Media People

As creator of The Real World and Road Rules and producer of Keeping Up With The Kardashians and Project Runway, Jonathan Murray gets asked one question an awful lot:

How do I get a job in reality TV?

In mediabistro.com’s latest So What Do You Do? interview, Murray said it’s all about getting that first gig — any gig — in the business.

“I think we hire 20 to 30 young people each year to start out as PAs and loggers and all these different entry-level jobs. And I always tell them that you really need to work in it to understand it. Get a good liberal arts education,” he explained. “I’m always looking for people who think well, who are curious, who can write well, who are well-read, who understand story, and then we can teach them most of the rest of the stuff as a company.”

Murray also discussed how he was able to get MTV to take a chance on the genre and whether Kim Kardashian‘s 72-day marriage was really a sham for the cameras. Read the full interview.

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

Women still only make up a tiny fraction of the total number of CEOs, so what does it take to reach that executive level?

“I actually think it’s a lot easier to do than people realize, but it’s about making choices,” trendspotter Marian Salzman, CEO of Euro RSCG Worldwide PR North America, said in mediabistro.com’s So What Do You Do? interview.

“And I think men tend to be more prepared to make the choices. You have to choose to delay your family plans well into your 30′s. You have to be prepared to live on at least three continents early in your career. And that means that someone’s career is going to come first, and someone’s career is going to have to come second… And I think if you’re going to be comfortable with that, that’s fine.”

For more on how Salzman jumped from advertising to PR and why she doesn’t believe in physical offices, read the full interview.

Like this should have surprised you at all. The “Fox Mole,” an anonymous commentator posting to Gawker about what really goes on inside Fox News.

In the inaugural post on Tuesday, the Mole asked, rhetorically, “Why not just leave Fox News?” “I am leaving. Sooner rather than later, I’m guessing,” he wrote.

Barely 24 hours later, Joe Muto was unmasked and out of a job. “Two nice gentlemen from security escorted me to my desk to pack up my stuff, and it was pretty obvious at that point that I would not be setting foot back into 1211 Avenue of the Americas again.”

Somebody was able to figure out that someone, logged into Fox’s systems as Muto, accessed the videos that appeared on Gawker.com. That made him suspect number one. Lesson: Don’t whistleblow using anything on company computers, ever.

Since then, Gawker has received a legal threat from Fox News lawyers telling the site not to publish any photos or video “that have been unlawfully obtained by or from Joe Muto” and published a photo of a young Bill O’Reilly on a boat with a topless lady Stay classy, everyone.

Tim Armstrong has signed a contract that keeps him at AOL through 2016, Citybiznews reports.

Under the contract, he’ll get a base salary of $1 million plus a bonus of 200% of his base.

That’s about the same as he received in previous years, though the new contract does provide fewer benefits (like a reduction in severance if he were to be fired and the elimination of supplemental life insurance benefits).

Two new anchors have been hired at KVOA, the Tucson-area NBC affiliate.

TVNewsCheck reports that Rebecca Taylor (pictured) is rejoining KVOA after a two-year stint working as business manager for Christian Dior. She will co-anchor the weekend newscasts and report during the week.

Allison Alexander will anchor KVOA’s noon and 4 p.m. newscasts. She was previously morning news anchor at KTVK Phoenix, weekend anchor at KGUN Tucson, and also worked at WLNE Providence, R.I.; WOIO Cleveland; KSLA Shreveport, La.; and KTEN Sherman, Texas.

Rob Malda, who founded geek news site Slashdot in 1997, has joined the Washington Post as chief strategist and editor-at-large at Washington Post Labs.

He resigned from Slashdot in August and announced the new move this morning, saying that after three months of relaxing, “my wife [was] telling me that it was time to get out of her house.”

At the Post, he’ll be working with editorial folks on existing projects (like Trove and Social Reader) and creating new ones.

