Richard A. Oppel, Austin (Texas) American-Statesman, ASNE president, presiding: The men and women I am about to introduce are role models. They are editors who found the time and energy to lead ASNE even while holding down busy jobs. Please hold your applause until I have introduced them all.

From my far right are Howard H “Tim” Hays, The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, Calif., who presided during the 1975 convention; Warren H. Phillips, The Wall Street Journal, 1976; George Chaplin, The Honolulu Advertiser, 1977; John Hughes, The Christian Science Monitor, 1979; Thomas Winship, The Boston Globe, 1981; Creed C. Black, Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, 1984; Richard D. Smyser, The Oak Ridger, Oak Ridge, Tenn., 1985; and Robert P. Clark, Harte-Hanks Newspapers, 1986.

Continuing on my left are John Seigenthaler, USA Today and The Tennessean, Nashville, 1989; William A. Hilliard, The Oregonian, Portland, 1994; Gregory Favre, The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee, 1995; William B. Ketter, The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, Mass., 1996; Robert H. Giles, The Detroit News, 1997; and Edward L. Seaton, The Manhattan (Kan.) Mercury, 1999.

Please join me in recognizing these leaders of ASNE with your applause.

This convention would not have run so efficiently or well without the dedicated work of the ASNE staff. They are a dedicated group that cares deeply about our work and success. Some of them are in the hall, while others, as usual, are back in the office attending to business. I will ask these staff members who are with us to please stand. Please join me in thanking these good folks with your applause, as well as my my able assistant, Darlene Colone, with whom I wouldn’t be able to get all this done the entire year, not just this convention.

Also, today we are honored to have with us two men who served this group of former presidents and this organization so well. Gene Giancarlo was executive directors of ASNE from 1963 to 1983, when he was succeeded by Lee Stinnett who served until 1999. This organization is indebted to both of you. Please stand and be recognized.

The generous gifts of sponsors amount to more than 15 percent of ASNE’s annual income. Convention sponsors provide crucial support, and we are grateful to all of them. Today we especially thank our luncheon sponsors King Features Syndicate and Hearst Newspapers, represented today by Hearst Newspapers president, George Irish and King Features Syndicate editor in chief, Jay Kennedy. I’ll ask them to stand. Please join me in thanking them.

Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Just before lunch today the ASNE board in a quick and bloodless coup elected your new leadership for the coming year. The meeting was a formality because the board actually designates the new officer on the ladder at its fall meeting, so there were no surprises. But let me tell you that it was a meaningful event, nevertheless. It’s my honor to turn over ASNE to an energetic group of officers, whom I am confident will lead ASNE brilliantly.

The newly elected officers are at the head table today, and I would like to recognize them: Tim J. McGuire, Star Tribune, Minneapolis, president; Diane H. McFarlin, Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune, vice president; Peter K. Bhatia, The Oregonian, Portland, secretary; and Karla Garrett Harshaw, Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun, treasurer. They are eager to make ASNE the best it can be during the next four years. Please encourage them with your applause.

You have elected six directors to the board this week. Incumbents re-elected were Gilbert Bailon, The Dallas Morning News; Jennie Buckner, The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer; Edward W. Jones, The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, Va.; Robert G. McGruder, Detroit Free Press; and Gregory L. Moore, The Boston Globe. One new director was elected, Charlotte H. Hall of Newsday, Melville, N.Y. She is on my right at the head table. Charlotte, please stand. Congratulations to all of you.

This week we have all been kept abreast of convention developments and the buzz in the Marriott corridors in four daily editions of The ASNE Reporter. The multicultural staff who worked on the newspaper is seated in the audience. Most of them are looking for jobs in this business. Will the students and the newsroom professionals who worked in this year’s News Lab please stand? Let’s applaud their good work.

