JILL ABRAMSON APPARENTLY DISPLEASURED HER PUBLISHER, IT'S JUST THAT SIMPLE

I've been trying very hard to just keep my mouth shut regarding the New York Times' firing of Executive Editor Jill Abramson, the first woman to hold that post at the paper, and the swirl of hubbub that has grown in wake of it. After all, I have never met her or her bosses or ever even been in the New York Times building, much less its news department. What's more, I am writing from the border in deep South Texas, some 2,000+ miles from the granite canyons of Manhattan.

However, two factors do come into play that led me to finally say something here. First, after 45 years in the business at eight different newspapers, I do know something about the nature of the beast. And, second, as anyone who knows me can readily attest, after more than 69 years of living I still lack the willpower to keep my mouth shut even about things that may not directly involve me.

The impetus for me to finally unshackle my tongue (or, perhaps, more accurately my fingers) with regard to the firing was this Facebook post this morning my by friend Jimmie D. Davis of Fort Worth, Texas, another former, longtime newsman:

"Oh, the ignominy. Getting unfriended by Amy Siskind. I had the audacity to disagree with her about the NYT mess.

She took out after Rachel Maddow for lack of coverage of the mess. If anyone out there has definitive knowledge of who is right and who is wrong in this, please share with the rest of us.

From the facts I so far have been able to gather I tend to lean with the NYT. But that may be totally wrong, so I am hesitant to go deeper than that. Rachel Maddow may just have the same problem.
But, apparently Amy Siskind thinks that any woman journalist worth her salt must take the default position in favor of the female in any dispute of this sort. That's thinking like a Fox."

Clearly, Abramson's seemingly abrupt firing on May 14 has sent the national journalism community into a tizzy.

Her supporters, in general, contend she is a victim of sexism and speculate that she might have been fired because she "may" have been being paid less than her predecessor and wanted a salary boost that cost her her job.

Her detractors, in general, contend she was let go because of her "management" style, alleging that she played favorites and sometimes publicly vilified those who weren't and, therefore, got just what she deserved.

Since I have no knowledge of what she or her predecessor were being paid, the only thing I have to say about that is that gender rightfully should have absolutely nothing to do with pay. If she had the same skills -- which I think you must assume or she would not have or should not have gotten the position in the first place -- and the same experience level, she should have been paid the same, or even more if she could have negotiated it at the time of her promotion. The only justification for having paid her less should have been, in my opinion, based solely on her skill and/or experience level compared to her predecessor. Gender should never play a role in a pay decision.

As for her "management style," I  have to suspect that considering the era in which she got into the business, she may have been a bit old school -- a style that sends today's newspaper H-R people into fits of apoplexy, but from which many of us learned one hell of a lot and became far better newspaper people than we might have been otherwise. However, being a tough, unyielding and possibly even harsh editor is one thing and playing favorites to the detriment of the others is quite something else. But I don't know anything about her personal management style.

What I DO know is that Abramson had established a reputation within the industry as a good and qualified editor and I, for one, was pleasantly surprised when she was named the NYT's first female executive editor in September 2011.

This all brings me back to my response to Jimmie Davis' Facebook post which was based on what all of us who have ever been the top news executive at any newspaper in the United States regardless of size or location knows all too well. My comment was:

"JIMMIE: There is one immutable fact here and that is that regardless of race, gender, ethnic origin, religion or sexual preference, if you are the editor of a newspaper, you serve at the pleasure of the owner and/or publisher. The question here is not one of whether or not the publisher had a right to fire her or whether or not it was the right thing or wrong thing to do, but rather how the dismissal was handled and from what I can see, it was not handled well nor with anything bordering on class from either side."

Whatever the "real" reason for Jill Abramson's firing -- fair or unfair, just or unjust -- it would appear, in the final analysis, that she displeased Publisher Arthur Sulzberger and he decided to show her the door. It has always been thus for chief news executives at newspapers and very few have ever survived getting irrevocably crosswise with their publisher.

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CONTENT: NEWSPAPERS SHOULDN'T NEED A WEATHERMAN TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS

Whenever I think about declining newspaper readership in the United States -- which is something I still do a lot, even in retirement -- I can't help but think that newspaper editors are as much to blame as any of the factors more commonly and popularly mentioned, particularly by newspaper editors.

I also can't help but recall perhaps the best known line from one of Bob Dylan's most popular early songs, "Subterranean Homesick Blues":  "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."

Beginning decades before the steep circulation declines newspapers have been experiencing since the turn of the Millennium, the industry started turning to "weathermen" in the form of research companies like Belden Associates, Yankelovich and Market & Opinion Research International (MORI) to tell us which way the winds of reader content interests were blowing.

Unfortunately, too many media companies and individual newspapers began relying more and more exclusively on readership survey findings as the sole gauge of reader content interests rather than talking and listening directly to their readers. This, I believe, is where and why the disconnect between newspapers and their readers began to take serious root.

Some like to say that it came rather precipitously as the nation's economy began to slip into recession starting in about 2005 and that the economic downturn, coupled with other factors -- such a expanding free website access to information that papers once sold exclusively in print, already declining advertising revenues and rising production costs -- created a "perfect storm" for newspapers.

Certainly, those perfect-storm factors may have set off the industry's panic alarms, but I think the clouds began gathering much earlier than 2005. In fact, I believe the readership barometer may have already been starting to drop when I began my first, post-college, full-time newspaper job as a reporter in the Indiana Bureau of The Louisville Courier-Journal & Times in 1970.

Whenever I ponder a newspaper's content relationship with its readers, I remember what my favorite journalism professor at Indiana University, Dr. Ron Farrar, who taught courses in in-depth and investigative reporting, once told me: "You earn the right to give readers the information YOU think they need to know by first giving them the information THEY actually want to know."

