syndication finally appears on the station when Two and a Half Men rolls at 7:30 p.m. 

Diverse Audiences

In October, KMEX brought back the Posible L.A. Entrepreneurship Summit for the first time since the pandemic. “We provided tools and resources for Latinos to succeed as entrepreneurs, either starting a new business or growing existing ones,” said Veronika Moroian, president/general manager, Univision Los Angeles.

KABC contributed to the ABC group’s Our America: Unforgettable project on Alzheimer’s disease, and launched abc7.com/espanol to better connect with the diverse population in Los Angeles. Chen called it “an example of how ABC7 is evolving in spaces where our audiences are.”

That diversity is what the general managers mention when asked what they like most about Los Angeles. “It’s a melting pot of people you just don’t get anywhere else in the world,” Carlston said. 

The sunny skies come in second. “The weather makes up for everything,” Vilmenay said. “It even makes up for the traffic.”

They also like the frenetic pace of the news game in town, and how local news often becomes national news. “You’re competing with the best in the business when you are here,” said Drafs. “And when you compete against the best, you get better.”   

Michael Malone, senior content producer at B+C / Multichannel News , covers network programming, including entertainment, news and sports on broadcast, cable and streaming; and local broadcast television. He hosts the podcasts Busted Pilot , about what’s new in television, and Series Business , a chat with the creator of a new program, and writes the column “The Watchman.” He joined B+C in 2005. His journalism has also appeared in The New York Times , The Philadelphia Inquirer , Playboy and New York magazine.

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