This morning we heard the winners of this year’s ASNE awards talk insightfully about the craft they practice so well. A short time ago, during the general session, they received their awards from this year’s Awards Board chair, Cynthia A. Tucker of The Atlanta Constitution. I’ll ask her to stand and be joined by the awards winners: Mary Jo Patterson, representing the team from The Star-Ledger, Newark, N.J., Jesse Laventhol Prize for Deadline News Reporting by a Team; Stephen T. Magagnini, The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee, ASNE Writing Award for diversity writing; Leonard Pitts, The Miami Herald, ASNE Writing Award for commentary writing; Tom Hallman Jr., The Oregonian, Portland, ASNE Writing Award for nondeadline writing; and Stephen E. Henderson, The Sun, Baltimore, ASNE Writing Award for editorial writing. John Beale of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who won the ASNE Community Service Photojournalism Award, had to leave earlier today, and Steven Urlinger, The New York Times, winner of the Jesse Laventhol Prize for Deadline News Reporting by an Individual was unable to be with us today as he continues his superb work in the Balkans. Please join Cynthia and me in applauding these honorees.

Oppel: Two weeks ago convention managers were working to find a speaker who would hold members through this the last event of our annual gathering.

We invited leading senators. We invited the fresh new top Cabinet members. All had conflicts. This is Friday in Washington, D.C. But, while any of them would have been a substantial speaker, none has the drawing power of today’s speaker. Editors understand why. Few events in our industry this year have caused more discussion than the resignation of Jay Harris as publisher of the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News.

Why is that? He is an editor. He is one of us. He is respected as a publisher. He is respected as an industry leader. The Merc and its owner, Knight Ridder, are gold plated legacies of excellent publishers and editors, and more than anything, most of us sense that the issues and tensions underlying Jay’s resignation play themselves out in one way or another at virtually every newspaper in this country. You should know that I invited Knight Ridder’s CEO, Tony Ridder, or any executive of his choosing to appear on equal footing with Jay today. Jay understood that this offer would be made and was willing to have it work out that way. Knight Ridder declined the invitation.

Jay Harris was hired as a reporter at The News Journal in Wilmington, Del., in 1970. After five years he left to join the faculty of Northwestern’s Medill School, where he also was an assistant dean. In 1978 he designed and launched ASNE’s annual national census of minority employment in our newsrooms. He left Medill to rejoin Gannett as a national correspondent in 1982, leaving for Knight Ridder three years later and becoming executive editor of the Philadelphia Daily News. In ’88 he became assistant to the president of the newspaper division and then vice president operations over nine newspapers. He became publisher of the Mercury News in 1994, leading the paper and enhancing coverage of business and technology. Under Jay, the Merc began Nuevo Mundo and the Viet Mercury, as it deepened and broadened the newspaper’s relations with a very diverse community.

Please welcome Jay Harris.

Remarks by Jay T. Harris

Good afternoon and thank you all very much.

I must say it is an unexpected pleasure to be back at ASNE this year. Until quite recently, budget difficulties were going to prevent me from attending. I have lost count of how many times I have spoken at the annual convention of this organization since my first major address in 1978 on the 10^th anniversary of the Kerner Commission Report. But I could tell you that at no time have I been more honored to receive the invitation or felt more at home.

I find myself, for the moment at least, at the symbolic center of a debate that extends in substance and consequence well beyond the specific circumstances surrounding my resignation as publisher of the Mercury News. Frankly, I was taken aback as I watched it grow and came to understand the breadth, depth, and passion of the concern in the journalistic community nationally. After a few days I concluded that while I did not seek or expect this role, if I had the courage of my convictions I would hold high the banner of our noble cause in forums such as this. If for no other reason, I owed it to the hundreds of journalists, publishers, journalism educators, readers and members of the Silicon Valley community who wrote or called to support me in the beliefs that lead me to my resignation.

So, let me tell you over the next few minutes why I did what I did, how I came to that point and that decision, and offer a few preliminary thoughts on where we might go from here. Three weeks ago today, Mercury News and Knight Ridder executives met to discuss how to respond to the sharp decline in the newspaper’s ad revenues and how best to achieve the parent company’s goals for the year. I resigned the following Monday. Less than three hours after receiving my personally delivered letter of resignation, Knight Ridder executives sent a memo to the Mercury News staff in which they described the Friday meeting as tough and candid. The public information officers at the State Department could no doubt appreciate that use of the measured language of diplomacy.