Farrar always emphasized the idea that content is the key to readership and I think it would hard find anyone in the newspaper industry who would disagree with that, then or now.

The questions, however, are how should we determine what sort of content attracts readers to buy newspapers and who should make that determination.

By the time I took my first full-time job many newspapers companies had already seemingly decided to turn that task over almost exclusively to the companies that conduct scientific readership interest surveys to determine what sort of content readers find most appealing.

While I believe such surveys are a great tool and do provide valuable information about readers and their interests, I don't think that information should be blindly accepted as gospel nor should it be the dictator of content. I say this, in part, because most readership survey questionnaires are more theoretical than practical. I also believe that when people provide answers to formal surveys, they aren't always honest and give answers they think the researchers want to hear or that they think will make them sound more intelligent and thoughtful. The same thing, I believe, is true when it comes to relying too heavily on formally assembled focus groups.

Editors who really want to know what readers and potential readers read in their newspapers need to get out of the office, go where people are and talk to them informally and actually listen to what they are saying.

Editors also need to realize that their best and staunchest ally in understanding what sort of content appeals to readers in their market is their newspapers' circulation director.

I don't know how many times over the years I heard many of my fellow newspapers editors pompously and erroneously say: "It's not my job to sell newspapers. It's my job to inform the public. Selling papers is the circulation director's job."

Well, one of the industry's biggest problems is that far too many editors have done a great job of not selling newspapers and have failed to realize the paper that doesn't sell also doesn't do a very good job of informing the public. As bluntly as I can put it, it's my opinion that at a this critical time in the life of the industry, any editor who doesn't sell newspapers shouldn't be the editor for very long.

If content truly is the key to selling a newspaper, there are a number of things you can do to determine what sort of content actually attracts buyers. This is where both getting out of the office to talk to real people, real readers, in their natural habitat and a good working relationship with your paper's circulation director come in.

Throughout my 30+ years as an editor, I made a habit of identifying popular local breakfast spots that had a good mix of customers from laborers to professionals and executives. Then, at least once a month, I would stop in early (always at a different restaurant), get breakfast and look for people who where reading my newspaper, with the understanding that if they had a paper at the restaurant, they probably picked it up as an impulse, single-copy buy from a vending machine. I would politely approach the cafe readers, introduce myself and ask them why they had purchased the paper, what story or stories might have attracted them to make the buy and why that story or those stories had grabbed their interest. Although I would sometimes be told the paper was purchased for inside content -- particularly sports -- the majority of cafe readers I talked to over the years would cite a particular front page story as the reason for that morning's buy.

And what sort of stories most frequently fueled the single-copy impulse buy? Except for the occasional really big national or international story -- such as 9-11 or the killing of Osama Bin Laden -- it was usually a local hard (usually breaking and/or developing) news or investigative story. There's an old saying that "if it bleeds it leads." And, like it or not, it is still those sorts of stories that grab the single-copy buyer by the labels and give him or her a shake, not the story about the city's new multi-bazillion dollar sewer project -- unless of course the angle on THAT story is that the mayor's brother-in-law got the job on a no-bid contract.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you should take a mediocre story, sensationalize it and slap it on Page 1, like some grocery store tabloid, just to appeal to the prurient interests. However, you should understand that a really good, hard-hitting story given strong play above the fold on the front does draw in readers and sells papers.

Another way to learn what sorts of stories appeal to readers in your market is to work with your paper's circulation director who maintains loads of data on home-delivery and single-copy sales. Of these, the most important to use in determining what sorts of stories really attract readers are the single-copy numbers. Any good circulation director will readily tell you that the person most likely to be converted into a home-delivery buyer is the one who makes frequent single copy buys and can be convinced that it's a lot cheaper and easier to have the paper tossed on the front lawn every morning than having to run around town -- particularly on a Sunday -- and find one in a circulation vending machine.

Get your circulation director to provide you numbers that show when single copy sales jumped and then look at the papers for those days and inspect and think about the front page stories and how they were played.  Doing so will tell you a lot about types of stories that get people to read your paper.

At the last several papers where I was editor, I had clear plastic sleeves installed on the wall of the news department conference room so that either a week's or two weeks' worth of the above-the-fold portion the newspaper could be displayed. Then, I asked the circulation director to have the single copy manager post the sales figures for each of those day's papers plus the numbers for the corresponding day of the previous year. By inspecting those postings, I and everyone else who attended the daily news budget meetings could see what was and wasn't selling on the street, based on the type of content and it's front-page play.

Granted, if you follow the lead of what the single-copy sales numbers tell you, you are occasionally going to get calls from irate readers who accuse you of "only trying to sell newspapers." But, let's face you're already getting those calls -- even if you don't pay attention to single copy sales -- every time you run a story that some readers find offensive for whatever reason.  I don't know how many times over the years I've had angry callers hurl the "you only ran that story to sell newspapers" accusation at me over a story buried inside the local section where it had absolutely no impact on sales.

Keep in mind that even though such calls might cause your blood pressure to spike, they come from people who have at least bothered scoop your paper off the front lawn and read it. And having people read your paper is a good thing, even if they seem to do so only because they need something to piss them off in the morning.

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IT'S BEEN A YEAR SINCE MY FINAL FAREWELL TO THE NEWSROOM

This is it! Retirement One Year Anniversary Day. At 4 p.m. today, it will be one year since I left the newsroom for the last time as editor of The Monitor in McAllen, Texas.

It's seemed like the shortest year of my life. I didn't die from lack of stress, nor have I been bored. In the past year the only day that I really wished I was in the newsroom was the day a couple of months ago when Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino -- who I never trusted because of the false cult of personality he worked so hard to establish and the fact that he always protested way to much when anyone even HINTED that he might be less than always on the up and up -- resigned in advance of being indicted by the Feds on money laundering charges. He has since pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing.

