Geneva Talks (interview)   

Geneva Overholser, one of the nation's most respected editors, stunned the newspaper world in February when she announced she was leaving the Des Moines Register. Now the Washington Post's ombudsman, Oversholser discusses the disheartening trends that plague the business she loves.

Geneva Overholser, 47, a self-described "mouthy" woman, is looking out onto the newsroom from her new perch as Washington Post ombudsman. She delightedly took the two-year job in June, four months after she stunned the newspaper world by announcing that she was stepping down as editor of the Des Moines Register.

Her life now is a far cry from her days at the Register, with the long hours, high tension and constant battles over money that characterize the life of a big time newspaper editor in the '90s. The pace is slower, the office smaller, the salary significantly lower. But she's happy, she says, to no longer take what she considers the "hush money" that editors are paid, and to have time to reflect on what's wrong with the newspaper business and what might be done to make it right – something she says she couldn't pull off in Des Moines.

As the child of an "unhappy" Presbyterian minister, Overholser moved often – three times in high school alone. Joining a school paper was her entree to a world in which she felt at home. After graduating from Wellesley and getting her masters from Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism in 1971, she went to work as a reporter for the Colorado Springs Sun.

A decade later – after a stint at the Sun, traveling with her husband, freelancing in Europe and Africa and working on Capitol Hill – she joined the Register as an editorial writer. In 1985 she won a Nieman fellowship. When Gannett bought the paper that year, she considered her ties severed. Instead of returning to Iowa, she went to work for the New York Times as an editorial writer.

In 1988, much to her surprise, Register Publisher Charles C. Edwards Jr. called her in New York and sounded her out about becoming the paper's editor. Convinced she wasn't ready, she turned him down. But after consulting with then-Nieman Curator Howard SXmons – who told her she would be crazy not to take the job – she called back and said yes.

During her tenure, Overholser became one of the nation's best-known and most respected editors. She played a major role in a series on the ordeal of an Iowa rape victim that netted the Register a Pulitzer Prize. She also presided over its retreat from statewide voice to regional newspaper.

AJR: Talk about what made you want to take the editor job. It was a huge jump from editorial writer to editor.

GO: It was a huge jump. One thing was I loved the Register and I loved Iowa. I had fallen in love with it in a kind of a way maybe you do when you are looking for home. I grew up moving all the time. I wanted to belong to something and Iowa is about belonging. The paper is a very good newspaper and Iowans care about it. It's a great place to do newspapering.

I had never sought to be an editor. Hell, you'd have to be a megalomaniac to be a woman growing up in American journalism and picture yourself being an editor. But once I was handed that notion, it did strike me that to have an opportunity like this and not even consider it is kind of crazy.

AJR: You were quoted as saying when you first got there that the paper just blew you away. What changed?

GO: Well, you know, I want to be accurate about this. I'm conscious that the paper is a really good paper and will go on continuing to be a good paper. The last thing in the world I want is for my comments somehow to cast negative light on what I think is one of America's most interesting newspapers. So this is a little bit difficult for me.

I think I am wedded to the Register as it was when I went there in a way that is not healthy for the Register or for me in 1995.... What made me sad was that of necessity we were becoming more and more a central Iowa newspaper and less and less a statewide newspaper. I understand why, but for me that cut into the heart of an institution that had meant so much to the people of Iowa and it cut into the soul of the Register's excellence.

AJR: You presided over the shrinkage of the paper from statewide to regional. Why did that happen?

GO: Those are really business decisions that are related to the fact that the reader whom advertisers are not interested in is not much more than a newsprint cost... In Iowa, what that meant was, if you lived in Dubuque or Sioux City or Council Bluffs, you'recnot of interest, understandably, to the advertiser who is really advertising for the metro area...

Somebody told me recently that 85 percent of the typical American newspaper bill is now paid by advertisers. So the reader doesn't sound very loud at the table. I think this is a too little understood fact.

AJR: So now whose voice is the loudest at the table?

GO: The business voice. It's not just louder, it's almost all you hear at the table of newspaper management. I don't want to sound like some wild-eyed '60s liberal who doesn't get business. I do get it. That's my point.

What I think we in newspapering ought to be talking about is very practical facts, like: If we operate in an era when profit pressures are as great as they are, and they are great, and I understand why – if we accept that as a fact, and if we accept the fact that, the way we have it structured now, only advertisers can pay that bill, then of course what drives the newspaper is not going to be the newsroom.