What troubled me most about the meeting was its myopic focus on numbers. It wasn’t the cutting so much. To be true I have cut and forced others to cut over many years. I was taught how to do so by the best on both sides of the table. What troubled me, something that had never happened before in all my years in the company, was that little or no attention was paid to the consequences of achieving the numbers. There was virtually no discussion of the damage that would be done to the quality and aspirations of the Mercury News as a journalistic endeavor, or to its ability to fulfill its responsibilities to the community. As important, scant attention was paid to the damage that would be done to our ability to compete and grow the business.

In a written budget overview I gave to corporate the day before the meeting, I argued that while we could achieve the near-term savings being sought, those savings would be more than offset by a long-term diminution of the vitality and potential profitability of Knight Ridder’s Bay-area franchise. But despite my best efforts in the letter and in the meeting the next day, they could not or would not hear the warning.

The first step is to measure whatever can be easily measured. That is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can’t be measured or give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume what can’t be measured easily really isn’t very important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can’t be easily measured doesn’t exist. This is suicide.

In that Friday budget meeting seven years later, our discussions were focused on getting to a number, and essentially blind to all else. It was like watching a loved one commit suicide unintentionally. Things moved quickly from that point. After the Knight Ridder executives left late Friday, the Mercury News executive team met to debrief and decompress after an intense day. We knew we had made a little progress in the discussions, but not much. We agreed to meet by phone on Sunday to discuss the next steps on getting to the still distant goal. Then I went home.

I woke up Saturday morning about 3 a.m. I had a knot in my stomach and was deeply troubled. While I was asleep the stark reality of what had happened and what seemed to lie inevitably ahead had worked its way to the front of my brain. Over the next several hours the idea came together in my mind that resigning was the only way to slow things down, to possibly get corporate to open their eyes to what was in prospect. Moreover, I had decided that resigning was the right thing for me to do. I confronted the fact that continuing negotiation and compromise was little more than slow and silent surrender. Like many others, I had become an unacknowledged co-conspirator in something I knew not to be a good thing but did not know how to stop. It is often said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. It is equally true that in single steps a journey of a thousand miles can be completed. And I knew that morning that I wanted to go no farther down a road leading away from all I thought was best and most important about being a newspaper publisher and a journalist.

Later that morning, after the sun came up, I talked it over with my wife, Christine. We agreed that resigning was the right step and that we would strike out on a new path together. Christine pointed to an additional benefit. We would no longer have to pay the heavy toll, the on-again, off-again struggle over budgets and values was taking on the family and me.

Saturday afternoon I cancelled the Sunday conference call to discuss next steps on the budget. I now had a new plan for the scheduled resumption of budget talks Monday with corporate. I set to work on writing my letter of resignation in which I laid out my reasoning and suggestions for a more appropriate approach to the budget challenges and company goals. The next morning, I started my farewell note to the employees of the Mercury News. That was the tough one. I was saying farewell to my Mercury News family, to a dream, and to the plan I had to be publisher of the paper for the balance of my career.

On Sunday afternoon, Christine and I told the kids. My oldest daughter, Jamarah, who hates surprises, cried and eventually went to her room to work it through alone. After the family discussion I went back to work polishing the letters. I didn’t see Jamarah again that day. So, the next morning before leaving for work I went upstairs to wake her for school. She was awake, but still in bed. I sat down on the bed next to her and said, “Sometimes you just have to sit at the front of bus.” She smiled and said, “I understand, Daddy.” I knew then that everything would be all right.

On Monday at 1:30 I submitted my resignation. I resigned because of a fundamental disagreement over business strategy and an equally fundamental disagreement over whether the company’s values and priorities had been changing over the years. I want to emphasize here that I did not resign solely because of newsroom related concerns, although it is true that the very real possibility of deep cuts in news staff and news hole concerned me greatly. I resigned because I was concerned about damage to the whole of the paper — the business side as well as the news side — and about a lessening of our ability to fulfill our myriad responsibilities to a wonderful community.

In my letter of resignation I asked my Knight Ridder colleagues to reconsider two things: the deep and ill-advised staff and expense reductions their profit goals would necessitate; and cuts that would affect the quality and reputation of the newspaper and the perception of the Mercury News as a place good people want to work. Before going to corporate to submit my resignation, I burned my bridges behind me. I arranged for my farewell message to my staff to be sent by e-mail while I was at Knight Ridder. There would be no turning back, no conversation leading to compromise. I had lived as long as I should, or could, with a slowly widening gap between creed and deed.