Mostly what I miss is the people I used to work with not just at just my last paper, The Monitor, but at all of the newspapers where I've worked since graduating from Indiana University: The Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal & Times; The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger; The Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram; The Cincinnati Post; The (Springfield, Ill.) State Journal-Register; and The (Florence, S.C.) Morning News.

I was fortunate in my nearly 45-year newspaper career to have worked with or under some excellent reporters, editors,  publishers and college professors to whom I am grateful for their impact on my newspapering tenure and from whom I learned much. They helped to make me a success. Notable among them were:

* John Anderson, editor of the New Albany (Ind.) Tribune, for whom I worked briefly at my first reporting job shortly after getting out of the Navy in 1966. When I told Anderson that I was thinking about just staying on at the Tribune instead of going back to college, he fired me. He then told me that if I still needed a job after I graduated, he'd be pleased to have me come back to the Trib.

* IU journalism professors Ron Farrar and Ralph Holsinger and hard-nosed journalism school dean John Stempel. They were all demanding taskmasters, but the training they provided to all of their students was invaluable.

* Robert Crumpler, city editor of The Louisville Times, from who I learned what it meant to be a truly great city editor. In the final analysis, I think that Crump and what I learned about newspapering from him was the single greatest influence on my career. In many ways, I tried to pattern myself after him.

* Dick Krantz, who headed the Times investigative team of which I was a member. Dick did more than anyone else to help me hone my investigative reporting skills -- skills that I tried to pass along to those who later worked for me.

* Don Farrell, who hired me at The Clarion-Ledger to head up the paper's fledgling investigative reporting team and then, after just four months, threatened to fire me if I didn't accept his offer to become the paper's city editor -- my first editing position.

* Rea Hederman, executive editor (also known as executive heir) of The Clarion-Ledger who promoted me to managing editor and protected me from the other members of his family who were involved in the upper management while the staff and I worked to transform a paper that had a reputation as being among the 10 worst in America to one that was considered one of the best its size. Were it not for his intercession, the paper would never have been able to win the more than 40 national journalism awards it won between 1977 and 1983, including the a Public Service Pulitzer for the last project I launched before leaving to become business editor at The Star-Telegram and culminating after the C-L was purchased by Gannett.

* Henry Holcomb, managing editor of The Star-Telegram, who hired me as business editor and taught me important lessons in newsroom diplomacy and later promoted me to assistant managing editor for news and projects. And Star-Telegram Executive Editor Jack Tinsley, who overcame some early jangly nerves to stand staunchly behind me and, even more importantly, behind Washington Bureau reporter Mark Thompson, during the firestorm that developed after we began publishing the Bell Helicopter series that went on to win the Public Service Pulitzer and several other major national awards.

* Publishers Barry Bingham Jr. of The Louisville Courier-Journal & Times, Phil Meek of The Star-Telegram, Tom Marschel of The (Florence, S.C.) Morning News, and Ray Stafford and his successor Olaf Frandsen of The Monitor, all of whom unwaveringly supported me and encouraged me to practice the sort of journalism I loved and believed made a difference.

I just hope that some of the reporters, photographers and editors who worked under me feel that I had a strong, positive influence on their careers and that I did an at least decent job of passing along to them the skills I was taught. I certainly know that I am grateful to many of them because their hard and diligent work helped to make me a success. Although there are more of these former staffers than I could possibly list here -- including a significant number who went on to win one or more Pulitzer Prizes and numerous other prestigious journalism awards -- some of the key ones include Rick Tulsky, Mark Thompson, Ryan Gabrielson, Nancy Weaver, Stephanie Saul, Johanna Neuman, Lauraine Miller, Pat Larkin, Dana Heupel, Larry Nighswander, John Liston, Henry Miller, Jeremy Roebuck, Mike Perry, Lee Ann Hamilton, Sara Ovaska, Jared Taylor, Kirsten Luce, Nathan Lambrecht, Delcia Lopez, Frank Kimmel, Ray Wong, Wade Baker, Marci Caltabiano-Ponce  and Mike Kelly (deceased).

Many old friends have passed on. Most recently -- about two weeks ago -- Kenneth Bunting, who I became friends with when he joined the staff of The Star-Telegram just shortly before I left my position there as night managing editor to become managing editor of The Cincinnati Post, one of the papers where Ken had previously worked. Ken, with whom I maintained contact as we both moved from paper to paper, was a highly skilled reporter and editor and an all-around great newspapering practitioner, but, even more than that, he was wonderful, warm and caring person whose last job was as director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition headquartered at the University of Missouri.

However, Ken and the others who are gone now still live on in nearly 45 years of wonderful memories of a career that I felt was worthwhile, in an endeavor that I believe actually made a difference in the world around me.

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RAY SULLIVAN, NEWSPAPERING WILL MISS YOU

Ray Sullivan, a good friend of many years, retired last week after more than 13 years as publisher of the Clovis News Journal, Portales News-Tribune and Quay County Sun in New Mexico and a total of some four decades as a newspaperman at papers big and small.

Over the years Ray and I have had lots of fun and often highly contentious political -- well, let's say -- "discussions," with him coming from right of and me from left of center. Although neither of us has EVER let the other win one of those discussions, which always seem to taper off into an exhausted truce, I have always had the utmost respect for Ray not only as a person, but also as a publisher and a newspaperman -- two things at which he was/is very skilled.

