Published Tuesday, April 3, 2001
Oppel issues ‘A Call to Leadership’ to advance quality journalism
BY JEWEL GOPWANI
ASNE Reporter
Election night tested the leadership of many newspaper editors nationwide. They had to decide what to put on their front pages with no clear winner in the presidential race.
"So much of journalism involves making quick judgments on little information," said ASNE President Richard A. Oppel, editor of the Austin American-Statesman. "We learned a lesson."
At 1 a.m., some news operations called Florida’s electoral votes in George W. Bush’s favor. At 1:15, with the headline "Bush!" the Statesman sent its paper to press. Al Gore called Mr. Bush to concede at 1:30. But Mr. Gore didn’t follow that call with a public announcement – and two hours later retracted his concession.
By then, there were more than 58,000 copies of the Statesman’s first edition on the streets. "Our biggest problem in November was not acting on our best judgment," Mr. Oppel said.
It won’t be the last time that editors have to make influential decisions without all the facts, Mr. Oppel observed, noting that it’s not only about getting the story right; it’s about making decisions in an environment of budget cuts, advances in newsroom technology and changing demographics.
"The editor who exercises good judgment, acts on principle, with integrity and sensitivity, succeeds in the long haul," said Mr. Oppel, who chose "A Call to Leadership" as the theme at this year’s ASNE convention.
With the downturn in the economy, editors have to balance the responsibility of cutting costs with the mission of improving the quality of their paper, he said.
The economic pressures that newspapers face are threefold: trimmed budgets, more mergers within the industry and greater competition from other media such as the Internet, said Gilbert Bailon, executive editor of The Dallas Morning News.
At the same time, "a leader has to be up to speed on technology. Editors are fully capable of adopting technology," Mr. Oppel said. Besides souping up their newspapers’ Web sites, some editors are improving the production of their newspapers through full pagination systems.
For example, The Dallas Morning News has moved toward a full pagination system, and that decision meant training more than 600 staffers.
"We’re still in some ways getting used to it," Mr. Bailon said.
On top of these challenges, Mr. Oppel said, it is a newspaper’s responsibility to respond to changes in demographics.
"We’re becoming a very international nation, and the percentage of people of color is rising," he said. "The objective ought to be to have a newsroom reflect the community that it serves."
A study scheduled for release Tuesday examines how editors nationwide are handling these challenges. Sharon Peters, a management consultant who teaches at Northwestern University, said that the survey, sponsored by ASNE, is based on 1,151 responses to a questionnaire sent to 3,600 journalists.
"Newsrooms are on orders to pay more attention to the bottom line," she said. "There was general concern and consternation that this would lead to the (ruin) of journalism as we know it."
The survey found that reporters want more recognition from and communication with their editors, but they believe that newsrooms are still doing quality journalism in a time of budget cuts, said Jennie Buckner, editor of The Charlotte Observer and chairwoman of the ASNE Leadership Committee.
She hopes that by reading the survey, editors will learn about how well their colleagues are leading their newsrooms and apply some of those lessons to their own work.
After the convention, editors should go back to their newsrooms and talk about examples of leadership, identify other leaders in their company and take a class in leadership, said professor Michael Useem, head of the Wharton Center for Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania. He and Ms. Peters will speak at the convention Tuesday.
Editors need to "become very self-conscious of the critical role of effective leadership," he said. "They need to talk about the importance of leadership" to their reporters, their fellow editors and their bosses.
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