Had I continued down the same path, what faced me was the utter frustration of disassembling something I had thrown my life into building up and the unavoidable violation of the sense of trust and family, of shared aspirations and shared destiny that I had worked to build over the years. I had watched a long train of abuses against the traditions and core values of a great profession and a great company. I had witnessed enough.

A dear friend and colleague who has always been able to find the right quote, with a perfect cartoon from The New Yorker, to get me through tough times sent me these words from Winston Churchill:

The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.

A Knight Ridder colleague called the other day to suggest that I take the high road in my talk today. I believe that I am. What I did on March 19, and the story I tell you today, is not an act of betrayal. It is an act of fidelity to the values of my profession and the best traditions of Knight Ridder.

The first statement of company values issued during my years with Knight Ridder contains these words, “Our enterprise is both a business and a public trust.” As I said in my letter of resignation, I worried that in Knight Ridder greater priority was increasingly given to the business aspects of the enterprise than was to given to fulfilling our public trust.

It was the conviction that newspapers are a public trust that brought me to Knight Ridder in 1985. I understood then, and understand even better today, that a good newspaper and a good business go hand in hand. Indeed, without a good business it would be impossible for a newspaper to do good journalism over the long haul. But at some point, one comes to ask what is meant by a good business? What is good enough in terms of profitability and sustaining a year-to-year profit improvement? And how do you balance maintaining a strong business with your responsibilities as the steward of a public trust? Maybe that is the most important question. Because our business, if you approach it as a public trust as well as a business, is different from most businesses. Most businesses can reduce expenses more or less proportionately with demand and revenue without doing irreparable damage to their core capabilities, their market positions or their missions.

Manufacturing businesses are a good example. When fewer items are bought, fewer items need to be made, and layoffs are possible. But news and readers’ interests do not contract with a decline in advertising. Nor does our responsibility to the public get smaller as revenue declines or newsprint becomes more expensive. That is where the balancing act comes in. That is where the character of leaders comes in and the priorities they set.

Let me give you a situation analogous to the one facing newspapers. Hospitals are important, at times essential, to our health as individuals and at times the health of whole communities. Over the last 10 to 15 years our nation’s health care system has been ravaged by a variety of market forces and the drive for increased profitability. Today, shortages of nurses and even medicines are not uncommon in many hospitals. At times doctors don’t have necessary equipment available or adequate support. HMOs can be more focused on their bottom lines than the health of their clients. In short, the quality of the nation’s health care system has declined because of market forces and business imperatives, and with it there has been a decline in the health care industry’s ability to meet the nation’s needs.

In the same way that hospitals are important to the health of individuals and communities, good newspapers are important to the health of our communities, our nation, and our democracy. The press is protected in the First Amendment to our national Constitution. It is the only business so protected, because the framers saw a free press as essential to the maintenance and health of our democracy.

My arguments today are not First Amendment arguments though. The First Amendment protects nearly all forms of speech and press activity. My argument today applies in particular to newspapers, newspaper companies and the leaders of such companies who believe their newspapers have a special responsibility to our society. My argument today is that a freedom, a resource so essential to our national democracy that it is protected in our Constitution should not be managed primarily according to the demands of the market or the dictates of a handful of large shareholders. In managing a newspaper or a newspaper company in the public interest you are faced with these questions. When the interest of readers and shareholders are at odds, which takes priority? When the interest of a community and shareholders are at odds, which takes priority? When the interest of the nation and an informed citizenry and the demands of shareholders’ forever increasing profits are at odds, which takes priority?

The balancing of profits and quality is not as easy to understand as it may seem. It defies simple analysis. Many newspapers are part of publicly held companies. There are several such newspapers where quality does not vary noticeably in good times or bad: The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal come immediately to mind. There are others, and I would include Knight Ridder in this number, that publish very good newspapers, but the tension between quality and responsibility on the one hand and financial expectations on the other is constant, and the balance is tenuously maintained.