Looking back -- and probably forward, too, since I seriously doubt our political wranglings will end merely because we are both now retired from newspapering -- I think maybe one of the few politically charged things we've ever been in pretty much complete agreement on is the need to not only honor those who protect us through their military service, but also the duty to see that our veterans and their sacrifices are properly remembered and adequately and appropriately rewarded. Granted, we share what probably can only be described as a bias in this regard because we are both veterans. Ray was a Marine and I was a sailor and this gives us an understanding and appreciation of what it means to serve in the military and the issues faced when that service ends.

This made us an increasingly rarer breed in today's media -- journalists with military service -- and that worries me, particularly at a time when when we have service men and women engaged in hot situations in various places in the world and the potential for involvement in yet another if issues between the United States and Russia over Ukraine can't be settled sanely.

These military involvements are keeping our Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force regularly in the news. And the fact that fewer and fewer members of the media -- particularly "local" media -- have a firsthand understanding of things military worries me because it opens up all sorts of avenues for potentially embarrassing mistakes.

Although some of those potential mistakes might seem "minor" to those print, electronic, visual and digital journalists who've not been in the military, rest assured they are not trivial to those who are or have been and their family members.

Like any mistakes the media makes, those that occur with regard to things military cast doubt on our credibility -- particularly among members of the public who may already be predisposed to distrust us and seek any opportunity to believe that there are times when we don't know our asses from third base.

In case you've not already learned it, let me tell you from personal experience that veterans can be a cantankerous lot. They have little tolerance for members of the media who, for instance, don't understand that while everyone who has been in the military technically can be considered a G.I. (Government Issue) it is a term most often applied to soldiers in the Army; or that Marines want to be referred to as Marines, not soldiers; etc. It's been my experience, for example, that far too many of today's young journalists don't understand the difference between an officer and a non-com and haven't a clue as to the hierarchy of rank within the individual branches of service.  Even those with some understanding of the order of military ranks are sometimes confused by seeming inconsistencies such as the fact that while in the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps a major outranks a lieutenant, a lieutenant general outranks a major general; that a captain in the Navy is a several steps higher in rank than a captain in the other services; and that the "captain" of a ship in the Navy may or may not carry the actual rank of "captain."

Without veterans like Ray and me around to catch these potential mistakes, many a cantankerous vet could grow to regard your newspaper as totally FUBAR (and if you don't know what they means, I suggest you look it up), so much so that it could cost you readers or damage your credibility in your community -- things we simply can't afford.

Fortunately, we do have a safeguard against these sorts of goof ups. The AP Stylebook lays out all of this pretty clearly and if you're an editor, I suggest you familiarize yourself and get your staffers -- particularly your copy editors who are your last line of defense -- to familiarize themselves with the Stylebook's military entries.

Honestly, this is important and because it's a journalistic issue. It's one of those things Ray and I have discussed on and off over the years and are in thorough agreement on. But, then, that's among the things that I like and respect about Ray Sullivan. Despite our frequent political sparring, I really can't recall us ever disagreeing over what it takes to make a good newspaper -- particularly a good community newspaper -- that has value, meaning and relevance to readers.

I guess I could go on longer and discuss my view of Ray's values as a publisher who came up through the news department ranks, but why should I, since he expressed them far better than I ever could in his swansong, published in the Clovis New Journal in the waning days before his retirement: 

"Telling Clovis’ stories had profound impact

March 16, 2014

By Ray Sullivan
Growing up in Pueblo, Colo., I’d come home from school in the 1950s and ’60s, I’d do my chores and homework, then read an escapism western or sports story in a library book I’d checked out the Saturday before.

Ray Sullivan

I’d sprawl on the floor in front of the small black-and-white television and plug my ears with tucked up fingers to block out the sounds of my seven siblings. Then I would drown in the world of the images the words created in my mind’s eye.
Oh, I’d watch a bit of the hometown TV station’s kid show, but mostly I’d escape into the story at hand.
A book is where I first experienced the power of words strung together the right way. The comic strips of the Pueblo Star-Journal reinforced that belief. By seventh grade I knew I would be a storyteller.
I’ve had the good fortune and privilege to follow that meandering path through five states — Colorado and California, Idaho and Ohio, and now New Mexico. I quit twice, once for a brief Peace Corps stint and once from burnout — no balance between work and play and prayer. But the draw of ink rubbing off on my fingers was too powerful to ignore.
When I became an editor for the first time in Idaho in the late 1970s, my goal was the same as it is today: Produce a strong community news report. Be prepared to do it unflinchingly because newspapers that do things right are attacked when they don’t buckle under pressure to print only the truth as interpreted by one faction.
Some days we do that pretty well. Other days, well, not so much. Most importantly, we never give up. We strive always to produce the daily miracle of newspapers. Now we do so in print and online.
We’ve always been guided and supported by our readers. Recently, our latest report of the tumbleweed barrage was far better because of the public’s stories and photos, and they did so again last week with dozens of dust-storm photos we posted online.
Now that I’m 66 and a retiree of two days, I can say my career has been as rewarding here in what I call “The Flat Windy” as it was when words captured me back in junior high.
My wife of nearly 31 years, Bev, our cats and I drove here in late 2000 from Ohio, for my opportunity to become a publisher. Fulfilling that challenge has enriched and educated us far more than we expected.
This region grew on us quickly. Walking in the early mornings, my soul was filled with the breathtaking beauty of a full moon setting in the west as the bright sun peeked over the eastern horizon.
A trip to the Billy the Kid graveyard in Fort Sumner and its more somber partner, the Bosque Redondo Memorial, spoke volumes about our rich, sometimes shameful history in America’s hardscrabble west.
Tucumcari’s Route 66 remains remind us all that we had best find ways to strengthen our roots while seeking new opportunities. Portales’ vibrant town square and nearby university campus mirrors the success of that message.
In Clovis, our sounds started more than a century ago when the first shrill train whistle scared a plow horse. The notes soon were enriched by the roar of propeller-driven engines on those new-fangled aeroplanes landing and taking off at Portair Field. Today, of course, that’s Cannon Air Force Base, which keeps the sound of freedom alive with its fiercely dedicated special operations airmen and civilians.
Our love of music arose in our first schools and churches and that morphed into the Clovis Sound out on West Seventh in the 1950s. We celebrate that sound today at the annual Clovis Music Festival.
And don’t forget the musical sound of water. This life-giving, scarce commodity offers a healing sound as it nurtures our farm fields and parks. We can’t lose that sound, people. We are in the west so of course we fight over water. But we best not fight each other so hard our neighbors take our liquid gold.
My final sound, though, is heard throughout our Clovis Media buildings each day as our good people take care of your needs. They do it well and our business is as vibrant today as ever. We were blessed with new owners 25 months ago when Gary and Sue Stevenson and Garry Ellis bought the Clovis News Journal, Portales News-Tribune and Quay County Sun from Freedom Communications. They restored balance out of what had eroded into a corporate labyrinth that made good newspapering difficult. They let us do our jobs. It is a gift I will take to my grave.
In Clovis the music culminates six nights a week when we turn on our presses. I love the expanding reach of the Internet, but when the motors on the only newspaper presses within 90 miles rev up, I feel the goose bumps of freedom arising.
It is that sound I will miss as much as the tunes played by our eastern New Mexico winds."

