If I Went Back...   

Former top newspaper editors discuss what they would do differently if they got another chance to run a newsroom.

Sharon Peters is a recidivist editor. She devoted half a career to helping run newsrooms, then sidestepped into consulting. Now, after eight years, she has relapsed and resumed the newspaper life, much smarter, she hopes, for being gone awhile.

Peters believes she learned a lot about editing during her time away, and she plans to act on those lessons now that she has a second chance, born again last November as editor of Colorado Springs' Gazette.

"One of the first things I told my staff was that I'm not a news junkie," Peters says. "I don't read seven papers. I don't feel compelled to watch CNN for four hours before I come to work. I think that makes me a little more normal than before I left the industry."

Being "a little more normal" also means being a "very impatient" reader. Peters finds herself, in her normal-reader phase, no longer tolerating "self-indulgence, where it is all about the writing, not about information-sharing" or stories where the reporter can't quickly engage her interest. And her time away from the newsroom convinced her this impatience is widespread. Peters also has switched her thinking about how to lead a newsroom and how to treat the people there.

Her thoughts parallel those of a dozen other former editors (who haven't, at least yet, made their comebacks), from Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post to Bill Jackson of Indiana's Evansville Courier and Press, from Pam Luecke of Kentucky's Lexington Herald-Leader to David Lawrence Jr. of the Miami Herald, all of whom were asked: What have you learned about running a newsroom since you stopped doing it?

Their answers, varied and personal but strikingly in concert on many points, clustered into two large areas: insights about newspaper content and newsroom culture.

They hate typos and stories that ramble. They're exasperated when something happens in their neighborhood and the local paper misses it. Small things set them off: when the paper doesn't warn that the tip-off time of a big game has been changed or writes about how much fun a festival was yesterday--a festival that the paper barely mentioned in advance, when they could have actually planned to attend.

Their attachment to journalism makes them sympathetic but impassioned observers, and they also take minor betrayals personally--the sloppiness, defensiveness and backward thinking that can infect service and attitudes.

While most editors said they didn't want to appear to second-guess their old papers, all seemed eager to reflect on lessons learned. If they had the chance to run newsrooms again, here are some things they would try.

Channel more energy into the next day's paper

Almost 11 years after stepping down as executive editor of the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee recognizes that being an editor gets more complicated by the day. But if he were transported back into the newsroom, he says, he would "try to speed things up" and focus on the daily urgency of news.

"Newspapers are getting away from people who just run tomorrow's paper," Bradlee says. "There is so much non-newspapering involved in editing a big newspaper now. There's so much salary administration, so much formatting, so much concentration on equal employment opportunity.... When you come to work in the morning, there is an awful lot preventing you from sitting down with other editors and reporters and saying, 'What are we going to put in the paper?' "

Don't ignore management chores, Bradlee advises, but don't let them divert you from what is most important and most fun: brewing up a great daily paper and doing it with zest. "Get it in the paper, get it in the paper, make a call, get it in," Bradlee growls. "The sense of excitement that comes from all that, that is what I would try to re-create."

Today Bradlee is vice president at large at the Post--someone once described his current role, he says, as "a stop on the tour, and maybe a little more." He sees one big difference between journalism today and in his heyday. "I don't think they're having as much fun now as my crowd had. Jesus, we had fun. None of us could wait to get to work."

Dig deeper inside the community

David Lawrence Jr. spent 35 years in the newspaper business, retiring in 1999 as Miami Herald publisher after running newsrooms in Detroit and Charlotte and heading the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Now, he says, "I read newspapers in a quite different way than I did before."

In particular, Lawrence, who is now president of the Early Childhood Initiative Foundation, notices what isn't there.

"It is frankly surprising to me how many things I know now that are not in the newspaper and are really important," he says. "It strikes me that newspapers continue to be dominated in many ways by government stories that don't relate to many people and by police stories because they are easier to gather. What I want to know is who's doing what and what makes the town hang together, and I don't find anywhere I look enough of that content.... Newspaper people are not even aware all too often of what is going on in the community."

Journalists, Lawrence says, should "know a hell of a lot more about the community than most people do," but too often they isolate themselves in the newsroom and lose touch. Instead, he believes, they should get out and meet people, study community history, visit factories and schools and neighborhoods, and report harder. After all, "few of the best stories ever come about by people sitting around the office talking."

"If I were ever to go back in the newspaper business," he says, he would "be tougher and stronger" in committing his staff to understanding their areas and readers. "Getting to know the community is not pandering," Lawrence stresses. "Giving people what they need and want is not pandering if it's done by people with integrity.

"Part of the salvation of newspapers would be that we understand the community better than anyone else. If you want to live a good life in Miami or anywhere, we can tell you more about it than anybody else."