AJR: How do you work within that system given that you accept the fact that business does drive a newspaper?

GO: I believe that what we have outlined here is what became for me an untenable thing. The answer to how I worked within it was not very effectively. For me, what happened was I kept losing the battles. I didn't want to cut subscribers off who wanted the paper. I didn't want to deliver the paper to the end of the driveway instead of the doorstep. I didn't want to have the only newshole growth come in sections of the newspaper that are of particular appeal to advertisers.

One of the misconceptions about my resignation was that I somehow felt that Gannett had done a terrible thing to the Register. I'm here to tell you that Gannett is quite right when they said during that period when Geneva was editor we increased the newshole and we increased the staff. I agree we were doing good things. I think Gannett does care about the Register... But now I don't have to agonize every day about all the battles I'm losing and then go out and defend them all to the Rotary Club when I don't agree.

AJR: Still, why would you step down at this stage of your career? Maybe you could have changed things.

GO: Hah! For six-and-a-half years I sat there at those tables and made arguments. I spoke out as much as I could in the corporation... But I was like a little fly on a slumbering elephant. There was no more some way I could have changed that than the man in the moon...

You know, what I decided in the end was my problem was that I did think I could save things. I finally decided not only can I not save things but I don't have to. I can live my own life.

AJR: Did you give up?

GO: Lisa! (laughs) Probably... I gave up on trying to save the thing.

AJR: Why do you think your resignation got so much attention?

GO: Because I'm a loudmouth in an era when nobody in editing ranks says anything and because I'm one of the few women, was one of the few women, in a prominent editor's job and I was scheduled to be president of ASNE in a year. But I think the big thing is I say what I think... So I left and a lot of people identified with me. I can't tell you how much mail I got from editors saying, "Oh, the economic pressures are horrible. I can hardly stand it." And then, they'd say things at the end like, "P.S. Don't quote me."

AJR: You became emblematic of what's wrong with the newspaper industry. But I sense that's not the only reason you resigned.

GO: It is also true that there were powerful personal reasons. My personal life was in a real state of change that contributed to my leaving. I'm getting a divorce and I've come out here to begin a new chapter in my life in a number of ways, both personally and professionally.

AJR: You've been very careful to talk about the pressure from the business side in general, without singling out Gannett. Why?

GO: I think that's accurate... This is not a Gannett issue. I'll admit Gannett has been particularly good at running newspapers what they call "efficiently" – what I call with unrealistic profit expectations. I've said this to Gannett.

But I think the industry gets away with saying, "Oh, those are the bad guys." When in fact, Knight-Ridder is doing it. Thomson is doing it. The New York Times Co. is doing it. I think it's a cop-out to say it's Gannett.

If anything, Gannett should get credit for plowing a ton of money into an innovation. You don't have to like USA Today. It's not my cup of tea as a newspaper. But that was a real investment in newspapering.

AJR: Is the problem in newspapering today at all related to the purchase of family-owned newspapers by chains?

GO: That was, of course, for a long time my great frustration. Newspaper-owning families like the Cowles, who really did nurture [the Register], had a sense of noblesse oblige. The Binghams, the Sulzbergers, the Grahams – they are the newspaper families that thought it was a duty and an honor. That is a lamentable passing.

But again there were terrible newspaper-owning families that had no courage and milked those institutions. I'm not sure it's inevitable that corporations would be bad owners.

AJR: Do you think online papers will catch on?

GO: I do. But I don't think they'll supplant newspapers. I think we should be positioning ourselves though as providing information needs in as many different ways as we can. Online is one. Fax on demand is one. Audiotext is one. Repackaging travel and food writing and stuff is another one.

AJR: How do you feel in mid-career, if I may, at age 47, about newspapering now? Have you lost your passion for it?

GO: No. No. I love it. One of the reasons I wanted a job where I could be reflective about it is I haven't in any way given up on journalism or newspapering. I won't. I think newspapers ought to be the ones that handle all this great font of information. If they're not, then somebody else will and whoever that is won't have the same editing skills and won't have the same principles as mine. I think, in fact, the death of newspapers is greatly overstated. Newspapers are incredibly powerful institutions.

AJR: Let's talk about some trends I see in journalism. How do you feel about public journalism?

GO: It's great if editors that have been too arrogant are sitting around saying, "We have to care about our community." I don't have any trouble having town hall meetings. I do have trouble with some of the way it is leading journalists.