In closing, I will only say that when a journalist-editor-publishers like Ray Sullivan retires, it leaves a hole in the fabric of American newspapering.

Thanks, Ray, for your service to the nation and, even more importantly, your service to the newspaper business.

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Blog Readers: If you enjoy reading my postings here on The Ancient Newspaper Editor, I sure would appreciate if you'd consider subscribing to or following the blog. It's easy to do and there are several options for doing so. If you look on the right side rail, you'll see the "Subscribe to" buttons and a "Subscribe by email" button. Just click any of those and follow the instructions. If you are a Google+ user you can click on the "Follow" button right under my profile picture and follow the instructions. Or, you can click on the "Google+ Add to Circles" button next to my photo and add me to your circles and get notifications of new blog entries when I post them. Also, please share the blog with your friends and colleagues.  Thanks for giving this consideration.

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PRESS PLANT CLOSURE A ST. PATRICK'S DAY DOWNER FOR THE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM

I have to suspect that this is not too happy a St. Patrick's Day at the Star-Telegram in Fort Worth, Texas. Last night, the paper's remote press plant printed it's final copies and the 28-year-old facility closed for good.

As someone who worked at the "Startlegram" for four years, first as business editor and then as assistant managing editor for news and special projects from 1982 through 1985, this bit of news saddens me.

Maybe I just haven't been paying attention, but I just learned of the press plant being shutdown this morning when old friend and former fellow Startlegrammer Kenneth Bunting, who now heads the National Freedom of Information Coalition, posted this on Facebook: "When I left the Startlegram in '93, if someone had taken a survey about whether the presses or the digital publishing operation, known then as "Startext," might survive, I suspect the result of that survey would have shown how clueless we all were."

However, as bad as news of the closure might sound, it's not as bad as it could be. In deference to Ken's observation, the paper is not ceasing print publication, just surrendering its press facility in favor of being printed elsewhere.

Beginning tonight, the Star-Telegram will be printed at the Dallas Morning News' press plant. The move, which is being done for sound financial reasons is pretty well explained in this video the newspaper produced and posted on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sxixu8__PJo&feature=share&app=desktop

Although the video strikes a hopeful chord, noting that the decision to close its press plant and be printed on the Morning News' presses will result in significant expense savings over the long haul, it still leaves me with a personal sense of melancholy for a couple of reasons.

First, although the video indicates that readers will not be adversely impacted by the closure and shift to a different printing site, that really is not the case. I speak from experience when I say the move will have some effects that readers likely will notice. That was the case here in the Rio Grande Valley, when the paper I retired as editor of, The Monitor in McAllen, began printing our sister papers, the Brownsville Herald and its Spanish-language edition El Nuevo Heraldo  and Harlingen's Valley Morning Star.  The deadlines for the Herald and El Nuevo were pushed up two hours and the deadline for the Valley Morning Star was pushed up an hour.

Doubtlessly, The Star-Telegram will go to press earlier at the Morning News plant than it has been at its own plant. That, of course, will play hell with updates of important late-breaking news, such as election results. The greatest impact, however, will be on sports news when the paper has to "go to bed" before the final scores come in for late games, possibly including even for some local high school and college sports events. This is bound to not sit too well with sports fans, particular during football season. I know that on the surface it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense that sports readers will be upset considering the fact that many of those late professional and collegiate games are televised and anyone watching to the end knows the score and there are tons of electronic and digital sources that deliver sports scores way before any printed product. But, newspaper sports fans are an unusual breed. For some reason, many of them still apparently feel a score isn't really official until they see it in print in their newspaper along with box score statistics.

Secondly, I watched that remote press plant -- which opened just shortly before I left the paper to become managing editor of The Cincinnati Post -- being built from the ground up and remember how proud all of us were because it was, at the time, going to be THE most modern newspaper printing facility in Texas. Now, 28 or so years later, it just seems sad that it has to close, and sadder still that it means many of the remaining members of the press crew -- which was already down to only 25 percent of what it was when I was at the paper -- will be without jobs.

I got to know many members of the press crew when I was at the Star-Telegram and was always impressed with their skill and their dedication to the job.

Looking back, I can only recall one time during my tenure at Fort Worth when someone from the back shop really ticked me off. It happened one Saturday night in March 1984 when we printed the first part of the Bell helicopter series that went on to win the Public Service Pulitzer Prize.

