The Inquirer's Midlife Crisis   

The departure of Gene Roberts, budget pressure from parent Knight-Riudder and an aging staff have the once-glamorous Philadelphia paper searching for a new identity.

David Zucchino was restless. He'd been at the Philadelphia Inquirer for 14 years. He'd been a key player during the glory days when Gene Roberts, the Inquirer's worshipped executive editor, gave reporters money, time and freedom in exchange for their best work.

Zucchino had thrived under Roberts, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for feature writing in South Africa. He'd written countless projects and collected numerous awards. He'd reported from three of the paper's six foreign bureaus. But some of his friends, with similar track records, were leaving the Inquirer. At 43, Zucchino was facing his own midlife crisis.

Last summer, he sent a note to Roberts, then the newly named managing editor of the New York Times. Roberts had left the Inquirer four years before but was still sorely missed. Zucchino toyed with the idea of once again working for Roberts, widely considered one of the great editors in American journalism. Roberts was interested. After some discussions, Roberts offered Zucchino a job as a national correspondent.

It was a tough call. Zucchino is married with three young daughters, a house, a mortgage and a comfortable life in Philadelphia. It would be exhilarating to work for Roberts again and have the influence of journalism's most prestigious institution behind him. But it wouldn't be easy to leave the Inquirer and Philadelphia. Besides, top Inquirer management was determined not to let it happen. The paper had already lost some key people; it could not afford to lose Zucchino.

"Zuke is the marquee player," says Robert J. "Rosey" Rosenthal, 46, an associate managing editor who's been at the paper 15 years. "As good as other people are, he's one of the best reporters working in the country. He reflects the sort of paper Roberts created. If he'd have left, it would have been a terrible, wounding blow to me, the paper and the morale."

Zucchino stayed.

"Giving up the opportunity to work for Roberts and the impact, scope and visibility the New York Times has, that was hard to turn down," Zucchino says. At the same time, he didn't have to move his family, and he received both a big raise and a promise that he would become the Inquirer's roving international reporter.

"We convinced him that he could continue to do the kind of journalism that he's good at here," says Editor Maxwell E.P. King, Roberts' successor. "The journalism that he's good at exemplifies what the Inquirer has stood for and still stands for: very, very thorough, substantive, sophisticated explanatory journalism. That's us. And that's Dave."

More important, Zucchino stayed because he sensed the paper was finally emerging from a rough four years. By staying he sent a message to the uneasy staff that, despite disturbing defections, it made sense to remain at the Inquirer.

The Inquirer in the '90s is struggling to redefine itself. The golden era, when Roberts assigned reporter Mark Bowden to study the plight of the black rhino for seven months and kept stacks of hundred dollar bills handy for reporters working on big stories, is over.

During Roberts' tenure, the paper won nearly a score of Pulitzers and a national reputation for quality journalism. It remains a strong, solid, largely well-written metropolitan newspaper, still ranked among the nation's elite. But budget constraints, a loss of 18 editorial staff positions since 1988, a smaller newshole, competition from television and suburban papers, and a changing corporate climate are making it tough to preserve the Roberts legacy.

"The Inquirer is having a midlife crisis," says Zucchino, who writes often about the impact of drugs on the inner city. "We can't decide whether to get the toupee or the red convertible."

The Inquirer, once a paper few considered leaving, has been through a kind of newspaper hell in the last four years that provided staffers plenty of reasons to send out resumés and network with old friends.

People began saying the paper was adrift, that it had lost its edge, that it wasn't as good as when the sainted Roberts presided. The fact that it hasn't won a Pulitzer since Roberts stepped down has hurt the paper's stature.

Top talent began to go elsewhere after Roberts departed to teach at the University of Maryland College of Journalism (he's on a three-year leave while at the Times). Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner William K. Marimow left for Baltimore's Sun; others headed for the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. The recession hit Philadelphia hard; advertising plummeted. Circulation has been falling for nearly a decade. An intermittent five-year hiring freeze sapped spirits as management asked those who stayed to do more while failing to replace many who left.

At the same time, merit raises disappeared. A $300 million printing plant that opened in late 1992 initially created more production problems than it promised to solve. And last fall, the paper began an experimental one-hour newscast that relies on staff for a nightly version of the next day's newspaper (see "Ready for Prime Time?" page 27).