AJR: Can you be more specific?

GO: At the risk of stepping on toes here, I'm a member of the Pulitzer Board and one of the finalists for public service was the Charlotte Observer's very interesting work intended to help neighborhoods in Charlotte attack their problems... It was so untraditional that I believe it raises important questions about the readers' understanding of our role. I would say that as a reader of the Charlotte Observer, I would have read this and I would have understood that the paper was well-intentioned toward the community and I would welcome that.

But I don't think it makes good sense. Because then what happens is the paper just throws itself so fully into bringing about some kind of change with a clear attitude that somehow I wonder if the reader can trust the paper. What if something goes afoul in the process? What if new businesses are brought into the community and don't pay well? Are we going to trust that newspaper is going to be independent enough in the process to report on that?

But I don't want to piss all over public journalism. Why not think about some of their points?

AJR: There's still a relatively small number of women who are editors. Why is that? Will it ever change?

GO: Surely, it must change now. In journalism graduate schools there's a larger percentage of women. In the hiring pool these days, there are more women. But it's an odd situation. Here you have all these women at the bottom and an amazingly few at the top.

Why? It seems to be a combination of things. One of them is the same old stuff about who rises up in the operation is determined by your comfort level as you look down... It also has to do with hunger. I think a lot of women decide it's really not worth it. So are some young fathers too, so it's not just sex-linked. It isn't worth it to give that much of your life to your work...

I really saw that all the time at the Register... Time after time after time, I must have had half a dozen young women in deputy editor positions who were clearly on the route up, big time, decide to step out of those jobs into reporting or copy editing jobs because they could make it more manageable.

AJR: Do you feel that editors have to push down the thrill, the fun of newspapering now and be hard-nosed businessmen?

GO: Maybe that's what happened to me. One of the main problems of being an editor is that you go into the business because you love newspapering. And then all of a sudden you are spending 90 percent – and I'm not exaggerating – I mean 90 percent of your time being a business executive.

AJR: The line between editor and publisher is becoming thinner and thinner, isn't it?

GO: I do think of editors as sort of interchangeable MBA business types... Show me the great editors today. Show me the really inspirational figures who are the Gene Roberts and Abe Rosenthals and Ben Bradlees of the world.

AJR: So is the rise of the corporate news industry the end of the great editors?

GO: There are some great editors. Sandy Rowe at the Oregonian is an interesting editor. I think Deborah Howell [Newhouse's Washington bureau chief] is an interesting editor.

AJR: You just mentioned women. What does it take for a woman to be an interesting editor?

GO: It takes the same thing it takes for a man. You have to have a real clear sense of where you're going. You have to be willing to stick your neck out. You have to believe in your troops and back them up all the time...

When I went back there to the Register as editor, the troops never made me feel they couldn't look to a woman. I thought the sports staff was going to be horrified. But why did I think that? I'm more of a sports fan than the guy who preceded me. But you know, women do these trips on themselves.

AJR: What was the attraction of the Post job?

GO: I wanted to have a job that provided me with the ability to be reflective and also to continue to have some impact in journalism. I thought about teaching. One day I spent the morning on a campus around here and then came to this newsroom that afternoon. You feel this boom, boom, boom. And I thought, "I'm not ready to leave this."

AJR: So..are you making less money?

GO: Oh yes. Oh yeah. Big time less. Although I have no complaints. They are paying me very generously.... I really think it [editors' high pay] is kind of hush money. I made $230,000 last year. Some of it was stock options and this and that. But hell, you make this money. Editors make a lot of money. To be fair, they don't want to make the publishers unhappy. But it is a very different job from the honest-to-God, shoe-leather journalism job. It's a business executive job.

AJR: You told me you are getting divorced. Do you want to talk about what the newspaper industry does to relationships?

GO: I really think it does eat up family lives in a lot of ways.. I think I wasn't investing in my marriage as much as I might have been if I weren't in a job that ate me up. But one thing that happens in newspapering is that it's so rich and interesting and full of people whom you like a lot that you decide to spend your time there. I think I protected my time with my children [Laura Schaffer, 17, and Eleanor Schaffer, 11] sufficiently to have a really wonderful relationship. I don't think I could say that about [her husband] Mike.

AJR: What are the chances we'll ever see you as a newspaper editor again?

GO: Right now I don't want to worry about what I'll do in two years. That's sort of part of my therapy. l