I called down to the press room -- which was still on the bottom floor of our building downtown -- to hustle me up a hot-off-the-press copy of the Sunday paper so I could quickly proof the first part of the series. Within minutes, one of the pressmen appeared in my office and dropped a couple of copies of the paper on my desk and quickly disappeared to get back to his job.

A few minutes later, when I left my office to take a marked up copy of the story to the copy desk for fixes, I was immediately struck by the inky coming-and-going foot prints of the pressman who'd brought me the paper on the brand new carpeting that had just been installed over the newsroom's ugly black and white tile.

I guess that's what I got for wanting that proof copy ASAP.

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MISSISSIPPI ELECTION '78: REPORTER LOSES NOTEBOOK, BUT THAD COCHRAN WINS NONETHELESS

It's election day in South Texas. Granted, it isn't a huge election with any statewide offices or really any significant local offices at stake. What it is, though, is the first election in 44 years that I won't be in a newspaper newsroom.

Throughout my 44 year newspaper career, that ended with my retirement in May, I always publically professed to hate newsroom election nights, declaring them the best argument I could think of in favor of benevolent dictatorship.  The truth, however, is that I really enjoyed them because of the adrenalin rush they almost always produced and because they are the best examples I can think of of democracy in action. And, of course, they also provide a great justification for gorging yourself with pizza.

In a newsroom, election nights are the stuff that memories are made of.

For me, one of those memories that always stands out is election night 1978, when I was metro editor at The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss.

The big race that night was for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Democrat (Dixiecrat) Sen. James O. Eastland, chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee. It was also a significant race in that it marked the beginning of the end of Democratic Party control of politics in Mississippi.

Although it was never stated as a reason, I still believe that Eastland -- then one of the nation's most powerful senators -- decided to step down because he saw the handwriting on the wall and feared he might lose his reelection bid. Eastland was an astute politician and always a gritty campaigner who would not have been able handle a tough campaign and a possible head-to-head defeat well or graciously at his advancing age. He was also an inveterate racist who after meeting and having a long visit with Egyptian President and Noble Peace Prize winner Anwar Sadat, summed the highly respected world leader up to an aide by saying only: "I never realized before that that man was a (N word)."

 So, the race to assume Eastland's Senate seat ended up as a battle between Republican U.S. Rep. Thad Cochran and Democrat Maurice Dantin, a former district attorney, who had Eastland's blessing and backing. To get the Republican nomination, Cochran defeated State Sen. Charles W. Pickering in the GOP primary. For the Democratic nomination, Dantin defeated, among others, Gov. Cliff Finch, a somewhat goofy Democrat populist of the Huey Long variety who even then was giving off rumblings of possibly challenging President Jimmy Carter for the 1980 Democratic presidential nomination, which he did and lost horribly.

That election night in the Clarion-Ledger newsroom turned into a memory for me for two big reasons, both major screw ups.

First, the paper had just the day before finished installing a brand new ATEX system, then the premiere variety of newsroom computer system. It was in place along side our old computer system that included scanners that transformed typewriter written and coded paper copy into words on a computer screen. It was never very efficient, but it at least did work. Although the weeks-long installation of the new, much more sophisticated ATEX system, on which copy was generated directly into the computer, was complete, staffers had only had a few hours of training on it the day before the election. The new system, however, had never been tested in actual production of the newspaper.

Although I pleaded with him not to do it, Managing Editor Bill Seymour decided that come hell or high water, we would be using the ATEX system on election night and ordered the old system shut down and removed from the newsroom so it could not even be used for back up.

As everyone, even the ATEX installation technicians who were still on site, feared, Seymour's decision turned out the be a disaster. Fortunately, the copy desk was able to use the new system to put out all of the newspaper but the front page, some inside election news jump pages and the election special section, getting it all in early, to clear the decks for the election copy.

However, before the election results even started coming in the new system locked up and crashed. The ATEX technicians swung immediately into action, but were unable to figure out what had gone wrong. Try though the did, they were able to get only one of the copy desk terminals, but none of the reporter terminals, up and running that night.

Fortunately, even though he had ordered the old computer system shut down and removed from the newsroom, Seymour did not order the IBM electric typewriters removed. So, to produce our election pages, including all of Page 1, reporters had to type their stories on their typewriters. The paper copy was then edited and given to a our one copy editor who was also a pretty nearly impeccable typist to enter into the only operating ATEX terminal. When he finished entering the text, he wrote a headline. Then, the news editor sat down, gave the story and head a final read and hit send and we all prayed that it would go through to the typesetters that produced the cold type strips that went to the page paste-up folks in the back shop. Fortunately, that one operating terminal performed like a  champ and we able to get the paper out -- out late, yes, but out.

All of this served as a backdrop for the second memorable screw up that night.

Although there were other races being covered, the main story for that evening was the Senate race between Cochran and Dantin. Because this was to be our main story -- and involved results coming in from all over the state, including many precincts that still operated on paper ballots -- I had assigned it the latest deadline. Coverage of the race had been assigned to David Bates, one of our statehouse political reporters.

Despite the fact that I spent a good part of the evening fretting over the computer crash -- and secretly gloating over the fact that I was right and we should not have done the ATEX switch over for that night -- I made my usual desk-to-desk rounds to see how reporter were coming with their stories and prodding them to get their copy out ASAP because of our computer woes.

I didn't pay much attention to where Bates was or what he was doing since his copy was scheduled to come in late and last. When Bates did show up in the newsroom, he immediately went to work writing. When I at last checked on him, he had a couple of paragraphs written and told me he was waiting on one more interview to have everything he needed. I wasn't quite sure what interview that was, but a few minutes later he got a phone call granting it, but it had to be done in person because all of the background noise coming from the campaign headquarters made it impossible to hear over the phone. Bates dashed out the door and I went back to worrying about the rest of the reporters and their stories.

