When you’re trained to chase soundbites, it’s easy to lose your own voice.
“Did you get the sound?”
That was the question. After every interview—“Did you get the sound?”
Translation: Did you get someone to cry? Break down? Get emotional on camera? You know, the kind of soundbite that makes viewers stop scrolling, or makes the 5 o’clock producer say, “Perfect. This is our A-block.” Emotion sells. It’s called “good sound.” But somewhere along the line, it started to feel… off.
I got the soundbite.
But after a while, I started to wonder—did I get the sound, or did the sound get me?
I thought leaving TV news was the hardest part of my career pivot. It wasn’t.
I expected leaving journalism to sting for a second and then feel like relief. Sure, this identity I spent years building for myself would hurt to give up…but in the name of work-life balance, it would definitely be worth it. But instead, it felt more like waking up to the fact that the thing I thought was sustaining me was still slowly wearing me down. Yes, even after I wasn’t in it any more.
At first, I felt a weird mix of freedom and FOMO. I had time off for holidays and I didn’t wake up with a pit in my stomach every morning. I wasn’t constantly bracing for breaking news or preparing to knock on the door of someone who’d just lost a family member to a tragic accident. I should have felt great.
But instead, I felt… guilty? Like I’d let something go I was supposed to hang onto no matter how much it hurt. Meanwhile, many of my friends and former colleagues were still hanging on—and I wondered if I just wasn’t tough enough.
But then I started talking to them. Quietly. Over DMs or coffee.
Most of them weren’t fulfilled. They were exhausted. Disillusioned. Ready to leave, too. And one by one, they did.
It didn’t make me feel better. It made me sad because we all got into this field with big hopes. We wanted to tell stories that mattered. Hold people accountable. Shine a light on the important news that wasn’t being reported. All that good, noble stuff. But the system we entered had changed. Or maybe it was never what we thought it was to begin with.
Amy Koczera: Strategic Writer & Storyteller 