“Don Graham is trying to accomplish something that is a bit of a cliche these days: A startup inside an established corporation. A group that can exist at a nexus between newspapers, websites, cable networks, and TV stations and think about the big picture and the future without the normal burdens associated with a business operating at a large scale,” Malda wrote. “I’m hoping to learn as much as I can from the journalists at the Post, and work to in turn provide them with tools to help them better connect with their audience, and at the same time help that audience to better connect with each other. I see a future that blends the created, the curated and the algorithm in new ways that benefits both active and passive information consumers. It’s a mouthful, but it’s important work, and it’s being done at the WaPo Labs.”

(h/t Jim Romenesko)

KXAS Dallas is launching a new investigative team and adding “significant resources” to its morning news coverage, TVNewsCheck reports.

Scott Friedman will lead a team that will include a producer, researcher and photographer.

“This is an investigative reporter’s dream, having the support and the resources to track down and report stories that can really make a difference for all of us who live here,” he told TVNewsCheck.

The NBC-owned station has recently renewed the contracts of key talent as well as making new hires, TVNewsCheck says. Deborah Ferguson, who has worked for KXAS for 20 years, recently renewed her contract, and the station has recently hired Keaton Fox, Samantha Davies, Ben Russell, Kendra Lyn and Tim Livingston.

Former New York Times CEO Janet Robinson’s multimillion-dollar severance package included a $4.5 million payment for a one-year consulting gig.

Footnoted.com has now dug into the numbers and learned that the consulting contract states that she won’t be “required to provide more than 15 hours of such services or assistance in any month.”

The contract doesn’t stipulate a minimum amount of work. “So if the Times never calls Robinson, she simply gets the $4.5 million. If it does call her and she ends up consulting for 15 hours a month, that’s an effective rate of $375,000 a month, or $25,000 per hour,” Footnoted says. She’s also due a bonus, which could bring her total exit package to $21 million.

Two anchors in small-town Oregon are losing their jobs as their parent station is eliminating their positions, the (Douglas County, Ore.) News-Review reports.

Dan Bain, who has anchored the evening news on KPIC in Roseburg, Ore., for 20 years, will lose his job March 9, along with Tim Novotny, of KCBY in Coos Bay, Ore.

Parent company Fisher Broadcasting is planning to shut down the anchor desks at both stations, and instead staff KPIC and KCBY with reporters only—no anchors or news directors.

The reporters will submit their stories to parent station KVAL in Eugene, Ore., and anchors there will present them.

“We hope what we’re doing will enhance our news operations,” general manager Greg Raschio told the News-Review.

Bain received word two weeks ago that his contract wouldn’t be renewed; that meeting came, the News-Review said, just days after newspaper personnel chatted with Bain while he was filming a story at the paper. During that discussion, Bain, 61, said he planned to keep working at KPIC until he was 65.

Jim Asendio, news director at D.C.’s WAMU-FM, resigned Tuesday over a station-sponsored event for donors in which journalists were expected to attend.

“I do not believe that reporters should be exposed to the real or perceived influence of individuals or foundations who fund the work of the newsroom,” he said in a message posted to Washingtonpost.com, and obtained by columnist Richard Prince.

Asendio told Prince that after he raised his objections to WAMU’s general manager, he received the following email: “Understand that your refusal to participate in a major station event involves a permanent, irreversible statement to me, about whether you are part of my team.”

The station’s development office had scheduled a breakfast for this morning for 30 people, with a panel of nine reporters and producers speaking. “Allowing people to see the impact that their investment makes in our work is completely appropriate. However, the station does not permit crossing the line between a funder seeing that impact and a funder being allowed input into the planning process for coverage,” a spokesperson told Prince.

Asendio said he believed the event reminiscent of a canceled plan developed at the Washington Post by publisher Katharine Weymouth in 2009. The Post had sent out brochures offering sponsorships for an “exclusive Washington Post salon” at Weymouth’s home, promising off-the-record dinners with reporters.