Gail's Forces   

Columnist Gail Collins, a decidedly untraditional pick, takes over the editorial page of the New York Times, succeeding the fire-breathing Howell Raines. What's Collins all about, and what does her selection mean for that influential piece of real estate?

I T STARTED AS a trick.

Back in the early 1970s Gail Collins was cranking out stories about the obscure goings-on at the Connecticut Statehouse for small papers subscribing to her Connecticut State News Bureau. The total staff, herself included, numbered three. Collins and Co. and a few other press leftovers toiled in a fifth-floor corridor-of-a-room, an attic reallyÐthe fire marshal had suggested that, in the event of a fire, folks crawl out onto the roof and hang onto a gargoyle. The smoke, since everyone was a smoker then, including Collins, was thick. Public interest in stories from the Statehouse, however, was not.

How do you explain the guaranteed tax base and actually get people to read it? Collins and Trish Hall, her partner for two legislative sessions, started thinking funny. "We'd sit there every night and think, well if you told a nursery rhyme maybe, if you did it with a poem," Collins says. "And that's about the time that we started making fun of the legislators, because we found that the one thing you could get people kind of interested in was if you used a lot of humor."

Once Collins wrote a lead on a story about the first day of the legislative session, her friend Kate McMahon recalls, that went something like this: "I found a used condom floating in the toiletSin the bathroom, it was downhill from there." The gig was "completely about trying to trick people into reading about politics and issues," Collins says.

Well, it worked. Colleagues and former editors praise Collins' ability to make boring policy issues a great read. Her writing, in her op-ed column for the New York Times and her editorial observer pieces, is funny. Her name and the word "wit" appear in the same sentence so many times that Roget's might have to consider adding "Gail Collins" as a synonym for the word.

"She was known for her insight, impeccable insight and dry wit," says McMahon, a former entertainment editor at New York's Daily News who worked in the Hartford bureau of United Press International when Collins was in Connecticut. "She's one of the wittiest people in the business," echoes Gil Spencer, who was editor of the Daily News when Collins worked there.

In August, Collins gave up her twice-weekly op-ed column to become editorial page editor of the Times, as her predecessor, Howell Raines, took on the executive editor job. She was not a traditional worked-at-the-Times-since-25-and-climbed-the-ranks choice. Collins joined the paper in 1995 as a member of the editorial board, got a column in '99 and, lo and behold, landed one of the top jobs at the paper, shaping the most-paid-attention-to opinion page in the country.

Says Raines, "I think there's never been an ascent as meteoric as Gail's." The paper is "much more open and diverse" than it was in the past, he says, though it still has its traditions. "But I think in the case of Gail, you've simply got someone who came to the paper after a fully successful career elsewhere and really found this to be the perfect place" to cap it. He calls it "a triumph of merit."

Those who know Collins applaud the move. Many hope her skills as a wielder of the comic sword will infuse the editorialsÐa genre of writing that, while respected, is not often referred to as "a great read."

"I think our editorials were really fun to read back when Howell was smashing china in the Clinton White House," says Bill Keller, the paper's former managing editor who will write a biweekly op-ed column and Sunday magazine pieces. In 1993, Raines' page said that President Clinton's administration had exhibited "all the dignity and order of a mudslide." Raines punched up the editorials, enlivening them so much, particularly in their critiques of Clinton, that they were sometimes called "harsh."

"But as a rule," Keller continues, "editorials tend toward a kind of institutional monotone. It would be great if Gail could give them some voice, and it doesn't always have to be her voiceS. Even liberating the page a little bit from the fountain of opinion formed by committee would be great."

Collins has called New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani "His Fearsome Rudyness." She has a habit of making statements of political reality and then nudging the reader with a joking aside. From her April 20 column: "Howard Leach, an agricultural business investment banker who does not speak French, has been nominated to be ambassador to France, a nation famous for its patience and tolerance in dealing with Americans who don't know the language." From May 1: "The twins, Jenna and Barbara Bush, have been regulars in the supermarket tabloids ever since the inauguration, and a careful reading of all the articles reveals that they show a disturbing tendency to behave like college students." Now, in her oh-so-serious-sounding role as editorial page editor, Collins, 55, says she'll still be able to slip in humor. "To the degree that I can, I'll do it with the page. It's a lot harder," she says. There are, after all, some subjects that are just not funny. "But when we can, we will."