"Take any one of these things in the newsroom and it'll have reverberations," says Executive Editor James M. Naughton, a major player during the Roberts years. "Take it all together and it's a marvelous thing we are not crazy."

Gene Roberts, then 58, left the Inquirer in October 1990, but his presence still haunts the place. He's like the John F. Kennedy of journalism, a figure whose legend grows even larger as years pass. A few at the paper view him critically; most are adoring. He inspired and demanded tremendous loyalty. Everyone still talks about Roberts: his Buddha-like silences, his inability to remember names, his absentmindedness – and his unfailing eye and enthusiasm for good stories.

"Ninety percent of what Gene did was create a mystique that this was a special place to work," says reporter Marc Duvoisin. "Thereby, he was able to attract and keep a lot of very talented people." The editor's departure, in the wake of epic struggles over money with P. Anthony Ridder – president of Knight-Ridder, the Inquirer's owner – was a crushing blow.

"The last thing Gene said was, 'This will always be my paper,' " Rosenthal recalls. "I burst into tears and I was not the least bit embarrassed." There was no reason to be; scores of others wept with him. The paper spent $45,000 for a seven-hour going-away party for Roberts.

Roberts came to the Inquirer in 1972 from the New York Times, where he'd been national editor. John Knight had persuaded him to take charge of a newspaper that, before Knight acquired it in 1970 from Walter S. Annenberg, had been mediocre at best. Roberts began recruiting bright, young, talented people and teaching them the art of the long, explanatory takeout, the Roberts hallmark.

"We were very clear what our mission was," says former Inquirer reporter Carol Horner, whom Roberts hired in 1979 and who left last fall to become an editor at the Wall Street Journal. "We were doing the best damn journalism we could possibly do in the world, second to none. We didn't always achieve it, but we went after it."

James Asher, now at the Sun in Baltimore, says the Inquirer during Roberts' heyday was the epicenter of great American journalism. The newsroom took on the air of a fraternity. Wild parties and elaborate pranks – like the time Naughton let 46 frogs loose in Roberts' office to commemorate the 46th birthday of the editor nicknamed "the frog" – enhanced the legend. Horner tells of smuggling a live camel onto a freight elevator and then leading it into Roberts' office, much to the amazement of some visiting consultants from Boston.

"It was so much fun," recalls Rosenthal, who left the Boston Globe in December 1979 to join the Inquirer. "We partied every night.... We played touch football. We worked all night. It was an incredible time."

And they were rewarded. By the time Rosenthal arrived in 1979, the once-lowly Inky had already won five Pulitzers and gained national attention for investigative stories and coverage of the Middle East. But the atmosphere became headier still as the paper carried out its secret plan to overtake the long-dominant Bulletin. In 1982, the newspaper known for its New Yorker ads proclaiming "In Philadelphia Nearly Everybody Reads the Bulletin" went out of business.

"I remember the day after the Bulletin folded that Gene Roberts stood on a desk in the newsroom and announced he was opening six foreign bureaus," says former Inquirer reporter Vernon Loeb, 38, who joined the paper at 23. "It was an electric day. We all knew the Inquirer was making a quantum leap into greatness."

Roberts went on a hiring spree. When he took over in 1972, there were 250 people on the editorial staff. In 1988 it peaked at 530, 18 higher than the current total. In 1982 alone, the newsroom staff increased by 80 after the Bulletin's demise.

"Roberts was like a warlord," says Richard Aregood, Pulitzer-winning editorial page editor of the Philadelphia Daily News, Knight-Ridder's gritty tabloid. "This was his territory. He did pretty much what he wanted. Then Knight-Ridder started to become more a corporation on the standard model of corporations rather than on the Knight model."

While Roberts was flourishing, so was Tony Ridder, a scion of the Ridder family that had merged its newspapers with the Knights' in 1974. After nine years as publisher of Knight-Ridder's San Jose Mercury News, Ridder took over in 1986 as president of the nation's second largest newspaper company, moving to Knight-Ridder's Miami headquarters.

