This time last Christmas, Hilary Barry set in motion a plan that would see her make the biggest decision of her life: to leave her job at TV3, publicly, after 23 years.
While her April resignation came as a shock to everyone, it had been a long time in the planning.
It was last Christmas, while Barry was away on summer break with her family, when she started to realise what a toll her job was taking on her.
It was, she tells NEXT, a time of ‘reflection and introspection’, a break from the relentless treadmill of her daily routine. Surrounded by family, her head clear of work clutter, she was free to think about what was important to her. And for the first time in 23 years, Barry says, her own values were no longer reflected in her work life. She wasn’t happy, and she needed a change.
“It would be fair to say that I got to a stage where I felt sad about my work life, and I didn’t think it was good for my mental and physical health to stay there. I thought it was time for me to walk out the door, on my own terms… From the moment I resigned – and this is who I am, over everything I do in my life – I had made my decision and I was heading down that path. Nobody could have convinced me to stay,” she says.
“And I haven’t regretted that decision for a moment. And that might surprise some people, because they look from the outside and go, ‘Oh, but that was such a dream job.’ And it was, for a long time. But it wasn’t in the last year.”
WATCH: Behind the scenes with NEXT and Hilary Barry. Story continues after video
Barry was the poster girl of TV3’s news programming: you could start the day with her on The Paul Henry Show, you could finish the day with her on TV3’s nightly news. But her professional world was in constant flux.
Since the arrival of then CEO Mark Weldon in August 2014, the focus of the media organisation had shifted and the result was something of a structural bloodbath.
One high profile journalist followed another out the door of Mediaworks – some by their own accord, many not – and Barry says she found the endless emotional rollercoaster exhausting to work through. She picks her words carefully, but her message is clear: she had to get out.
“I just felt like I was in this constant grieving process: It was John Campbell and the entire Campbell Live team, it was then the entire Third Degree team and all those senior journalists. And then my mentor and the man that first hired me, [news chief] Mark Jennings. You just get to a stage… I couldn’t take it anymore. I actually couldn’t take it. It was time for me to go, to preserve my own sanity.”
There’s an element of survivor’s guilt to Barry’s tale, she admits her ‘motherly instinct’ meant she wanted to take some of her beloved colleagues with her when she left.
“I felt for them, because I knew that it was a shock and it was on the back of a lot of other people walking out the door. So there was that sense of letting them down a bit. But in the end, you’ve just got to do what’s right for you and have the courage to do that.”
For more on Hilary’s battle to become more ‘ballsy’ and her new start on Breakfast, see the December issue of NEXT
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