Finally, there are public newspaper companies where there is little evidence to be found of a concern about quality or responsibility. Clearly, there is nothing inherent about being public that ensures a priority on quality or a priority on profits. It must be said that the same is true about privately held companies. Some, whether individually owned or part of a larger group, are quite good and reflect a concern by the owners for quality and community. The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times would be a good example. Other privately held newspapers are an embarrassment. They seem to be little more than the owners’ pet cash cows, or in the case of private newspaper groups, the owners’ herds of cash cows.

But the question in the spotlight today involves publicly held companies. I thought the tension and its sources were captured clearly and succinctly in a recent segment on “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.” NewsHour media correspondent Terence Smith was interviewing several people, including Lauren Ridge Fine, a well-known media analyst for Merrill Lynch. There occurred the following exchange.

Fine: The real issue here comes from trying to serve the public in a high quality fashion but at the same time being beholden to shareholders.

Smith: Well, Lauren Fine, what profit margin does Wall Street expect from a newspaper, a publicly held newspaper company? If they average in the 20s, is that enough? What does it have to be?

Fine: Well, it’s never enough of course. This is Wall Street we’re talking about.

Now, that is an honest and unabashed statement of what some of us see as the tyranny of the current situation. It matters not whether the source of that tyranny is the demand of analysts and major shareholders, the reaction of corporate executives to those demands, or merely the demand of owners of privately held newspapers for an unreasonably high return.

The point has been made that American newspapers on average are better than ever. I agree wholeheartedly. But their improvement, their upward momentum is being overcome by the gravity of the marketplace. The drive for ever-increasing profits is pulling quality down. Unless some booster restores newspapers’ upward momentum, gravity will take over with potentially irreversible consequences.

What is generally true of newspapers is true in Knight Ridder. There are many good newspapers and good newspaper people in Knight Ridder. The Mercury News is ranked as one of the 10 best newspapers in the nation. Knight Ridder journalists continue to do the best journalism they are capable of, which I want to emphasize is still among the best in the nation. But the momentum of the company, like the momentum in many other media companies, is trending in the wrong direction. The trend threatening newspapers’ historic mission is clear if we are willing to see it.

It can be challenged and reversed if we are willing to speak out. Of course, many are unable or unwilling to see or speak the truth of the situation. There are many reasons for this. One is that the high salaries many of our leaders receive, in newsrooms and newspaper business offices as well as corporate headquarters, have turned into golden handcuffs. And those handcuffs have morphed into blindfolds and gags, as well. Sometimes we refuse to see the truth. Sometimes we see it, but dare not speak it. But this muffle of good fortune has not produced absolute silence. Today, we hear a growing chorus of brave souls, both inside and outside the industry, protesting vigorously, and an audible grumbling of discontent from within the ranks of journalists and readers alike. They are all concerned about the current drift away from quality. A drift they fear will become a steady flow that will grow into an irresistible tide that will wash away so much that is good and important in American journalism.

It is good that we have people working for reform inside and outside the newspaper business. When Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg near the beginning of what we now call the Reformation, there were people of good will working at nearly every level of the Catholic Church. Those like Luther who left the church to protest its debasement and the many who remained to work for improvement from within gave rise not only to a new branch of Christianity, the Protestants, but also forced the reform of the Catholic Church. Much the same needs to happen in newspapers today.

A publisher wrote me this week to say he respected my decision to resign and hoped I would respect his to stay in the job he has and put out the best paper he could for his community. And that newspaper is still quite good indeed. Not only do I respect his decision, I know it is the right one if we are to set the balance right again.

We need people like that publisher working on the inside to support good journalism and build healthy businesses. Great institutions fail when they are overcome by a corrupted ideal or when the good people who sustain them lose faith and leave. I made the choice to work from the outside. As Nancy Woodhull, a friend and talented editor who died too soon, used to say, “It is much easier to rock the boat when you’re not in it.”

Throughout my career I have surrounded myself with ideas and ideals and have tried to live within and live up to the best them. For many years my office walls have been adorned by quotes that inspire, that guide, that challenge and remind. When I finally faced squarely the tyranny of the market and the threat it represents to the historic and noble mission of American journalism, I kept coming back to a quote of a personal hero of mine, the 19^th century journalist and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. It was a quote that hung on the wall of my office on the day I resigned:

Let me give you a word on the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. ... If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them. And these will be continued till they are resisted. ... The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

Those words spoke clearly to me about my personal situation and the road forward that was best for me.