Although neither Ridder nor Roberts would comment on their relationship, it is widely believed that they fought bitterly over how the Inquirer was to be run, each wanting more control. "Gene built his credibility on creating this paper and being the editor of it," says Rosenthal. "The last few years before he left he was, for the most part, fending off financial issues, making sure his paper, his reporters, his editors were protected from Miami. A lot of energy went into that and he was worn out."

Roberts was succeeded by Harvard-educated Maxwell King, who'd worked at the paper since 1972. "Max is a nice guy, probably a good editor," says Stuart Bykofsky of the Daily News. "But he doesn't have the budget and he doesn't have the authority and he probably never will. Gene Roberts was God. Max King is not."

King faced the unenviable task of following a living legend. "You have to feel sorry for Max," says Inquirer columnist Steve Lopez. "Nobody loves this paper as much as Max, yet he's constantly measured against Gene. Max doesn't have the advantage Gene did of coming in and making improvements. Max has to stick his finger in the dike and keep things from collapsing. It's a much more difficult job to look good in."

King, 50, was hired during the regime of Roberts' predecessor, John McMullan, who took over the Inquirer after Knight acquired it and cleaned out much of the dead wood. But King grew up under Roberts' tutelage and says he is wedded to continuing Roberts' brand of journalism. King, who was the paper's senior vice president for marketing and distribution when he was promoted, may be better able to work with Miami, says Associate Managing Editor Fran Dauth.

"The staff worries whether Max can protect them from Knight-Ridder the way Gene did," says Dauth, a 12-year veteran. "Maybe Max can do it better because he has a relationship with Tony. They're not adversaries."

King and Ridder talk regularly. When King learned AJR was going to interview Ridder, King checked in with the company president that evening to see how the interview had gone. Shortly afterward, King called AJR to make sure he and Ridder had provided the same figures about budget and staff.

King is the first to admit he's not Gene Roberts. "Gene was the master of finding the side door or the back door to come in on a subject," says King, "and I generally go in the front door." There's no Max mystique either. For one thing, King knows reporters' names. He sends "Maxgrams" complimenting them on stories, something Roberts rarely did.

"I think I had four conversations with Gene Roberts the whole time he was here," says feature writer Karen Heller, who joined the staff in 1986. "Max, on the other hand, is much more accessible.... I had to work up the courage to talk to Gene."

What Roberts did was create a culture of creative freedom. But he did it as a benevolent dictator. Roberts' top management team – acolytes King, Jim Naughton, Steve Lovelady and Gene Foreman – are said to have spent more time trying to figure out what Roberts wanted than making their own decisions. "The image was of some priest opening up sheep entrails and making some pronouncement," says Denver correspondent Dan Meyers. "Then you had everyone else trying to figure out what the priest meant."

Roberts hoped King would succeed him, insiders say, but he failed to groom a cadre of leaders ready to move in when he moved out. "It was like the breakup of the old Soviet Union..," says Meyers. "When that leader goes, no one really knows how to run the country."

Naughton calls the notion that Roberts' inner circle didn't make their own decisions "dead wrong. My job has changed in some modest dimension under Max from what it was under Gene. But I'm doing essentially the same things in essentially the same ways with essentially the same kinds of people."

In the four years since Roberts left, King has slowly taken the reins. He has endeavored to decentralize power, build a management team and move decision making down the line. The top-heavy masthead, he says, reflects this. Under Roberts, only three names were on the masthead; now there are 12.

"What has occurred, which looks like title inflation, is Max is a very inclusive leader," says Naughton, who came to the paper 17 years ago from the New York Times. "Decisions once made by Gene Roberts are now more often the product of six or eight people being involved. It's a difference in style, not a different result."

While King wants to spread power among his team, the perception pervasive in the crumbling newsroom – where ceiling tiles fall and rodents occasionally scurry – is that the real power is held by Tony Ridder in Miami.

Even if Roberts were still at the paper, says the Daily News' Aregood, he wouldn't have the freedom he did in the 1970s and '80s. "Gene left because it wasn't the paper he wanted it to be anymore," says Lopez. "The business has changed. Decisions in the newsroom are made for business rather than editorial considerations. It's the company and the industry, not Gene or Max."