Finally, with nearly all the rest of the copy done or nearing completion, I got around to checking with Bates again and found him frantically sifting through the rubble on top of his desk. That's when I noticed that, despite the fact that his deadline was fast approaching, the paper in his typewriter still had just the few paragraphs that he'd written before charging out for that last interview.

As Bates rummaged through his desk, I finally asked him what the hell he was doing.

"I'm looking for something," he replied and then began an equally frantic search of all the pockets in his both his sports coat and trench coat.

"You need to be getting your story finished," I said emphatically and then demanded, "What the hell are you looking for?"

He hemmed and hawed and finally told me that he was looking for his notebook. My jaw dropped and temper flared.

"You can't find your fucking notebook," I yelled at him. "You mean your notebook with all your election stuff?"

He sheepishly nodded acknowledgement and said, "I had it but then I don't know what happened to it."

It turned out that he last had it at the headquarters of the victorious Cochran, where he conducted the final interview. However, before coming back to the office, he'd also stopped off at a Krystal and gotten a sack of burgers and a cup of coffee, all of which was sitting on top of his desk.

I went into a tirade that would probably cause any of today's uptight, apoplectic newspaper HR people to have a massive stroke and sent Bates back to both the Cochran HQ and the Krystal in search of his notebook. About an hour later and with no luck, Bates returned and struggled well past his deadline to construct a story based on his memory. Bates was a good reporter and a good writer and apparently had a pretty good memory (except, perhaps, for where he put notebooks) because the story he finally pulled together didn't garner any misquote complaints the next day.

But, even though in the end everything turned out OK, I wasn't about to let Bates forget or get away with losing his notebook on election night.

That next morning, I called him to my desk and handed him a reporter's notebook with a string attached to its spirals and ordered him to tie the other end around his wrist.

"For the rest of this week, I'd better not to see you without that notebook attached to your wrist," I growled. He dutifully obeyed and, to the best of my knowledge, never again lost track of a notebook.

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Blog Readers: If you enjoy reading my postings here on The Ancient Newspaper Editor, I sure would appreciate if you'd consider subscribing to or following the blog. It's easy to do and there are several options for doing so. If you look on the right side rail, you'll see the "Subscribe to" buttons and a "Subscribe by email" button. Just click any of those and follow the instructions. If you are a Google+ user you can click on the "Follow" button right under my profile picture and follow the instructions. Or, you can click on the "Google+ Add to Circles" button next to my photo and add me to your circles and get notifications of new blog entries when I post them. Also, please share the blog with your friends and colleagues.  Thanks for giving this consideration.

 

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NEWSROOMS NEED TO DIVERSIFY DIVERSITY

For decades, the most commonly heard buzzword in newsroom staffing has been "diversity." Over the years the scope of what that term means has changed, slowly becoming more inclusive.

When I started in the newspaper business more than 44 years ago, newsrooms were, as they still sadly are today, primarily male dominated from management to worker bee level. Many newspapers began to officially recognize this as a problem in the early '70s and started talking about "diversity" in terms of trying more aggressively to hire female news staffers, a drive that seemed to reach its apex when Geneva Overholser was named the first female editor of The Des Moines Register in 1988. During her seven years in that post, Overholser led the paper to a public service Pulitzer and helped solidify its standing as one of the top 10 newspapers in the United States. Her success helped, in particular, to open more newspaper management doors for women across the country.

Meanwhile, although most newspapers still remain conscious of the need to hire and retain female staffers, the primary focus of newsroom diversity efforts slowly shifted from gender to race following the passage of the Equal Opportunity Employment Act in 1972. At some point, editors began looking around their newsrooms and realized that they saw very few black faces even at papers in cities where a substantial percentage of the residents were African Americans. Slowly, the nation's newspapers began the push to hire more black staffers, an effort which -- despite an extreme commitment on the part of many papers -- has met with what I believe is only limited success, but still continues.

Today, the primary drive for newsroom diversity has again shifted as newspapers push to become more ethnically diverse. Although newspapers have grown more conscious of the need to hire staffers of all sort of ethic backgrounds, the effort seems to be mainly focused on recruiting staffers of Hispanic origin, in large part because Hispanics have become nationally and in nearly every state the fastest growing minority population.

As an editor, I was -- and still am -- a strong supporter of every effort to make newsrooms more diverse in gender, race, ethnicity and sexual preference. I firmly believe that if a newspaper is going to effectively serve its community, it must strive to reflect that community's demographic make up. Yes, it's a difficult task, made even more so in recent years as newspapers have slipped into their financial morass that has led to staff reductions and frozen or reduced salaries, making it more difficult to recruit staffers of all sorts.

Nonetheless, the efforts must continue and, in fact, should be expanded beyond just cold demographics into an area of diversity that I am not sure has really been given anywhere near enough consideration to this point.

For lack of a better term, I will call it "experiential" diversity.

To date, the common thread throughout the various diversity drives has been the idea that gender, racial and ethic staff gaps must be filled by "qualified graduates" of college journalism programs. A mantra that ignores the fact that many of the best journalists this country has ever known never even went to college, much less graduated with degrees in journalism. Once upon a time -- including during the "heydays" of American newspaper in the '20s and '30s when nearly every major city had two, three, four or even more daily newspapers competing for dominance -- a large number of staffers started out as copy clerks who, in many instances, weren't even high school graduates. They learned the journalism craft from the ground up. They understood the news interests of the ordinary citizens of the communities their newspapers served because they were products of those communities and reflected them well.

I am not saying that newspapers need return to the days of hiring non-college grads and training them from the ground up. However, I do believe that to fully reflect and understand their communities, newspapers do need to give greater consideration to hiring staffers who didn't merely graduate from high school, go off to college to major in journalism and then offer themselves on the job market. Newspapers need to give greater consideration in hiring to a job candidate's background of life and educational experience.