Flood 'em with hard news:

Pam Luecke was standing outside her Lexington, Virginia, home recently when she noticed a huge fire burning on a distant mountain, and she realized it might be days before she knew what had happened. Lexington has no daily newspaper, the nearest regional dailies are too far away to cover local fires, and the community weekly wasn't due for several days.

Luecke, who joined the faculty at Washington and Lee University last year after editing Kentucky's Lexington Herald-Leader for four-and-a-half years, now considers herself a regular reader who craves news and plenty of it, about everything from fires on the nearby mountain to global terrorism. She wants her newspaper to supply both "short, useful stories" and "long, in-depth stories." "I guess it's the stories in between that we need fewer of," she says.

If she returned to the newsroom, Luecke would lobby for more resources to blanket the news. She would also push her staff to "become more aware of how the rest of the world consumes news. When you're in a newsroom all day, you really don't understand how much the rest of the world is listening to the radio and watching TV. I might work harder on trying to develop what the newspaper can bring to people the next day that they haven't heard or felt."

Nothing beats a good dose of news, says James M. Naughton, a former Philadelphia Inquirer executive editor who is now president of the Poynter Institute. "I would pay more attention to hard news," he says. "I really want it all. It distresses me if there is something missing, whether it's government, national or international."

Naughton believes the September 11 terrorist attacks may represent a turning point. "We were verging on irrelevance in a lot of our news judgments.... We had persuaded ourselves that we had to jolly people into noticing. But people do care what the city council is doing, what laws are being enacted, and we need to get better at telling those stories."

Rethink old taboos on voice and personality

In her time away from running a newspaper, Nancy Maynard, former Oakland Tribune co-owner and publisher, has been struck by how many young people find the traditional ways "insufferable." Newspapers must respond, she believes, with more personality and point of view.

In an information age, she says, newspapers "have to go one way or the other. Either we try to bulk up our specialization--and I don't think that is possible--or we go the other way and tell you a whole lot of things from our prism of life, and you can decide whether you like it or not. Having personality and voice is what will make a difference in this environment."

If Maynard were to re-enter the newsroom, she would push for a new kind of writing, "somewhere between a column and a news story. Call it something, fact-based opinion, maybe. I would do more of that, let the personalities of my journalists come out more strongly.... 'This is what I found and this is what I think it is.' That would be the tone."

Maynard would deputize section editors to enforce high standards for such writing, and she bets it would win over the public.

She would also continue stressing watchdog reporting. What bothers her most as a consumer of today's news is "the total acceptance of the official point of view." But the watchdog role is the "imperative" part, she says. It should be a given. Newspapers become distinctive by what they do with the rest of their resources, what she calls the "discretionary" coverage. What will be critical, she believes, is "the ability of a news institution to have a conversation with its audience."

Reform the newsroom culture

Ask Geneva Overholser how she would be a different editor today, and she goes off for a few days and comes back with a list. Few of the items are new, she says, "it's just that I think them with much more passion and urgency now" that she has shed the daily "web of practicalities."

Much of her emphasis would be to reshape how journalists think of themselves and their roles. Among the particulars:

• "You've got to get your reporters to listen to readers and to understand that readers are the point.... You have to accept responsibility for the impact that you have on your community."

• "We've got to explain more to people about what we're doing. We say, 'We know our business, we know what we are doing, just trust us.' Well, they don't trust us.... Readers appreciate being respected and let in on the deal."

• "Editors have got to do a much better and braver job of making the case for more investment in journalism."

• "You can't care enough about keeping your staff engaged. Not happy, necessarily, but engaged. A well-attended machine is going to work better than one that is neglected."

Overholser, who edited the Des Moines Register from 1988 to 1995 and now teaches journalism at the University of Missouri, would pay special attention to staff development: immersing staff members in the history of their community and newspaper, pairing old-timers with newcomers to help transfer the "lore of the newsroom" and spending more time "just cruising the newsroom."

"It's easy to underestimate, when you become a top editor, how much there is in a simple glance or a slight word from you," she says. "The smallest compliment can be like making the sun shine."

Gregory Favre, veteran executive editor of the Sacramento Bee and now a fellow at the Poynter Institute, agrees. "To me, people need to be the center of the editor's universe." Favre would work harder on attracting "the best and the brightest," treating them as individuals and offering a range of incentives to help them avoid burnout and lead balanced lives, from job sharing to telecommuting to providing nearby child care.

"The single most important thing we do," according to Favre, "is surround ourselves with good people and try to create the kind of workplace where they can express themselves and do their best work."

Make newsrooms more creative

If all these former editors share a dream, it involves fast-forwarding the bureaucracy so creativity can flourish.

"We have so many processes to accomplish what we accomplish every day," says Pam Johnson, who ran the Arizona Republic from 1996 to 2001 and now teaches at the Poynter Institute, "that we can become bound by those processes. It may not allow for the breathing room that a creative field needs."

The solution? "The newsroom ought to be the first priority, and you try to jimmy around the rest of it," Johnson says.