G AIL COLLINS PICTURED herself as a journalist at a young age. "My mother always wanted to be a journalist, and she got married instead," she says, adding that she may have inherited that career desire.

Editor of her high school paperÐCollins attended a "typical Catholic girls school" in her hometown of CincinnatiÐshe earned a B.A. in journalism from Marquette University in Milwaukee in 1967 and then began work on a master's in government at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. "Nobody wanted to go into the real world," she says, adding a rich laugh that reverberates around the room--a Gail trademark. "I had to do something."

Then seriously: Government was the subject to study at the time--a time of Vietnam protests, Kent State, "everything that made life worth living," Collins says. "It was a really, really exciting time to be a student."

Besides, she met her husband, Dan Collins, now lead political producer for CBSNews.com, in imperialism class. They graduated, got married and moved to Connecticut. She landed a job covering the Capitol for the weekly Fair Press in Fairfield County, a startup that soon laid off much of its staff. Still wanting to scour the halls of the Statehouse and not having enough experience to get someone to hire her, Collins created her own job: the Connecticut State News Bureau, which rolled out story after story for small papers across the state.

"I've never worked so hard in my entire life. It was just ridiculous," Collins says. Hall, a freelancer who writes a weekly real estate column for the New York Times and a former Times staffer, says they'd work from 8 a.m. until midnight. "Gail has always been a great writer and very funny and very smart, butSshe's not like a manager type--always dying to have power over people and run things," says Hall. "It was really fun to work for her, because what she cared about was not being in charge," it was the stories.

Collins "covered the Capitol in a way in which it hadn't been covered before," Hall says.

Says McMahon: "When everyone else was writing, ŒThe judiciary committee said this,' Gail was writing the unique column," finding the unusual story. And she wasn't afraid to say what was on her mind, McMahon says. "From the moment you met her, you knew she was destined to be a columnist."

Collins sold the Connecticut State News Bureau in 1977, feeling it was time to move on, and strung together a bunch of freelance jobs for a few years, including writing occasional pieces for the New York Times. She wrote a column--for the alt-weekly Hartford Advocate--drawing upon the "enormous amount of basic information," she says, that she had gleaned from years of interviewing every state legislator again and again and again. The legislators "really got into the idea that there was a gossip column about them," she says.

In 1980, she joined United Press International in New York for a five-year stint, working on the metro, foreign and business desks, and taking a year off in 1981 for a Bagehot Fellowship in economic journalism at Columbia University. In '85, financial woes hit UPI.

A calculating career-climber Collins is not. She compares her job moves to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Eliza, "jumping from the ice floes." On the surface, it does appear she was leaping from one crackling-ice situation to another: UPI goes bankrupt, she joins New York's Daily News; killer strike in '91, she hops to New York Newsday; it dies in '95, she lands at the Times. But actually, she had a little help from her fans.

When Steve Yahn, executive editor at Editor & Publisher, was business editor at the Philadelphia Daily News in the mid-1980s, he regularly ran Collins' profiles of business leaders. When he got the same job at New York's Daily News, he remembered "this wunderkind from UPI of New York, Gail Collins," he says. He called her up, then-Managing Editor Jim Willse read her stuff, and she was hired to write business profiles. "The kicker," says Yahn, is that Willse "took her out of business for greater things as a general columnist for the paper before I could even blink my eyes."

It took less than a year. Collins says she knew something good would happen at the Daily News if she worked for it. Despite her lighthearted nature, her ability to toss in jokes in conversations about anything, she is a serious person. She's writing a book on the history of American women in her spare time, and any books-for-pleasure she may read are books-for-the-book research. Collins says she's gotten into gardening lately. (She and her husband have a country house in Dutchess County, New York.) But she doesn't say more on what she likes to do outside of the job.

"I tend to work most of the time," she admits. "But I'm not a person who's always in the office."

"She really enjoys [her work], and her plate is full," says friend and former Daily News colleague Gene Mustain, who teaches journalism at the University of Hong Kong. "I wouldn't describe her as a workaholic, but she has a lot she wants to accomplish."

