Right Place, Wrong Time   

Now that they've reached the peak of their profession, today's newspaper editors are having to learn to live with diminished expectations.

Like many top editors, Mark Nadler can remember scrambling his way up the newsroom ladder, grousing and grumbling with the best of them, dreaming of the day when he'd take over and things would change.

Now Nadler has taken over, moving from the St. Paul Pioneer Press to become executive editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, and things have changed all right. Just not the way he anticipated.

For Nadler and other new editors around the country, the grim economic climate has tempered grand ambitions and deflated the exhilaration of reaching a career pinnacle. Their dreams of directing bold investigations and spawning imaginative new sections have yielded, all too often, to draining days and nights coping with layoffs, salary freezes and space cutbacks.

"Fifteen years ago," Nadler recalls, "when I thought about being a senior editor at a big paper, you thought about the job almost in religious terms. You were going to be there protecting the First Amendment and the people's right to know and advancing the cause of social justice. You defined the job in those terms.

"Now, for most of us the priority is that we're putting out a consumer product every day and trying to find ways to make it useful and worthwhile enough that consumers will want to buy it."

Maxwell King, who succeeded Eugene Roberts nearly two years ago as head of the Philadelphia Inquirer newsroom, says the defining characteristic of his tenure has been endless grappling with economic woes.

"It's been the relentless quality of it, week after week, month after month," King says, "struggling to make the right decision and keep the staff committed to those decisions and believing we're trying to do the right thing."

The worst experience, for those editors forced into it, has been laying off colleagues. "There have been people who we've asked to leave," Nadler says, "where in different times we would have said, 'We'll stick them in another job or make some accommodation and live with it.' Now, we can't afford to live with it. But it's really tough to sit across the desk from somebody, knowing their family situation, knowing they have kids in school, and knowing the prospects of finding another job that pays like this one."

Still, for all the frustrations, few editors despair, and many use the same word – "Pollyanna" – to describe their optimism about having fun and moving forward even in bad times.

Never Enough

For many editors, scarcity is a fact of life. "There are three givens in every newsroom, no matter what the economic climate is," explains Linda Grist Cunningham, who became executive editor at the Rockford Register Star in Illinois last May. "First, you never have enough time to get it done. Second, you never have enough resources to get it done. And third, you never have enough support to get it done. I've been accused of being a Pollyanna, but my attitude has always been, 'Oh, hell, let's get it done anyway.' "

Douglas Clifton, executive editor at the Miami Herald since March 1991, agrees. "I've been in this business during the flushest of times and the not-so-flushest of times, and I've always found there were constraints of some sort. So it comes down to applying creative solutions to your problems."

At the Anniston Star in Alabama, where Joe Distelheim took over as executive editor nearly two years ago, an understanding staff has helped.

"I remember the day that I had to stand up and announce a wage freeze," says Distelheim, who had been at the Detroit Free Press before joining the Star. "I expected grapefruits to come flying at me. But later, people said, 'Gee, we were expecting maybe worse.' "

At the Tulsa Tribune, Mary Hargrove, who two years ago jumped from another news position at the Tribune to managing editor for projects, finds solace in small steps forward.

"I'm hearing from my reporters all the things I used to say: 'If I were in charge I would do X, so why don't we do X?' " Hargrove says. "The way you survive is, you have to scale back your dreams, but you put a version of them out there, and you hope that down the line you can put them more fully into place."

While all the editors interviewed have had to administer cutbacks, they cite changes and innovations achieved by taking advantage of their honeymoon period and reallocating existing resources. Many even express qualified gratitude that the tough conditions have forced newspapers to set priorities and trim fat.

"It really is helpful to tell people that we have to find ways to do what we want without simply running up the roster of employees, and that makes us more disciplined, which is good," says Robert Kaiser, who became the Washington Post's managing editor last September. "But it's a pain in the neck, too, and I don't want to romanticize it."

