What I don't understand about the newspaper biz

In the recent meltdown of the newspaper business I have been struggling to understand the thinking of those at the top. You know, the boys who run the shops, set the tone, steer the ship, pick your favorite analogy.

Recently, reporters and editors (and ad folks) have been learning whether or not management anticipates a place for them in the new Booth system.

From the reviews I have received there are two separate - and wildly different messages - being delivered.

For employees that the company would like to hang onto, the message is "we want you to stay and as soon as we clean out some of the deadwood I think we're going to do just fine."

For a second set of employees, those the company wants to depart, a curious other message is delivered: "You know, things look very bad, we may already be dead and not know it, there is just no place for you here, yada, yada, yada."

So either we're going to be fine or we're dead reporters walking. Depends on how much you are favored or not.

But to get back to what I don't understand about the news biz of today.

In my more cooperative moments in my final years I once sat down in a quiet office (an office for a time known as "the cone of silence" - a Get Smart reference for those over 50) with the managing editor at the Flint Journal and offered my frustrations and ideas. The biggest idea I tried to get across to him is the idea that it never works to pound a square peg into a round hole. (I even used that cliche).

When you are the boss or editor, and admittedly I only have a couple years of my 30-year career where that was true, the most important thing you can do is to know the talents and limitations of your staff.

Once you know where an individual is strong, the position in which they thrive, the best thing any good manager can do is to turn them loose and leave them alone.

When I was editor of The State News, I once hired a reporter who frequently referred to editors as "goat brained." And because I was the editor that approved his hiring, I was the biggest "goat brain" of them all at that time.

Later when he and I were reporters at the Flint Journal he would often refer to his editors as "goat brained" and I would just smile. Not because I was offended by what he had once called me, but by the realization that he was one of the best reporters and writers I had ever known.

Unfortunately, some of his bosses couldn't get past the idea that the reporter thought they were "goat brains." When I was an editor I couldn't care less what a reporter thought of me or editors in general, all I was interested in was good, clean copy on a story that would knock the socks off my readers.

Good reporters are full of ego, they are aggressive, they are cynical (in a good way) and they have little tolerance for following blind authority or being cowered by it. Many are eccentrics who keep strange hours and have strange habits. That's all a part of what makes them good reporters.

Heck, I once faced off in a newsroom in an angry and public confrontation with the current managing editor. It had to do with a violent disagreement over a story I had written about the in-school slaying of a first-grade girl student by a first-grade male student in 2000. It was a story I had been working on for three weeks and a story that had drawn international attention.

A lot of us were working our butts off keeping ahead of the story as it unfolded and nerves were frayed and tempers were short and frankly the editor just lit my fuse.

I still don't remember what I said to the editor, but one of my friends said I threatened to "kick his..." well you know.

We didn't speak for nearly two years, although I did apologize to him for, well, you know, the "kick your...." remark.

For my money any newsroom that doesn't have a reporter versus editor explosion at least once every two weeks is not worth working in. But as corporate journalism has moved into the room, less of that is tolerated. Too bad too, because it was that kind of passion that made newspapers good and fun to read.

Now we have plastic editors who talk about "writing with authority," and think that passes for inspired leadership. Well, not so much in my opinion. I had a couple of great editors with whom I frequently clashed, but it was never personal and they helped me to be a better writer and reporter and they never took what I said or did personally. Nor did I hold a grudge that they asked me to "get lost for awhile" or other not so endearing comments. It was all part of a creative process.

Realizing that there was little tolerance for head to head battles, in my last years I played a kind of journalistic "rope-a-dope" where I just played the Paul Newman character in "Cool Hand Luke" where I settled into a cooperative and docile position and just did what I was told all the time (well most of the time), waiting, like Luke did in the Newman movie, for my moment to escape.

It didn't result in better journalism, but it did lower my blood pressure a lot.

The point is that some writers love and are good at breaking news, while others prefer the dogged work of investigating a story over a long period of time, and yet others like to dig into a good feature and put together prose that sings. Making a thoroughbred racehorse pull a plow, or a plow horse run a horse race makes no sense, and neither does constantly playing to a person's weakness or making a feature writer cover breaking news.

Unfortunately, the new management style is to force everyone into a newsroom jobs bank where everyone does everything, talents and strengths be darned. It's like a word assembly line and while that works in manufacturing areas, in the field of writing and creating, not as well. Many folks have learned to adapt, but I know that many great investigative stories will not be done because of it.

When the newspaper tires went flat and the first buyout was offered several years ago, a number of talented folks left. But the same leaders who guided the paper to its sorry condition stayed put.

Then last year, another round of buyouts sheared off a larger number of veteran reporters and editors. But yet, the management remained, untouched and firmly in place.

Again this year, another round of buyouts is proposed to further cut those who produce copy and ads for the paper, while seemingly leaving intact much of the upper level management that exists.

Is anyone at Newhouse awake? Or are they simply protecting their "phony-baloney" jobs (a Blazing Saddles reference for those over 45). What is this plan? To limp along for another year or two until more of the top management can retire. Cutting the meat of a business while leaving the skeleton makes no sense, at least not to me.

And if changes in those areas finally come (and I understand that some big management changes may be coming) mark my words, there will be no forced exit for those folks. New places, good places, will be found for them whether they are competent to fill them, or not, and so those who are responsible for some of the current woes will somehow come out on top.

Somewhere, sometime those who have been at the helm should also face the same fate as those they have so poorly led.

But don't count on it.