By ERIN STARKEBAUM
J Alumni News staff
Darryle Brown
At a time when the journalism industry is getting rid of personnel and consolidating departments, two-time Emmy award-winning television producer Daryle Glynn Brown has an advantage over other journalists of her generation.
“News is a 24-hour monster,” Brown said. And journalists today are expected to present it on every platform possible.
But the 47-year-old who grew up in Omaha and has worked in the Los Angeles market for the past 17 years, already has the skills the converging industry now requires. In fact, she is one of the pioneers of the trend. Her skill set includes efficiency in television, newspapers, magazines and radio.
Brown graduated from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications with a broadcasting degree in 1984. When she was unable to find a job in the small Midwest television market, the dean, the late Neale Copple, offered her the chance to take a year of print news classes so she could work in newspapers, which had a larger job market at the time.
In essence, she became one of UNL’s first multimedia students.
Multimedia pioneering
Brown is a “forerunner of the multimedia journalists we know today,” said Carla Kimbrough, long-time friend and classmate of Brown’s. Kimbrough also completed the extra year of news-editorial classes with Brown and now is an associate news-editorial professor at UNL.
With both broadcast and print news training, Brown has had a varied career in journalism. She’s been a newspaper reporter, a writer, a live television producer, a field producer, a segment producer and a post-production editor, to name a few. She’s been in the small TV market, the large TV market and in radio and magazines.
“Basic skills can take you anywhere you want to go,” Brown said.
Her experience in all these areas has put her one step ahead of colleagues trained only in specific areas of journalism.
Brown’s passion is for broadcast, which she been doing for the past 14 years at KTTV FOX 11 and the FOX News Channel in Los Angeles before that.
When 110 of Brown’s co-workers were laid off from KTTV last year, it was “pretty shocking,” she said. Now when she looks around the office that was once filled with 235 employees, half the desks are empty. What’s even more shocking is the fact that the station is producing the same amount of content with only the 125 people who are left.
Less staff means less time spent writing, editing and producing stories. As a professional, Brown said she can tell the work is lower quality, but the viewers don’t seem to have noticed. Brown thought the viewers would write in to complain, but she hasn’t heard a word.
Working overnight to produce the morning news
Brown works the 1 a.m. to 9 a.m. shift at the station. Normally, she is the associate producer of the 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. morning news show. She writes and edits video for the teasers that keep the audience watching during commercial breaks, answers questions from writers and reporters and manages the workflow while the producer is in the control room.
“It’s a juggling act,” said Brown who loves the work for its variability.
Brown is also the backup producer of the morning news, so if the producer is gone, she takes over selecting the day’s news content, deciding how it will be presented and assigning the stories to writers and reporters.
“She has the qualities of a great producer,” Kimbrough said. “She’s curious, inquisitive, has very strong communication skills and very strong organization skills.” All of those are great to have in any newsroom, Kimbrough added.
Those qualities helped KTTV FOX 11 win two Emmy Awards for live coverage of an unscheduled news event. Brown was part of the award-winning teams that produced the live coverage of a fire in 2003 and the live coverage of a van crash in 2004.
“She’s the kind of alumna we love because she’s done so well and makes us proud,” said Charlyne Berens, professor and interim dean of UNL’s CoJMC.
Journalism: an excuse to be nosy
Brown’s enthusiasm for journalism started in the sixth grade when she starting writing for a school paper. She liked being able to ask “nosy questions,” she said, and making people answer tough questions.
She was also active in her high school newspaper at Omaha Central. She was even an editor her senior year, although she can no longer remember what part of the paper she was in charge of. Her adviser emphasized the basics of reporting but also encouraged the students to “scratch below the surface,” which Brown said helped her at UNL.
She completed her first two years of college at Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln and then transferred to the UNL to make a career out of journalism.
During college, Brown had a daughter, Summer, who is now a 27-year-old therapist for children and teens in LA.
Between schoolwork and being a single mom, Brown wasn’t as involved on campus as she would have liked to have been.
“Ask me now, and I have no idea how I did it,” Brown said. “I just know that I did.”
Her parents never gave her the option of quitting. They knew having a college degree was the best way to get ahead in life.
The goal was always, “graduation, graduation, graduation,” Brown said, and when she finally graduated, she added the extra year of education on top of it.
From Omaha to Florida to LA
Her effort paid off, though. After a quick summer internship at The Omaha World-Herald, Brown was hired full-time.
After two years, she went to the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times for two years and then switched to broadcast at CNN, where she worked for four years. In 1993, Brown left for LA, and until taking the job at the FOX News Channel in 1996, she dabbled in freelance writing, radio and television work.
Brown said she would love to get the chance to work as a live producer again as she did at the FOX News Channel and CNN before that.
“Live is more exciting because you’re in the moment,” Brown said.
It was the kind of work that involved all of her favorite things: communication, organization, thinking on her feet and working under deadline.
She would hop on a plane to cover natural disasters or other intense situations, land in another country and go right to work behind the camera, managing the reporter and video coverage while coordinating with the network back in the States to get it on the air.
Brown said she loves that “pressure-cooker kind of situation” and rush she gets from journalism.
Be prepared for whatever comes along
Jobs used to be easy to come by in LA, Brown said, but she knows the industry today is volatile and that any day at the station could be her last.
“That’s just a reality,” she said. “It’s not something to stress over or be worried about; just be prepared.”
And with the skills she’s acquired at UNL and on the job, Brown knows very well how to be prepared.
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