Taking Another Page from the Scripps Playbook
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KPRC (Houston) is doubling down on a non-traditional newsroom structure, promoting Senior Investigative Producer Jason Nguyen to the role of Early Evening Executive Reporter.
While the word "Reporter" is baked right into the title, the position is strictly behind the camera. Nguyen succeeds longtime Houston TV veteran John Donnelly, who has reportedly departed the Graham Media Group station after being hired into the newly created role just last year.
If the "Executive Reporter" title sounds unfamiliar to Texas newsrooms, that is because it is a direct transplant from Cincinnati.
The architect behind this structure is KPRC Vice President and General Manager Sean McLaughlin. Before taking the reins at Channel 2, McLaughlin spent nearly a decade as the Senior Vice President of Local Media for the E.W. Scripps Company.
During his tenure at Scripps, McLaughlin championed a corporate strategy aimed at restructuring traditional newsrooms. Facing a severe industry-wide shortage of experienced journalists, Scripps began hiring seasoned, high-profile veteran reporters specifically to act as coaches, field producers, and managers for a younger generation of Multimedia Journalists (MMJs).
Now, McLaughlin is running the exact same play at Graham Media. When KPRC first launched the roles in 2025 by hiring Donnelly and former KTRK reporter Kevin Quinn, News Director Ana Lastra framed the move as a way to support a rapidly expanding, "field-oriented" newsroom.
But while management views it as an investment in mentorship, industry insiders see it as a costly workaround for a deeper structural issue.
In a major market like Houston (DMA #6), the traditional newsroom hierarchy has always been clearly defined to handle editorial quality control:
The News Director and Assistant ND set the overall editorial vision and strategy.
The Managing Editor assigns the stories, tracks the angles, and vets the copy.
The Executive Producers (EPs) manage the specific broadcasts, ensuring showcasing and pacing are sharp.
Historically, top-market stations didn't need to hire dedicated coaches to teach reporters how to do their jobs; the competitive nature of a top-10 market meant you didn't get hired there unless you already knew how.
However, as local TV stations face shrinking budgets, stagnant wages, and high turnover, major markets are increasingly forced to hire younger, less experienced talent who bypassed the traditional small-market training ground. The "Executive Reporter" role is essentially an admission of this new reality. Rather than relying on standard middle management—who are already chained to their desks dealing with corporate metrics, streaming demands, and endless administrative meetings—KPRC is inserting an elite tier of former field vets into the trenches to hand-hold the staff.
For Nguyen, the promotion represents a shift from digging up original stories to supervising them.
Since joining KPRC in 2022 as an investigative producer, Nguyen has built a formidable track record, co-leading the station's 11-member investigative unit and earning a Lone Star Emmy for his work on the station's Evidence Roomdocumentary series. Before arriving in Houston, Nguyen spent years in the field as an MMJ, reporter, and photographer in markets like Salt Lake City, Portland, and Cleveland.
That extensive field background is exactly what KPRC is banking on. Nguyen will be tasked with working side-by-side with early evening field crews—honing angles, refining live shots, and elevating storytelling execution before the cameras roll.
Whether importing the Scripps playbook will actually elevate Channel 2's product or simply add another confusing layer to the newsroom org chart remains to be seen. But with one of the original "Executive Reporters" already out the door, McLaughlin’s grand newsroom experiment is facing its first major stress test.