Horner says this plays out in subtle ways. "Once on an admittedly difficult investigation I wanted to pursue, I was told, 'We don't go wandering into a morass,' " she says. "Well, that's the kind of thing we used to do all the time."

Ridder demurs. "There's no difference than when Gene Roberts was there," he says. "Since I moved to Miami, I don't think I've had less of a hand than I do now."

Yet according to a report commissioned last fall by the Inquirer and Daily News' parent, Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. (PNI), Knight-Ridder has such a strong hand that PNI's management spends too much time worrying about Knight-Ridder and not enough promoting the papers and gaining readers.

"With KR as the customer, the focus is on serving KR," says the report by Design Learning. "This results in everyone managing upward to ensure self-preservation at the expense of enhancing the total organization, while simultaneously creating unrealistic expectations for KR in an effort to please Miami."

King praises Knight-Ridder for staying out of news decisions. When it comes to the budget, King would like what Roberts used to demand: a long-term budget that wouldn't be changed. Instead, what often happens is the annual budget is revisited and adjusted according to revenues.

"There is a lot of oversight [from Miami]..," says King, "and a lot of re-budgeting, and that does impact the effectiveness of the newsroom. The constant re-budgeting has a negative impact on a newsroom."

Although he won't directly criticize Knight-Ridder, Roberts made his views clear when asked how the New York Times and Knight-Ridder management differ. "The principal difference in working for the Times," says Roberts, his slow Southern drawl making note-taking a breeze, "is that it makes a long-range budgetary commitment to excellence. While it has to weather some financial problems like all institutions, it basically keeps a steady course in all weather and does not take the staff or space up and down like an accordion depending on revenues."

Out of all the budgetary turmoil comes the perception that the Inquirer has lost its edge. "Part of it is the notion that with Gene gone, the paper would logically diminish," says King. "The second reason is a number of people have left and some of them left because they weren't happy about their prospects here. The third reason, obviously, is because we haven't won any Pulitzers." (See "The Pulitzer Pall," page 23.)

A number of reporters, among them Tim Weiner, Katherine Seelye and Matthew Purdy, left during the last few years to join the New York Times, which traditionally has recruited from the Inquirer, even in the Roberts days.

Baltimore's Sun lured away William Marimow, a 21-year veteran and Roberts protege, in April 1993 to become associate managing editor. James Asher left the Inquirer after a dozen years to become the Sun's city editor and Gary Cohn left in the fall of 1993 to be a business reporter there. Fredric Tulsky, a 14-year veteran who shared a Pulitzer for investigative reporting, left 15 months ago.

"Once Gene left it was no longer fun," says Tulsky, who now directs the Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco. "The thing about Gene was he was a risk taker. He knew that to have a great paper you had to be willing to fail."

The losses of Tulsky and Marimow were particularly painful blows, says reporter Vernon Loeb, who left in December to join the Washington Post. "Quite frankly," he says, "I don't think [the paper's] investigative capabilities have been sufficiently brought back since their departure."

For some still at the paper, it's difficult to accept the end of the intoxicating days when the Inquirer had so many reporters that management could turn countless staffers loose for months without missing them. "One of the things that happened to us is we were used to having so much money and having so many people," says Features Editor Lorraine Branham. "If somebody was off on a project for six months, it was no big deal. Then suddenly to not have it when the recession hit was traumatic."

It's hard for those who flourished under Roberts' free-spending approach to grapple with the cutbacks virtually all newspapers are confronting in the '90s. "We all did very, very, very well," says Art Howe, another Pulitzer winner who moved on to become publisher of his own string of Pennsylvania weeklies. "It was an unbelievable playpen for a lot of great writers."

But the playpen has been folded up and stored in the Inquirer's attic alongside scrapbooks of 120-inch stories. Now pieces tend to be shorter, although reporters at many papers would kill for the opportunities available at the Inquirer today. The paper still has plenty of 60-inch stories and massive projects. Nonetheless, veterans continue to mourn.

"Because a lot of people have left and the staff isn't as big and we don't have the resources that we once had, it's just not what it used to be," says Lopez, who turned down an offer from the Times.