In the days since my resignation I have been humbled, encouraged and energized by the continuing and very public debate it has sparked in the newspaper industry and the hundreds of e-mails, letters, calls and cards I have received. Let me share a few of the latter with you. I have omitted the names to protect both the innocent and the uninvolved.

An editor of a major East Coast newspaper penned a note that said, “Congratulations on an act of exquisite integrity that I hope and believe will be of historic influence in the craft that we love.”

Staffers in the newsroom of a Midwestern paper wrote, “In an age when heroes are a dying breed, courage is a rare thing to behold. Your act has made us proud. At a time when many of us wonder whether journalism can ever again be a noble endeavor, you have redeemed our faith in our profession.”

A national correspondent for a newspaper known for a tradition of excellence sent the following: “I want to congratulate you on your courageous and principled stance regarding the financial targeting at the Merc. I hope your action succeeds in getting the attention of some folks at the top of the corporate pyramid. I have seen my own newspaper eviscerated to serve what many believe are unreasonable goals.”

And this came from a former president of ASNE: “I know how extraordinarily difficult it is to leave a job at a newspaper you love. But to do so because of principle is a profile in courage that is badly needed at this moment in our history. My prayer is that your act of bravery will sound a bell that will be heard in the offices of all of our CEOs, publishers, editors and others, and that Wall Street will listen carefully to what you had to say.”

So, where do we go from here?

First, let me say that I am hopeful and optimistic about the future of American newspapers — both as a business and as key contributors to the vitality of our democracy. I neither believe nor will I accept that the current trend cannot be changed, that the proper balance cannot be restored, that the unwise is somehow unavoidable, or that a course that is inconsistent with our principles and values must be followed. Just as we journalists can make better bad situations in our communities by shining our spotlights into usually hidden or unseen places, we can apply the same remedy to our own houses. I believe that if we are willing to speak the truth, willing to talk together and work together to determine what the proper balance is and how it can be restored, then we can achieve that end.

And what should such a collaborative effort consider and whom should it include?

Here are a few thought starters.

n The discussion needs to include all the stakeholders, not just publishers, editors, large shareholders and institutional investors. Journalists and employees from the business side need to be at the table as well, as do readers, scholars and a diverse group of community representatives.

n One goal of the effort should be to develop a working definition of what being a good and faithful steward of the public trust requires of newspaper managers and newspaper owners.

n The moral, social, and business dimensions of the issue should be fully explored and given equal priority.

n The discussion should build the case for a steady and reliable investment, insofar as prudent business allows, in news, circulation, research and promotion. It should also make the case for a reliable and supportive environment that will attract and hold the best talent in all departments.

n The case needs to be made that editors must seek equal access to the publisher’s chair. Journalists cannot leave the helm to those who do not have a deep commitment to a newspaper’s responsibilities to its readers or its community.

n And, finally, a way must be found to give the public a sense of ownership in its community’s newspaper. It should hold the paper, its managers and owners to reasonably high standards and accept nothing less.

I would like to close on an unusually personal note. For several years now as I girded for budget battles, I had my own private fight song. The resolve it expressed was a constant tonic. The song, actually a sermon written by the essayist Stanley Crouch, was a verbalization and accompaniment for Wynton Marsalis’ composition “Premature Autopsies,” on his album The Majesty of the Blues.

The sermon is a rejection of the debasement of jazz through commercialism. And I heard in it a parallel between the nobility and deeply personal nature of jazz and journalism done excellently. The threat both face from equally pernicious commercial pressures and a reason to be hopeful. Let me leave you with a few lines:

[I]f a dragon thinks it is grand enough, that dragon will try to make you believe that what you need to carry you through the inevitable turmoil that visits human life is beyond your grasp. If that dragon thinks it is grand enough, it will try to convince you that there is no escape, no release, no salvation from its wicked domination. ...

There are some of us who don’t accept the dreams of dragons as their own, no matter how grand those dragons might say they are. ... Out there somewhere are the kind of people who do not accept the premature autopsy of a noble art form. These are the ones who follow in the footsteps of the gifted and the disciplined who have been deeply hurt but not discouraged, who have been frightened but have not forgotten how to be brave. ...