Newsroom procedures, she believes, should have "minimal interference" with storytelling and good journalism. As editor in Phoenix, Johnson says, she was able to gain "the equivalent in work hours of 12 reporters" through changes such as centralizing calendar functions and consolidating wire editing. Reinstalled in the editor's chair, she would do even more to re-examine the newsroom "piece to piece," looking for ways to divert resources to reporting and writing.

Gene Foreman, a former Philadelphia Inquirer executive editor now teaching at Penn State, zooms in on a related issue, "really working with journalists, particularly editors, to establish priorities."

"My time away from the business reinforces the impression that so many of our meetings are time-wasters," Foreman says. "I'm not anti-meeting per se, but too many routine daily meetings go on too long. They're out of control."

Foreman would streamline daily meetings and reduce the number of people who attend. Instead, he would rely more on "one-on-one meetings off deadline" to brainstorm everything from story ideas to time rationing to copy flow.

"Journalists, because we are passionate about what we do, don't really apply logic and linear thinking as much as we should. But if you are working with fewer resources, if you have been downsized, you can't get everything done you used to. So we need to make sure that what we are doing are the right things."

Stop fouling up the basics

Almost every ex-editor interviewed for this article grumbled about irritating errors such as typos and poor grammar.

"My husband and I edit heavily at the breakfast table," Luecke says. "I think I would redouble my efforts to make sure grammar was impeccable and make sure jump lines were correct. Those little things really are annoying."

Bill Jackson, who was editor of the Evansville Courier from 1978 to 1986 and then editor of the Evansville Press until 1998, brims over with his own catalog of such breaches, from what he calls "silly errors" like misspellings to incomplete television listings to letting TV stations beat you to the obvious stories.

"They are little things, but they are little important things," says Jackson, who is retired and freelancing. "Reading everything cold and seeing the number of small errors in the paper, I think, 'Copy editors aren't paying attention.' And that makes me wonder if top editors are paying attention."

Naughton has a theory as to why such slip-ups seem to be rising. "I think it means that as resources have been reduced, more copy editors have less time to really read stories, and they are more reliant on technology to cover their rear ends," he says. "And it doesn't."

Several other editors linked the problem to understaffed copy desks. Given another chance, says Overholser, "I would do everything I could do to make sure the copy desks were adequately staffed during the time of pagination and change. I think we are way underestimating public discontent with things like spelling."

Says Foreman pointedly: "What it tells me, unfortunately, is that the papers just don't care. People think, 'If they're screwing up the little things, how can I trust them with the big things?' "

Lead bravely

More than one editor vowed that, if they could reascend the editor's pulpit, they would more forcefully advance their visions, even in the face of staff or community resistance.

"Sometimes editors need to be tougher in enforcing their beliefs," says William Hilliard, who worked at Portland's Oregonian for 42 years, 12 as editor, before retiring. "You have to be visible, let people know what your philosophy is and that as long as you're editor, that is the way you want things to go. Too many people run popularity contests, and that's a bad thing to do if you are a leader."

Journalists can be notoriously stubborn and defensive. For Naughton, leaving the newsroom made him "more sympathetic to the perspective of a reader" and less forgiving of the "automatic defensive crouch" journalists assume when challenged. The in-group inclinations to scorn change and even to mock readers are "traditionally a part of the dark humor that helps you get through the day," Naughton says, but strong leaders cannot let a "turtle-like" mentality stymie progress.

Sharon Peters, in an uncommon but not unheard-of move, returned to editing after eight years. What was the first major thing she did?

She committed the first four weeks to holding 30-minute, one-on-one sessions with her news staff of more than 120. "Most of my research found that reporters, copy editors, photographers and even mid-managers felt they didn't know the editor well enough," Peters explains. "I wanted us to relate, to the degree possible, as human beings first, so maybe they would feel more comfortable telling me when one of my ideas is a bone-headed one, or approaching me with middle-of-the-night musings about how our journalism needs to improve."

Now, she adds, "I know a little about their kids and their dogs and cats and the courses they're taking at the community college and some of the disappointments they've had, and, frankly, that kind of connection feels more normal and fulfilling to me than the newsroom relationships I've had in the past."

Less than six months into her new job, she wants to move deliberately but decisively. She wants a livelier front page, "more humanity and people from the community in the paper," more profiles, more contributions from readers. She wants to upgrade staff training and to share with staff members information she receives about customer satisfaction and circulation. And she's open to experimenting with things like three-day work weeks, job rotations and part-time options for parents.

She also wants daily news meetings that are "robust and very funny" rather than stifling. "To the extent possible, we're going to shake things up around here. Not to the extent it feels like a psycho ward, but I think we can do more than most newspapers have done in the past.

"I really needed to be away from daily journalism for a while to figure out what I had been doing wrong and why I should behave and do things differently to be a better journalist."