Circulation and advertising are both down. In 1983, the Inquirer Sunday circulation was just over a million; it has declined slowly if steadily since, dropping to around 938,000 last year. Figures released in November indicate the Inquirer lost 7,569 in daily circulation in the six months prior to September 1994, bringing the total to 479,000.

With two-thirds of its readers in the suburbs, the paper is struggling to keep them happy while trying to boost single-copy sales in the city. Competition from television, cable, national papers, and 12 suburban dailies, as well as the lively, Philly-flavored Daily News, means the Inquirer is in a tough fight to hold on to its numbers.

One recent attempt to stimulate circulation fell flat. To the embarrassment of the newsroom, Robert J. Hall, publisher of the Inquirer and the Daily News, encouraged staff last fall to help boost circulation by selling subscriptions in exchange for a bonus of $25 per sale (see Free Press, December 1994).

And advertising remains a problem, with revenue just beginning to recover. "Advertising revenues for 1993 were about $52 million less than in 1989," Hall says. "Does that give you an idea of how bad things have been?"

Today the Inquirer staff is leaner, the newshole smaller. King says the total number of staff members and non-staff contributors has shrunk by 4 percent since 1990 and the newshole, cut by 5 percent in the late '80s, has remained flat.

Ridder says things aren't that bleak. "Our total newsroom spending has gone up every year without fail," he says. "The percentage of newsroom spending to revenue has gone up steadily over the last five years... Even when profits were falling, we were not going to cut expenses to match falling revenue."

King says there have been cutbacks on messengers, administrative travel, metro travel and meals. The feature department's expense budget has lagged behind inflation, says King, but the foreign and national desks have kept pace.

King won't provide hard budget figures. He says newsroom spending has risen 17 percent since 1989, keeping pace with inflation.

"We're still doing the same kinds of stories," says child welfare writer Martha Woodall. "But if I need a court transcript I have to jump through more hoops than ever before to get it." Part of the newsroom perception that the paper is cutting back may stem from the fact that it is asking more of people, King says. "We are doing more zoning. We're doing a lot more health and science coverage. We're doing more with features."

Familiar laments among staffers include, "It's Miami's fault" and "Tony Ridder only cares about profits, not about good journalism."

"That's pure hogwash," Ridder responds. "I would doubt there's a company in the business that was more careful about not cutting expenses than we were. They were trimmed marginally. That's what we did in Philadelphia and everywhere."

While that may be true, reporters and editors are more concerned about actual bodies in a newsroom and whether they can freely order court transcripts – not whether the ratio of newsroom spending to revenue has risen.

"One of the things that makes the loss of these people harder to take is that they're not being replaced..," says Woodall. "If you had a sense that as someone was going out the door others were coming in, it would feel better."

Gene Foreman, the deputy editor known for making the trains run on time, says that last year the paper hired 18 full time journalists. But in 1991, only two were hired.

One way to do more with less, especially in the suburbs, is to hire "correspondents," reporters who are paid less than full time staffers and get fewer benefits. A year ago, the roughly 165 correspondents voted to join the Newspaper Guild and they are still in contentious negotiations with the paper's management over their status.

Another gripe at the paper is that fewer reporters means more weekend work. That angers veteran staffers. "We are all working harder and working more weekend shifts than we used to," says reporter Marc Duvoisin. "No one is exempt. Even those who've won Pulitzers find themselves working Saturdays from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., making police checks and covering ethnic festivals."

The ambitious features department is stretched too. In 1993, King and Hall decided to create two daily sections, one for entertainment, the other for lifestyles. Because the new printing plant has earlier deadlines, writers are locked into the day's topic. If there's a breaking story, the deadlines make it virtually impossible to write stories off of the event.

But difficult deadlines shouldn't dictate content, says metro reporter George Anastasia. "I can't believe that a daily paper can't write off the news," he says. "There's a mentality that's not journalism-based that's making these decisions."

While some whine about cutbacks, many are thankful the paper continues to do distinguished journalism. The Inquirer is still considered a reporter's paper and has a fairly laid-back atmosphere for a big-city newspaper. It's telling that out of 35 people interviewed at the newspaper, only a few feared reprisal and declined to speak on the record.

