Rene Knott quit KSDK after HR probe focused on his comments

Longtime KSDK morning news anchor Rene Knott says he resigned at the station’s request last week after becoming the focus of an HR investigation.

Knott says his supervisor told him not to come in on Oct. 9, and that he was instead asked to join a human resources representative on a FaceTime call. There, Knott says he was asked about comments he’d supposedly made about violence and guns, including one alleged comment about getting his AK-47. He insists he never talked about guns in any context other than a journalistic one. “I’ve never touched a gun,” he says, “so I don’t know where that comes from.”

Knott says he was also asked whether he’d made comments about wanting to kick coworkers’ asses, which he characterized as normal joking around that no one had ever complained about—to him or, to his knowledge, to others.

But the station was apparently unpersuaded. Several of Knott’s former colleagues say they’d become concerned in recent months, saying he seemed to be under stress and “increasingly agitated.” They were worried that his comments suggested trouble, and resisted the idea of Knott returning to the newsroom. 

Six days after the station’s initial inquiry, on Oct. 15, Knott says he was summoned to another call, but this one lasted just a few minutes. Knott says he was told that the station’s corporate owner, Tegna, has a zero tolerance policy. He was asked to resign.

“I said to myself, Well, if no one believes me after all these years, why would I want to work in that environment?” Knott says. “Why would I work with people who are saying these things about me now?” He quit, and says he has since been grappling with the end of his time at KSDK.

“In 21 years, I never had a bad review,” he says. “All my reviews have been exemplary. I’ve never been to HR outside of waving at somebody in a hallway. I never had any complaints and nothing like that ever brought up against me in 21 years.” 

Knott says he’s mystified why anyone would have complained about him, although he notes that the station had experienced significant turnover lately. He wonders if someone overheard something and misinterpreted it. “I think we’ve had a lot of change from people who don’t basically know me,” he says. 

KSDK has not responded to repeated requests for comment.

In the last six months, Knott had been announced internally as the new anchor on the 5 p.m. newscast, a move he says was designed to set him up as a potential successor to legendary anchor Mike Bush. The station even went so far as to interview replacements for Knott on the morning show.

But station sources suggest that some staffers assigned to the 5 p.m. broadcast balked at working with Knott, and after director of content Morgan Schaab was pushed out last summer, it wasn’t clear to colleagues whether the move to 5 p.m. was still happening. (Knott says it was definitely still happening, and says he is not aware of anyone who didn’t want to work with him. He attributes the delay to turnover in key leadership positions at the station.) 

And while colleagues believe the limbo around his position may have been a stressor, they say that so was pressure from station managers to get the ratings up and add hours of streaming to the KSDK app, a situation SLM previously covered.

Coworkers say Knott alarmed them on more than one occasion by making comments about guns or potential violence. In one instance earlier this month, staffers say he made a series of odd comments, including the one about getting his AK-47, while on set. A producer reportedly told him, “We’re not doing this.” 

In another case, sources say, someone reported hearing him making a comment about wanting to stab a colleague. Coworkers noted to each other that the frequency with which Knott made comments involving violence seemed to increase in recent weeks. When asked to cut it out, he seemed to double down.

Then, two weeks ago, colleagues say that Knott, a former college football player, made a comment about potentially having CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative disease linked to repeated trauma to the head, and suggested he was having violent thoughts. Those comments became the source of anxiety among staffers. Says one, “The concern was widespread in the newsroom.” 

Knott says he at one point discussed the possibility of suffering from CTE, but only in the context of fearing that it could lead to dementia in his older years—not violence. “I haven’t been under stress,” he insists. 

At some point prior to Knott’s dismissal, HR met with some staffers to see if there was a way Knott could continue at the station. A colleague says that some people indicated there was no way they’d feel comfortable.

At a meeting on Oct. 15, staffers were told Knott was no longer a station employee, and that the company would not be taking questions.

Knott has kept his comments on social media friendly to the station. “It’s very, very sad,” he said in a video posted to Facebook after his departure. “It breaks my heart and has been extremely tough.” He added, “But at the same time, I want to tell you that my time at KSDK was tremendous, and I will never have any ill things to say about that time period. I met some great people along the way in our newsroom, and in our community.” 

To SLM, he says the last few days have been difficult, as he’s grappled with life without his public-facing job. Since his resignation, he says been sleeping badly and has lost 10 pounds.

But, he says, he meant what he said about his former employer. “Without them, I wouldn’t have the home I live in,” he says. “I wouldn’t have two college graduates as children. I look at the bonuses and the positives. Did it end the way I wanted? No. You would think, you put in that much time, that much energy, you get the gold pocket watch at the end, right?” 

The station has made no public acknowledgment of Knott’s departure other than a brief statement just before 7 a.m. on Friday. “Finally, we do want to let our audience know that Rene Knott will no longer be on the morning show team,” said traffic reporter Paul Cook as festive music played beneath him. (The music was a holdover from the previous segment, celebrating children who had turned five.) “We appreciate his energy and dedication that Rene brought to our viewers, and we wish him success in the future.” The station then went to a commercial break.

KSDK has seen a series of high-profile departures in the last year, including anchor Kay Quinn, news director (and former anchor) Art Holliday, and meteorologist Anthony Slaughter, who told SLM he was fired in April after pushing back on demands to create more content and increase the ratings. The station pushed staff to add more hours of streaming content to its app, and Slaughter called the resulting workload “a little absurd.”

As with Slaughter, the station has faced a firestorm on social media about Knott’s departure, with many community members describing positive interactions with the longtime journalist. 

Cook’s brief acknowledgement of Knott’s departure came at the end of Today in St. Louis’ Friday’s 6 a.m. hour—an hour that began with Knott’s former colleagues Travis Cummings and Michelle Li behind the anchor desk, making TGIF banter. 

“Pat yourself on the back because we made it,” said Li. “It’s been a week.”

“I didn’t know if we were going to get through this one, I got to tell you,” added Cummings.