Author: Rhina Guidos
Published: April 02, 1998
Last Updated: January 31, 2000
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Sandra Mims Rowe, ASNE president, addressed fellow editors as her term
comes to an end. HA LAM/ASNE Reporter

Rowe says readers' trust is crucial — and lacking

By Rhina Guidos
Staff Writer

When Sandra Mims Rowe was in college at East Carolina University, she was so shy that she had a hard time raising her
hand in class to ask a question.
Now, years later, she still gets a little scared when addressing large crowds.
"I get uncomfortable if I'm talking to more than three people," she said. "I'm a wimpy marshmallow."
Yet Wednesday, Rowe stood before about 350 people at an ASNE convention breakfast to deliver what she considers one of
the most important messages in journalism: Editors must re-establish trust with readers.
"Well, my friends, we must have royally fouled up somewhere along the way," she told the group. "For here we are, editors
leading newsrooms in time of frighteningly low respect for the newspapers we rightly hold dear."
In her year as president of the nation's leading organization of daily newspaper editors, Rowe, 49 years old, has become one
of the strongest voices for media credibility.
"Our central responsibility as editors is to make the believability ? a combination of accuracy, authority, skill, judgment and
respectfulness ? of our newspapers the central concerns of our newsrooms," she said. "Ahead of profits. Ahead of what corporate
thinks of us."
Her legacy to ASNE is the Journalism Credibility Project, which ASNE has agreed to continue beyond her tenure.
Rowe, editor of The Oregonian, said she learned from her mentor, Perry Morgan, former publisher of The Ledger-Star in Norfolk,
Va., simple lessons that really matter: not to take short cuts, not to be dishonest in action or words, and to respect the reader.
Rowe grew up in Harrisonburg, Va., as the daughter of a small-town newspaperman, Lathan Mims. He was the editor and general
manager of Harrisonburg's local paper, The Daily News Record, which had a circulation of 25,000.
As a college student in the late 1960s, Rowe said she didn't really set out to pursue journalism as a career. Women of her generation,
she said, would work a few years and then get married and have a family.
She first tried out radio but decided it wasn't her calling. She entered newspapers as an editorial assistant at the Ledger-Star and, from
there, moved into reporting in the newspaper's women's department.
The Ledger-Star ultimately merged with The Virginian-Pilot, and Rowe remained there for 22 years, working her way up to executive
editor and vice president. In 1985, during her tenure, the newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for general news reporting.
"It was a magical place to be," she said of her days at The Virginian-Pilot. "We built that newspaper to one that was consistent in excellent
reporting."
Today, as editor of The Oregonian, Rowe oversees the largest newspaper in the Northwest, with a daily circulation of 360,000.
"If you went through The Oregonian newsroom and asked people what the problem area in the newsroom is, they would say, 'Weíre not
as good as we should be.' " And that, Rowe said, is a good thing. "Weíve created a newsroom that is not satisfied with what (we) have. It's
hungry to get better."