‘How Do You Tell the Story ... If You Don’t Reflect This Country?’ A Conversation With Janelle Rodriguez

In recent years, an unprecedented number of women of color have risen to executive and shot-calling positions in news media in the United States — but their representation is still far below their proportion of the population. The Women’s Media Center’s recently released report, “Women of Color in U.S. News Leadership 2023,” includes interviews with 20 history-making women of color news executives in television, print, digital media, and radio who shed light on how they have navigated their careers in media, the ways in which they create inclusive workplaces, and why it is crucial for news media staffs to reflect the diversity of their audiences. Below is our conversation with Janelle Rodriguez, vice president of NBC News and head of NBC News Now.

Early in her news career, Janelle Rodriguez set her sights on becoming an executive producer. After about 15 years at CNN, she was promoted to executive producer and eventually executive vice president for programming.

Now executive vice president of NBC News and head of its NBC News Now online streaming newscast, she has overseen a 55% surge in the size of the latter’s audience between 2020 and 2021.

Rodriguez started at NBC in 2015. Along her journey to her current position, the Latina and South Florida native has been nurtured and supported by her newsroom elders and her peers, she says.

Likewise, she’s doing her part to fill NBC’s jobs pipeline with a diversity of up-and-comers from far-flung parts of the nation — all in the interest of good journalism.

This is an abridged version of Rodriguez’s conversation with the Women’s Media Center.

WMC: What prompted your old bosses at CNN to say, as you recall, ‘We’d like you to take on a bigger role?’
A tsunami happened in Southeast Asia during the Christmas-to-New Year holiday. All of my male bosses were out on vacation, and it was no surprise that the women were left to pick up those holidays.

I was in the role of a more junior person, leading the editorial meetings. Because it was such a huge story, the new CNN president, Joe Klein, started working a week earlier than he was scheduled. I was the senior producer, at the time, for Anderson Cooper, who we put on the story. It was a career-defining time for him. And [Klein] pegged me as a high achiever that he wanted to grow. They saw things in me that I didn’t see in myself.

How old were you then?

In my early thirties.

How secure were you in your talents?

I felt very comfortable with my producing talents. But where I had a big learning curve was becoming a senior-level manager. As [rank-and-file] journalists, we’re not trained to be managers, handling budgets or the interpersonal crises that happen.

To their credit, CNN sent me to an executive MBA program at UCLA. They invested in me, sending me to a number of different trainings and to a Time-Warner program for women in leadership.

Really healthy, strong organizations help close that leadership gap for people who may be great reporters but aren’t already equipped to be senior managers.

What did the C-suite of NBC’s newsroom look like when you joined that network?

CNN had been very male-dominated, although the number of women in leadership definitely began to increase while I was there.

Coming to NBC, I was quite surprised at how many women are in leadership. Sometimes I’m in senior-level meetings here with a room full of women, all women. Other times, it’s a very mixed group of men and women.

It’s nice to work at a place that organically has that.

On the most basic level, what does that diversity among decision-makers do for the news cycle?

I’ll give two separate examples: One of my colleagues was beating on my door, saying we had to do a special on anti-Asian violence during the pandemic. A lot of people have covered that story since. She — an Asian woman — was on it before it got picked up as a national story.

In a similar manner, a male colleague who’s Jewish [jump-started] our coverage of anti-Semitic attacks happening across the country.

We need to connect the dots. Being of the community — whether it’s the Black community, Latino, Asian, Jewish — gets us connected to stories.

Diversity is not even an optional thing. It’s not just a good thing or the right thing to do. It has to be embedded.

As you scan the landscape, does this era mark a groundswell moment for women of color in newsroom leadership?
I’d hate to say it’s a groundswell. Usually, it’s a very zig-zagging road. Five steps forward, three steps back. A couple of steps forward, a couple of steps back. And that’s true on multiple levels.

I think we’re having some great moments, we’re having some glimmers of progress. I want to see where we are 10 years from now.

Are you optimistic?

I am. And what gives me the greatest sense of optimism is younger folks. Generationally, they’ve never experienced the [all-White] ‘Mad Men’ era of media, right? They’re not going to put up with that.

Nonetheless, the road is usually very zig-zagging.

What are your big tips for those aspiring to be newsroom leaders?

The best tip I ever got, when I was very, very junior, was: ‘Persevere.’ See the long road ahead and hang in. You have to be confident.

If you’re a good person, doing the right things, operating with integrity and treating people with respect, you’ll have people cheering for you. When you make mistakes, you need strong people who believe in you. They’ll help you overcome those days.

Which of your own mistakes stands out for you as both difficult and a pivotal lesson?

It probably wasn’t the biggest one, but I think about this every couple of months because it’s relevant: I was a very junior producer at CNN. They threw me in over my head into the control room, doing weekends, the 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. show, which is the most brutal. It means you’re in the newsroom at 2 a.m. on a Sunday.

I hadn’t mastered timing on my own and mistimed Larry King Live, which was syndicated globally, not just on TV but on radio stations, too. Those stations were in black, in silence, for two and a half minutes, which is a very long time. I just wanted to die.

I came out of there looking like I’d been shot, on the verge of tears and afraid I was going to get fired. The senior manager looks at me and, she was like, ‘First of all, nobody knows who you are. You’re not the center of the universe. Go home, get over yourself. Come back in here and do it again tomorrow.’

It was such a gift to me.

How are you opening a path for others, especially women and other people of color?

[NBCUniversal News Group President] Cesar Conde, my boss, created the 50% Challenge Initiative [to create a staff that is half female and half of color], which is incredible.

As a part of that, I’m very hyper-focused on recruiting and the interview process, casting as wide a net as possible. Our hiring manager Yvette Miley, who’s senior vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion and a rock star in her own right, has set up these extraordinary partnerships with community colleges, state colleges across the country. I don’t want all new hires coming out of Columbia and NYU. I want kids who went to community college or worked their way through state schools ... a kid from rural Texas who wants to be a journalist. It doesn’t matter how well-intentioned or smart or aware of the world you are, we all have massive blind spots. And we all bring particular perspectives to the newsroom.

How do you tell the story of this country if you don’t reflect this country?