You have to beware of premature autopsies. A noble sound might not lie still in the dark cave where the dragons have taken it. A noble sound might just rise up and push away the stones that were placed in its path. ... A noble sound is a mighty thing. It can mess around and end up swinging low and swinging high and flapping its wings in a rhythm that might swoop up over the limitations imposed by the dreams of dragons.

And the same will be true I hope for our noble calling of journalism in the public interest. It will push away the stones now blocking its path and swoop up over the limitations imposed by the dreams of dragons.

Thank you very much.

Oppel: Jay, I think I can safely say that history will show that was one of the most powerful and important speeches ever given at ASNE.

Before we get into the questions I wanted to say something. I know that some of you have reservations to leave early this afternoon, midafternoon and so on. I hope you can stay for the induction of our new president, because his mama’s here. If two-thirds of you head for the door, I’m going to have to explain to her that this is a very important religious ritual and only the priests of the profession are allowed to attend.

Jay has agreed to take a few questions. Only ASNE members may ask questions. Members are invited to come to the microphones from the audience. Please give your name and newspaper and keep your questions brief and to the point.

Questions from the floor

Jerome M. Ceppos, Knight Ridder, San Jose, Calif.: I was trying to come up with another lead, and as Jay knows leads are not my strong point. So I couldn’t do it. It’s tough to debate values in front of 500 people, most of whom are good friends or good acquaintances. That’s actually the easy part, it’s even tougher to do it — so I’m not going to — when the speaker is someone you’re so close to. I’ll stop with the nostalgia right there. I’m asking permission, Jay and Rich, to filibuster for a moment and not ask a question. Let me just repeat what I said to a reporter this morning who asked me about some of the points Jay raised. I said that I was frustrated — Jay heard this from me last weekend — about Jay’s resignation. I said, to be honest, I was frustrated that some people weren’t looking at the journalism that Knight Ridder does, the journalism that Jay mentioned, the journalism that this week included The Miami Herald’s recount. So, I would just ask that you judge us the way you judge your own newspapers — and that is by the journalism.

If you must look at numbers, and Jay knows this is not my strong point, so indulge me ...

Harris: It’s always been a team effort.

Ceppos: ... Yes, it has been, with you and David Yarnold doing the numbers part and me doing some of the rest. But if you must look at numbers — and I don’t have stuff in front of me — but I’m thinking back to probably the doubling of the Mercury News newsroom staff over the last couple of decades or less. I’m thinking about the dramatic growth in the last few years in the newsroom, which is great, but not something that should be held up particularly. I’m also thinking that, in this difficult year, the average number of folks in the Mercury News newsroom will be the same, I believe, as it was in the boom year of 1999. Again, I am not asking for any great applause for that, but I think it’s worth noting. It’s also probably worth noting that, looking at those traditional industry standards that I have often criticized, the Mercury News will have 380 or so people this year and a circulation of about 287,000. I think it’s great that proportion is the way it is. I would respectfully say that I doubt that many others of you in this room are fortunate enough to have a proportion like that between newsroom staff and circulation. And the projection is that news hole, which we sweated over a lot, actually will be higher at the end of the year than it was in the boom year of 1999. I am going to stop there and thank my friend Jay and thank Rich for letting me speak. I would just ask you to look at those things as well as to listen to the very serious things that Jay said. Thank you.

Harris: This is not a debate about Jay or Knight Ridder. The Mercury News is a very good newspaper. It was before I resigned. It continues to be. There is a lot of great journalism going on in Knight Ridder, as I said. What I hope we all stay focused on is the larger issues of values and directions. Jerry, I know that is a thought that you second.

Hodding Carter III, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Miami: Jay, the frustration that Jerry just mentioned leads to a different frustration that I’d like you to address. Your resignation makes a statement. In the news business we are constantly asked to make statements, to speak truth to power in all aspects of society, except, as it turns out, to our own. The only time it seems possible for this kind of prophetic voice to be uttered is when you leave the house. I want to ask you something. Is it possible to stay within and to be publicly prophetic about this business, or do you have to quit to speak publicly?