Collins looks at home in her office (still her columnist's office when we talked in July). She wears loose-fitting clothing and curls up in a dark blue chair that could be a hand-me-down. There's a blue couch as well adorned with mismatched pillows and a patchwork quilt hanging on the wall--a very lived-in space that contrasts with the Times' 10th-floor halls lined with grayish-blue trimmed doors that have large windows. It feels like walking the silent corridors of an old high school.

Work may, in fact, be home, and vice versa. There's not a separation between Gail the Columnist and Gail the Person, say many. "What you read is Gail Collins. It really is," says Sharon Rosenhause, managing editor of South Florida's Sun-Sentinel.

Rosenhause was Collins' editor when she wrote her Daily News columns. "Finding that voice and seeing it evolve was just a delight for me as an editor and a reader," Rosenhause says. "She works very, very hard, and we would push each otherS. I would send her back to try again and try again, and she was always game to do that even when she was mad at me."

When New York Times reporter Jim Dwyer was a columnist at New York Newsday, he says, he and others "urged that we grab her." He says that she's "very good at curing other people's panic, which is an extremely valuable trait, sitting in the minefield, in the neurotic minefield of news columnists."

Many mention her calmness in times of calamity. And adds Yahn: "She has the ability to really avoid office politics and keep people focused on their shared mission. And she's good at building enthusiasm about a particular project or story or an editorial or a commentary."

When, in 1994, Howell Raines called her looking for someone with state and local insight for his editorial board, she had never met him. Raines had been reading her column in New York Newsday and thought she'd be the best person for the job. "I always say that hiring Gail is an argument for dialing your dreams," he says.

Raines held the job for her for about a year, waiting for her New York Newsday contract to expire. As luck would have it, the water was bubbling around the tabloid anyway.

"I had always thought of editorial writing as really boring, to tell you the truth," Collins says. "But it was so clear that with Howell it would be different."

With some trepidation, she said yes.

D ON FORST LIKENS COLLINS to a magnet. The editor in chief of the Village Voice was the editor of New York Newsday who brought her to his paper. "I remember the first day she walked into the newsroom. People seemed to just be drawn to her," he says. Forst was surprised that Collins knew so many people there. "As it turned out, she didn't know anybody."

Friends, colleagues and past editors are effusive. Just try getting an acquaintance not to say something along the lines of "smart, funny and delightful" in an interview. "She's just terribly, terribly sharp," says Sharon Rosenhause.

Gene Mustain sat in "the pod," a group of four desks at the Daily News, with Collins and columnists Jerry Capeci and the late Mike McAlary. Mustain and Collins have remained close; he calls her "a warm, loving, loyal and compassionate friend." The image that comes to mind when he thinks of Collins is of her "in her kitchen basting turkeys." He and his wife have eaten a few Thanksgiving dinners at the Collins' Upper West Side apartment--a result of the couple's invitation to friends whose families are not close by.

Her appointment as editorial page editor has elicited a sense of victory. The Times' Dwyer says that after the announcement was made "just about everybody I ran into who had worked with her, everybody in the newsroomSwe would catch each other's eyes and just smileS. It was one of those splendid, splendid surprises, and so to have the same exact reaction from so many people, I think, says a lot even though there were not words spoken."

"What surprised a few of the old guard," says Times editorial board member Eleanor Randolph, was "they announced it, and people just broke into applause."

"I was thrilled, absolutely thrilled," Randolph says. "She's one of those people whose flair and interest will have a big impact on this page." Raines wasn't just Collins' boss; he is a friend. "She's someone to whom people turn in times of joy and times of stress," he says in describing her. "And I think that's one of the reasons that she's going to be a great leader--people naturally gravitate to Gail."

Collins has also known Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s wife, Gail Gregg, since the two were Bagehot fellows together. Sulzberger says he didn't get to know her, however, until she came to the Times.

Collins' appointment was a departure in that her résumé didn't mirror those of her predecessors. "Within the culture of the Times, people have been there longer," says Hall. "They work on the national desk or metro and then overseas."

Forst calls the promotion "bold." "I thought it was terrific on the part of the Times," he says. "Historically, folks who get that job have been there a while."

Collins' writing and leadership are key to her new job, says Sulzberger. He expects her to continue what Raines has done with the page--"that drive and fire and direction and add to it her own sensibilities." (Yes, those include "humor and wit.")

