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Sometimes, life sends a news director a simple but powerful message: Time out.

In the past year, three news directors were sidelined by serious health issues. It led them to rethink their approach to newsroom leadership, delegation of duties and work–life balance. If you wonder whether your priorities are in order, pay attention to the lessons they share.

WABC-TV's Kenny Plotnik is a feisty New York guy; so passionate about news that you might call him driven. But a heart attack and subsequent heart surgery late last year now drive him in a different direction. After nine weeks away from the newsroom, he admits, "I can't go back and be the same person." Not after a second chance at life at age 52.

Plotnik now spends more time on big-picture issues: the future direction of the newsroom -- from talent to technology. He's delegating more to his managers, who performed so well in his absence.

Most of all, he says, he is managing stress. When frustrated, he tries to replace red-in-the-face venting with a deep breath and a mental step backward. "I really love my job and want to be around for a long time."

Kenny Plotnik

Plotnik won't lose his edge, though. He'll always thrive on adrenaline, which, he says, "is what gives you the energy, the love, the passion. Stress management is dealing with it in a way that doesn't kill you."

Polly Van Doren-Orr's stress came from a long-standing struggle with depression. The news director at KOLR-TV and KSFX-TV in Springfield, Mo., says, "People have this impression of me as pretty laid back and un-flappable in the face of adversity." But last year, medication for her depression produced terrible side effects. The insomnia, panic and profound sadness she suffered "kicked me into journalist mode," she says. She researched her symptoms and concluded she needed inpatient psychiatric care.

Van Doren-Orr had complete support from her [general manager]. She was candid with her staff, writing to them from the hospital.

During her nine-day hospitalization, she was diagnosed as diabetic. A doctor told her that if she didn't slow down, she'd be dead in 10 years. She took a month off work, making her health a priority: losing weight, lowering her blood sugar and exercising.

Polly Van Doren-Orr

She kept in touch with the newsroom, not to be a decision-maker, but to stay in the loop. She stopped in, "just to let them see me. To say, 'I'm going to be OK. I love you guys.' "

She has reason to love them. Their success in running the newsroom was her tonic. "Had I not had the support system and the brilliant people with whom I work each day, it would have exacerbated my feelings of sadness."

Van Doren-Orr knows that people are sometimes reluctant to reveal mental health issues, fearing they'll be stigmatized. Her greater fear is that people won't get the help they need. She's available to anyone who wants to talk about depression.

Last year, Christine Riser Kopidlansky, news director of WJHL-TV in Johnson City, Tenn., was often tired, suffered strange pains and questioned why her weight was stable but her pants wouldn't fit at the waist. The answer: two benign but troubling growths in her abdomen -- a softball-sized ovarian cyst and uterine fibroid tumor.

Months of treatment included injections and surgery, followed by a slow recovery. Christine prepared her managers, telling them, "I'm going to teach you all the things I try not to bother you with." Things like payroll, reports, supplies, budget preparation, yearly calendar and sweeps planning.

Christine Riser Kopidlansky

Delegating frightened her. She wondered, "Is this going to prove that someone else can do everything that I do -- and better?" During her seven-week absence, her managers did it all, including a big hurricane-relief telethon.

On her return, she thanked them, adding, "Here's your reward. You get to keep doing a lot of those things." She gave up the control she once coveted. "How frustrating it must have been to be a manager I didn't turn things over to," she says. She's now using her new-found time for longer-range planning, staff coaching and multimedia/convergence projects.

There's more. The doctors told the 35-year-old news director that despite her ordeal, she should be able to have children, something she once wasn't sure she could balance with her job. But now, she says, "I'm no longer looking at it anymore as you have to quit if you get pregnant." Her new approach to leadership includes balance in her life.

Like Plotnik and Van Doren-Orr, she now advises fellow news directors: Tend to your health, reassess your work habits and "let other people shine."

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This article was originally published in the April 2006 issue of Communicator, the monthly magazine of the Radio-Television News Directors Association. It has been reprinted with permission.

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