"If you go back and compare front pages in October 1990 and October 1994, I think you'd find the mix is improved, the range of stories is improved and the writing is actually better in some cases," says reporter Tom Ferrick, who came to the paper in 1976. "I honestly think it's much better and more consistent than it was in the '70s."

|espite constraints, the paper still does a fair number of projects, says Duvoisin, "but maybe on a more selective basis."

The front page usually has a good mix of brightly written stories, most of them staff produced, although there's a lot of wire copy inside the A-section. On one day in November, 15 of 25 A-section stories were wire – but every front page story was staff-written. One might question why stories by staff correspondents about alleged embezzlement by the ex-president of a little-known Mississippi college or life as a caretaker in Maine during winter were on the front page. But a Zucchino piece in October, "Living by the Code: Dying by the Code," on how youths are willing to die seeking revenge against rivals, revealed much about life in the inner city.

The Metro section, even by City Editor Dave Tucker's admission, could be more lively. "The mission for Metro is to strive to be less goddamn boring, less gray, less procedural and more distinctive," says Tucker. "The story mix needs to be better." The section now bulges with crime, courts and government stories.

The paper, many agree, is in desperate need of new and young blood – for new story ideas and to shake up a complacent staff. "Our best reporters don't have some young hot dog nipping at their heels," says Assistant Managing Editor Lois Wark.

"The whole staff is in our 30s and 40s," says Heller, 38. "We are not so hip anymore."

The graying of the newsroom has affected what's in the paper, says Larry Platt, 31, who writes about the media for Philadelphia magazine. "Reading the Inquirer is akin to getting lectured by your parents," says Platt. "It's more tone and voice. By the time the Inquirer writes about something, young people roll their eyes."

Therein lies a major reason for the paper's current state. After five years of relatively little hiring, most of the editorial staff is middle-aged. The average age is 40. Many came to the paper single, driven, 10 years younger and eager to pull all-nighters. Now they're married, have kids, own houses and worry more about college tuitions than whether a story gets on the front page. "I worked until 9 p.m. last night," says Heller. "I can't do that anymore. I have an infant."

Many have been at the Inquirer for over a decade and are faced with career decisions such as, 'What next?' "I guess since so many of us are having midlife crises, we're wondering if this is what we want to do for the rest of our careers," says Branham, 41, one of the paper's few high-ranking black editors.

Some blame their angst on Roberts' departure, thinking that all would be well had their leader stayed. But not everyone. "Whether Roberts is here or not, is it a big surprise that people are restless or having midlife crises?" asks Associate Managing Editor Fran Dauth. "It's inevitable, especially for people who remained reporters."

Management's task is to retain the middle-aged staffers and keep them stimulated, says Rosenthal. "The reality is we're not the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or Washington Post," he says. "We don't have 30 bureaus... The reality is we don't have as many options. You've worked here 16 years. You've been overseas. You wonder do you want to work at the Post?"

Rosenthal was so tempted by an offer from Baltimore that his wife started house-hunting. "I stayed here because I believe in Max and I have a voice in what happens," he says. Steve Glynn, the news editor who oversees page one, turned down the New York Times, as did Zucchino.

"If I thought we here at the paper would not be able to do the kind of journalism we'd been doing," says Zucchino, "I certainly wouldn't have stayed. I'm convinced there's a commitment to that sort of journalism."

Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Tony Auth was courted by Newsday last fall but decided to remain in Philadelphia. "We're beginning to come out of an identity crisis," he says. "I'm pretty optimistic, actually. More often than not, I think when I get the paper, 'This is really good.' "

So does Roberts. He vowed when he left that he wouldn't read the Inquirer more than twice a week so he wouldn't be tempted to meddle. He still likes what he sees. "I must say, on the two days I see the paper and read it through, it seems to me the writing remains very high. The imagination going into the paper is quite high in the sense that it's not predictable," he says. "I find things I wish I had thought of here. I still get the sense that Philadelphia is being covered far, far better than most American cities are being covered. Yes, I miss it."

And the man who took his place takes a philosophical approach when he assesses the state of the erstwhile Pulitzer factory.

"All through the '80s, we were expanding, expanding, expanding and a lot of people came to feel that was the norm," Max King says. "It's not the norm. And it won't be for this newspaper or any other newspaper." l