She's also at the top of the Times' command. Sulzberger, Raines, Collins and President/General Manager Janet L. Robinson meet every Wednesday. "The four of us are sort of the executive leaders of the New York Times newspaper," Sulzberger says.

In July, Collins had been meeting with board members to discuss what they wanted to do, and she wasn't ready to make any pronouncements on what mark she'll make on the editorial page. "Whatever it is, it'll be fine," says Gil Spencer. "She's that good."

"She's got a deep policy expertise that she's not very showy about. She has a wonderful writing style," Raines says. "She's an independent thinker, and I think she'll put her own individual stamp on the page while at the same time ensuring that it remains the dignified, institutional voice for the Times."

Collins' friend Wayne Barrett, senior editor at the Village Voice, says her knowledge of state and local government issues will have an impact. "I think she has the skepticism about incumbents thatSthe page has not generally had," he says. "That will be healthy for the page."

"Just as Howell wrote more about national politics, I may write more about state and local," Collins acknowledges. "I've sort of always defined myself as a New Yorker." Though in the last year of writing her column on politics around the nation, "I've gotten a lot more into other parts of the country."

She plans to write editorial observer pieces--not many at first, more later--as well as editorials. Her liberal leanings fit those that the Times' page has held historically; Collins has been critical of President Bush's tax cut, education initiative and missile shield priorities. (From her May 4 column: "When you hear the president promise to have some sort of a missile shield in place by 2004, remember that there is nothing so disaster-prone as a large military organization attempting to do something really, really fast.")

But, notes Barrett, "she's certainly willing to poke fun at anybodyS. She didn't cover the [Republican Rudolph] Giuliani administration any differently than she did the [Democratic David] Dinkins administration."

The board, which now has 12 members, meets three times a week to discuss and ponder issues of importance. "It's like being in graduate school forever, and they pay you for it," says Collins. Anyone you'd like to call, you can. And they'll talk.

Why or how the Times board reaches a particular stance is not discussed with outsiders, and those listening to the edicts are of the executive and solon variety--conjuring up the image of the board as gods on Mt. Olympus, casting a shadow on those below. But Collins doesn't see her position as being quite as powerful as others might. Barrett says, at least in New York City, the power of the board is "enormous." The editorial page and City Hall "really cogovern," he adds. "Policy changes right after a Times editorial," and the page has a lot of influence over local votes. Nationally, the page is read by a rather heady audience--policymakers, business leaders, foreign-affairs specialists, most of official Washington.

Collins doubts that President Bush is changing policy based on what the Times says. To her, the editorial board is influential in guiding dialogue. "We're not running the city. We're not running the state," she says. "Directing the discussion is really where we ought to be, and I think that's where we are."

T HEN THERE'S the woman thing.

It's hard to ignore that Collins is the first woman to hold this key position at the Times.

Randolph mentions it right away, saying that it's "really important." Op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd wrote in an e-mail to AJR: "Gail's a great journalist and a great person and it's really exciting that she's the first woman to hold the job."

Sulzberger brings up the topic before I do. How will that affect the page? "I don't know," he says. "Perhaps her choice of things to write aboutS. I think it will be fun and interesting to watch" what happens.

"We're running out of first-woman things," says Collins. "The neatest thing was that you run into women, and you could tell that they're really happyS. And that's just incredible. That's a great gift."

She's already written two books--"Scorpion Tongues" on political gossip in 1998 and "The Millennium Book," coauthored with her husband, in 1991. When we talked she was up to the Civil War in her new one on American women.

While researching the book, she was reminded of the worldview presented to women when she was in high school. "There was a girl who was interested in physics and they told her that girls didn't do physics. That that was just not done," she says. "And it's not that long ago." Once, Collins says, the star graduate who had gotten a job with the local archdiocese newspaper came to talk with girls interested in journalism. "And the idea that you could do that was sort of spectacular in 1960-whatever-it-was."

Collins' roomy Times office is a long way from that gargoyle-topped attic in Hartford--and her appointment is a milestone. She's humble, though, and seems a little uncomfortable talking about herself. Oh, she'll answer whatever you want to ask in a relaxed, candid way. But Collins is eager to reach the end of all the me, me, me discourse.

"Well, I've gotten really tired of myself, I don't know about you," she says at the end of the interview, bursting into that laugh of hers, again.