A Sacred Profession?   

Not if almighty profits trump public service.

NOREEN TURYN WAS getting mad all over again.
The Lynchburg, Virginia, anchor was accepting the Jack R. Howard award for small-market television journalism from the Scripps Howard Foundation. Turyn, WSET's main anchor but at heart a passionate reporter, was being honored for her series on the victims of a Virginia law that allowed forced sterilization of those considered unfit to have children.
Ultimately the state's General Assembly officially apologized for the idiotic measure. But as Turyn--who wrote the series at home on her own time--recalled her frustration when she first tried to interest lawmakers in the issue, you could see her seethe.
That kind of intensity, that burning desire to right wrongs, was on display all night at the National Press Club as the foundation handed out its awards. It's easy to deride contest fever, but there was something very special about this evening.
These weren't the journalism celebs being feted one more time. The accolades fell to the environment reporter for Montana's Missoulian, the news director for KCSD-FM in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Web journalists from sonicnet.com, a cartoonist from Vero Beach, Florida.
The best thing about the event was the winners' speeches. While the number of categories was nearly Oscaresque, there was mercifully no Julia Roberts-style self-importance. These were straight-from-the-heart declarations from people who believe in what they do and love what they do. Because it matters.
Melvin Claxton and Charles Hurt of the Detroit News took home the Roy W. Howard prize for public service reporting. Their winning entry was on the truly shocking negligence of Detroit's fire department. When Claxton accepted the award, he had the line of the night.
"This," he said, "is a sacred profession."
Good words to hear--particularly after what I had just been hearing at the Super Bowl of Schmooze, also known as the ASNE convention.
This was not a happy event. With the economy slumping and lineage dropping, and with newspaper companies determined to keep profit margins at eye-popping levels regardless, America's newspaper editors are a beleaguered lot. I ran into a guy I've known for years who is now the editor of a medium-size paper in the East. He said he felt squeezed as he had never felt before. And this is someone who has been, as they say, around the block a couple of times. Was he thinking about making a move? I asked him.
What's the point? He responded. It would be the same almost anywhere else.
The highlight of the convention, as you doubtless know unless you've been spending a lot of time on Saturn lately, was the speech by Jay T. Harris, the famously resigned publisher of the San Jose Mercury News.
Harris' appearance before the assembled editors was much anticipated, and he didn't disappoint. Resigning over principle is rare enough. Going public and explaining precisely why you did so is simply unheard of.
But Harris wasn't disappearing quietly. In fact, it's clear he hopes his high-profile exit will be a catalyst in reversing the direction in which the newspaper business seems to be careening.
There is, of course, a Road to Damascus aspect to his dramatic departure. Harris had worked closely with Tony Ridder at Knight Ridder corporate. This wasn't exactly Ben Bagdikian decrying corporate greed. Harris was a recent (self-imposed) exile from the belly of the beast. As he mentioned from the podium, he was no stranger to enforcing fiscal discipline (read: ordering cutbacks).
That's what gave his act such power.
He had at last reached his personal choke point. The margins Knight Ridder was demanding from the Merc, in Harris' view, would force him to implement cuts that would do long-term damage to the paper he had helped build. There was no choice but to go.
After Harris finished, Knight Ridder VP Jerry Ceppos, a good man in a tough spot, approached a microphone. Ceppos had been Harris' editor in San Jose. The two men are friends; in fact, after Harris stepped down, they had shared a bottle of wine and talked things out.
Ceppos wisely wasn't plunging into a public debate. He simply wanted to remind people that, cuts or no cuts, Knight Ridder was still publishing some fine newspapers.
Harris readily agreed. But that wasn't the point. What was happening, he said, was that profit margins were being given too much weight vis-á-vis public service (and at a lot of places besides Knight Ridder). Too little thought was being given to the real-world impact of what was required to keep the margins high. And that trend was accelerating. It has to be reversed.
Yes it does.