The pain, as Kaiser terms it, is inflicted not only by newsroom cutbacks themselves, but also by the pressures of having to enforce the cuts, especially as a relative newcomer to running a newsroom.

Cole C. Campbell, for example, took over last August as managing editor of the Virginian-Pilot and Ledger-Star in Norfolk. "As a new managing editor," he says, "I am required to learn the organization, to run the organization, and to change the organization, all at the same time. The rate of change 10 years ago, the expectations of change, were a lot less."

Because editors can't abide standing pat, they must make their changes by juggling existing resources and without major hiring splurges.

"We are not not doing things," says Anniston's Distelheim. "But we're doing things more cheaply."

Distelheim also has been using his resources more creatively. By dropping little-used syndicated and freelance material, for example, his paper freed up money to redesign and improve its weekend entertainment guide.

In Chicago, Nadler chose to funnel new writers and desk people into the sports department at the expense of other newsroom needs. And the Sun-Times has managed to launch a weekly section on health and fitness without any new hires.

But all the editors concede that reallocation ratchets up the work load for an already burdened staff. It also can pit departments against one another in competition for meager resources. When she gets the rare chance for a new hire in Rockford, Cunningham says, she must resort to "little bidding wars" forcing department heads to compete for the spots.

"We really do keep loading the work onto people," says Nadler. "It means a lot of stress."

Keep On Keepin' On

Despite the Sturm und Drang, most editors remain eager to tackle such challenges, displaying the problem-solving attitudes that probably gained them promotions in the first place. Most admit to occasional or chronic exasperation and wish they had taken over in more robust times, but stress they wouldn't trade jobs with anyone.

"I feel good more than I feel awful," says Miami's Clifton, "and when I feel awful it doesn't have much to do with the economy."

Or as the Sun-Times' Nadler says, "On balance, I'm still doing the job that 15 years ago I was hoping I would get a chance to do. And most days the kicks that I get out of it still far outweigh the problems we're going through."

For all their chin-up buoyancy, most editors express profound concern about the long-term risks of giving in to economic tribulation. While willing to loyally lead their newsrooms through the lean years, they acknowledge that they must constantly push the boundaries.

"The real danger is lowering your sights," observes Nadler. "It's very easy to settle and say this is the way it is and we aren't going to get more money or more people and we're going to have to live with that. But we are no different from any other business. If you stand still, you die."

So editors consider it part of their job to lobby their publishers and owners tenaciously for more resources.

At the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Managing Editor Mary Jo Meisner, in the position since January 1991, brought staff editors in on the planning. Working with the circulation department, they brainstormed on how to convince the publisher to restore some editorial space. Eventually, the efforts paid off: The paper canceled its earliest afternoon edition and, in effect, used the saved newsprint to return space to other editions.

"You look back at those times when you weren't at the head of the pack and wish you had been managing editor in the late '70s or early '80s, when things were booming," Meisner says. "It must have been easier then. Now, you have to be creative."

And persistent.

"You have to keep pestering and keep nagging and telling them, 'Well, it's lousy times but we really do need to do some things,' " says the Anniston Star's Distelheim.

"I certainly continue to fight [for resources], though I will pick my battles," Cunningham says. "I look at journalists as a group, and I just can't imagine any of us rolling over and playing dead about this. It's just not in our natures."

When WJR reached Hargrove, the Tulsa Tribune editor was doing something radical: She was writing a story.

Hargrove has restructured her job to do less managing and more writing. When she became managing editor she intended to hire and direct teams of advanced reporters. "But," she says, "I'm not getting those people because of the cutbacks and the size of the paper, so I just decided, I'll do it myself..."

Hargrove worries that the tendency to go for the "quick fix" – getting by on skimpy resources and less ambitious reporting – has led newspapers to compromise on quality. "The good news is, you know it's a shared experience all around the country," she says. "The fear is, will we ever get it back?" l