Here's a for instance. If you are an editor, take a look around your newsroom. How many military veterans do you see, particularly among those staffers who are not creeping close to retirement and keeping in mind that after a decade of war in two countries we have more vets now than at anytime since the end of the Vietnam War?

When I retired as editor of The Monitor in McAllen, Texas, a few months ago, one of the things that worried the bejesus out of me was that fact that when I departed the staff, there wouldn't be a single person left who had ever served in the military. This worried me for a number of reasons, one of the most significant being that the area of deep South Texas The Monitor serves has one of the highest per capita population percentages of veterans in the nation and a substantial portion of them are subscribers. I can't even count the numbers of times over my nearly 12 years as editor that I caught potentially embarrassing mistakes regarding the military before they got into print. Granted some of them might seem, particularly to non-veterans, fairly inconsequential -- like referring to a former Marine as a soldier -- but to the many former Marines in our community, such a reference would be considered the sort of slap in the face that could shake their faith in the paper at a time when we can ill-afford to lose public confidence on any level.

My concern over the presence of veterans in newsrooms was brought home to me again this morning as I watched a news report on one of our local TV stations. A teenage Mexican national was arrested before crossing one of the local border bridges after apparently getting cold feet on a attempt to smuggle a hand grenade back into Mexico. He was seen tossing the device into a dumpster at a Whataburger just this side of the border and was arrested. In her report, the TV reporter referred to the grenade as "a dud." Which to me, as a veteran, would suggest that the suspect pulled the pin, tossed the grenade into the dumpster and it failed to go off. Most veterans know that a "dud," by definition, is an explosive device that fails to detonate. My guess is that the grenade was a "dummy," not a dud. A dummy grenade has no explosive charge. It is typically filled with sand instead of gunpowder and is used as training device to teach GI's how to throw a grenade without the risk of  doing something stupid and blowing their hand off. Consequently, I concluded that not only was the grenade a dummy, but so, too, was the TV reporter, who might have known better had she ever served in the military. What's more, she might have been saved the embarrassment had someone at her station been able to point out the difference between a dud and a dummy grenade.

The problem with life experience among today's news staffers, however, goes beyond merely how many have been in the military. How many have ever worked in a factory? How many have ever worked on a farm? How many have a physical handicap that does not impede their ability to gather information and write or edit copy and design pages? How many have ever had experience in any of the multitude of occupations filled by the people we expect to read our papers and trust us to understand what makes them tick and what is important news to them?

Unfortunately, many of the people who are involved in the employment process for America's newsrooms engage in a form of hiring snobbery. They are unwilling to "take a chance" on candidates who didn't have the right type of internships or no internships in college, or who didn't go to a "quality" journalism school, or who didn't even graduate from college but have been working perhaps for a couple of years on a weekly, or who got their training through one of the military's journalist training programs rather than from a college or university, or who display a strong desire for an opportunity to become a newspaper staffer despite having no training of any sort in the craft but, nonetheless, possess an ability to write and gather information.

For example, about a month or so before I retired, we posted a job opening for a copy editor/page designer, one of the toughest positions to fill at any newspaper.  Among the applications we received was one from a woman who was in the military. She had been trained in one of the military's journalist programs and had been working for several years as a copy editor/page designer for a military base newspaper. I wanted us to give her a serious look, but met resistance from some of my newsroom managers who felt that the military journalist training and the years of working for a base newspaper were not adequate. While we wrangled over that, she was hired by another newspaper that was more willing to take a chance and where, I am reasonably sure, she likely is performing up to expectations and preventing stupid mistakes regarding the military from getting into print.

Of course, there have been some noble efforts aimed at bringing people with possibilities but no formal journalism training into the newspaper business.

One of those was undertaken by Thomson Newspapers as part of it's broader Readership Inc. project that died when Thomson Corp. sold off its U.S. newspaper holdings in 2000. As part of the project, the company established a training program under which the newspapers would identify potential journalist candidates from among ordinary people in their communities who had a strong interest in becoming journalists and possessed decent spelling and grammar skills and displayed some rudimentary skills in information gathering and writing. The candidates could have been housewives, hair dresser, carpenters, bus drivers, teachers or factory workers. Those selected were to be sent to a training site where they would undergo an intensive, crash course of journalism training. Upon successful completion of that course, they were to be sent back to the newspaper that selected them where their training would continue under the watchful eyes of trained staff mentors. It was an innovative idea that could have yielded some potentially outstanding journalists who possessed a background of life experience and understanding outside the newspaper business.

Unfortunately, the Thomson training program concept didn't have a life beyond the sale of the papers and, considering the financial condition of most newspaper groups today, it is not too likely that anyone else will pickup on the idea and run with it.

That, however, does not mean newspapers should just ignore experiential diversity. Instead, if they hope to continue to be as relevant as possible to the communities they serve, they need to embrace the concept and value of experiential diversity as much as they do diversity in gender, race and ethnicity.

 

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Blog Readers: If you enjoy reading my postings here on The Ancient Newspaper Editor, I sure would appreciate if you'd consider subscribing to or following the blog. It's easy to do and there are several options for doing so. If you look on the right side rail, you'll see the "Subscribe to" buttons and a "Subscribe by email" button. Just click any of those and follow the instructions. If you are a Google+ user you can click on the "Follow" button right under my profile picture and follow the instructions. Or, you can click on the "Google+ Add to Circles" button next to my photo and add me to your circles and get notifications of new blog entries when I post them. Also, please share the blog with your friends and colleagues.  Thanks for giving this consideration.

 

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Your thoughts and/or comments are welcomed.