The relationship between the news director and the creative services director is one of the most important in a local station’s newsroom, with editorial driving promotional content and vice versa.

If these two people get along, it can be like heaven on earth, but if not, things can quickly turn to hell.

At Thursday’s Station Summit, Marshall Hites, Tribune Broadcasting’s senior VP of creative services and marketing, led a panel composed of people in both roles to see how they manage their relationships and their newsrooms.

“When you have to mediate is when you know you’re in trouble,” said Graeme Newell, president of 602 Communications, who has traveled to many TV stations to consult and once worked at TV stations himself. “What I applaud with both of these stations is the idea of polite conversation. One of the most poisonous things you can do is show contention to members of your team.”

“The competition isn’t down the hallway, it’s really down the street. The idea of us fighting is ludicrous,” said Rick Snyder, CSD for Young’s WKRN Nashville.

Moreover, everything works more smoothly when news directors and creative services directors can play nicely together. “A plan that is not completely what you want to do and is done well by both of you will work much better than a plan that one of you likes and one of you hates.”

“The goal of the CSD is to be that coach. You can be the person who makes sure that they don’t forget marketing. You can be the person that is going to be an amazing wingperson, with whom you march arm and arm into the future. When that relationship isn’t there, you are dead. You can have the best plan in the world and it will not work.”

For better or for worse, one of the best ways to bond a news director with his or her creative services director is to have a “bad-ass general manager,” said Newell. That dynamic makes people say to each other “I’m going to have your back with that leader upstairs. We may have to lock ourselves in this room and fight it out but when we come out we are going to go to the boss with a single message.”

Once the relationship is in place, it’s a matter of everyone knowing their roles and responsibilities.

“Our shows have different goals,” said Matthew Zelkind, news director at WKRN. “It’s paramount for all of us to understand the goals for each show. It’s the CSD’s job to write that stuff to create the spots that promote those goals. My job is to get him really good visuals and give him information that’s relevant to each show.”

And while the two teams on the stage at Station Summit touted the value of their digital and social teams, Newell said effective digital promotion and content creation doesn’t really exist at most stations he visits.

“Having robust digital teams and plans in place is completely not the case at most stations I go to,” he said. “It’s the lie we live each day. We need to move those digital producers into positions with much more decision-making authority. Why don’t we have more digital producers embedded in the newsroom?”

Cube image courtesy of Image Group LA.

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