Harris: I thought a lot about that, Hodding. I guess my answer would be that if everybody started to speak at once, it would be foolhardy for anyone to say, “All of you have to leave.” The business would collapse. It seems to me that we and the people who work with us have an obligation to make this a much broader debate, to throw open the doors, to not let just one person one year, two years later another, go to the point, but to make it a very broad discussion. I would like, for example, to see a discussion similar to this at the Newspaper Association of America this year, where senior editors and publishers talk about this. We have to throw open the doors and force a discussion of this much in the same way we would shine our light on difficult situations on other things that we cover.

Oppel: I want to point out that I don’t think, if we were a federation of NAA, we would have had such a speaker.

Deborah Howell, Newhouse News Service, Washington: Jay, maybe you could clear up something for me that I have not been able to square in reading the account and talking to people about your resignation. It’s the layoff issue. I think Tony Ridder said after you had resigned that there had already been an agreement that there would be no layoffs, and it seemed from your resignation that that was still a very real possibility.

Harris: I tried to stay away from the specifics of Mercury News budget issues, but let me try to offer a statement that will clarify the matter. There had been a desire expressed that there not be layoffs in the newsroom. Jerry and I had talked about it over a number of months. But there was no way in my estimation and that of my colleagues that we could have gotten to the number that we had, no way that was fair and reasonable, absent layoffs in the newsroom. That was true as of my last conversation with Knight Ridder executives on Friday night. I would only accept something that was fair and reasonable and made sense for the whole company. So, in that context, with that fuller explanation, that there was no agreement, and that in my estimation — and I’d being doing these budgets for 15 years at Knight Ridder — there was no way to get to the number that was still on the table Friday night that would not involve layoffs in the newsroom.

Oppel: This will be the final question, and I would ask you to keep it as brief as possible.

Clarence Pennington, Hebron, Ohio: Jay, all of us here reflect in the glory of your remarks today. They’re important. I want to very carefully couch my preface here. Because of its importance and because of your audience, I would like for you to take just a few minutes and tell us what chance you might have had if you had stayed and fought until you were fired.

Harris: Well, there are two points. One I made in the speech, and this is a personal statement. At some point I had to face the reality that, for me, continued negotiation and compromise was slow and silent surrender. I was just taking another step down the road. Some years we made progress. Other years we kept back. But, compromise is not always progress. The second point I’d make is that I’m not sure I would have been fired. I’m sure that if I threatened to do what I did that some temporary agreement, satisfactory to both sides, would have been reached — and that months later, or the following year, we’d be back at the same point. I had gone as far as I wanted to go down that road. At some point, you have to say no. That’s how I looked at it. Could I have stayed in the game? Absolutely. Could I have stopped the momentum in what I believed to be the wrong direction? I don’t think so. I thought this was the only way I could have the sort of impact that I wanted desperately to have for both the newspaper and the company that I loved dearly.

Thank you all very much.

Oppel: Jay, ASNE thanks you most sincerely for choosing our forum for your first full discussion of the issues that prompted your recent decision. Certainly, you have contributed to a dialogue that is critical to the future of the industry.

Presentation of the silver gavel

Oppel: On to the introduction of your next president. Tim McGuire is one of the most remarkable people in this room. If you haven’t read Gregory Favre’s profile of Tim yet, grab a copy of The American Editor and read it on the way to the airport. It’s a great piece of reading. Of course, Greg had a lot of material to work with. Greg quotes Diane McFarlin, your new ASNE vice president as saying this about Tim: “He laughs loud, and often his sneeze can clear a room.” (He was sneezing in one of the sessions yesterday, and speakers were saying bless you.) “He’s got an oversized intellect and a mouth to match. He’s also got a colossal heart.”

Tim was born in 1949 with arthrograposis multiplex congenita, AMC, a rare disease that crippled most of his joints. He was profoundly handicapped at birth. His parents, a salesman and a hospital admitting clerk, could have warehoused their young son. But the devoutly religious Irish Catholic couple never considered that. Tim’s parents, who lived in central Michigan, searched out a surgeon in Saginaw to give Tim some freedom of movement. He had 13 operations before he was 16. He spent many summers sitting on his front porch in casts, as other children played in their yards. But, of course, Tim doesn’t consider himself handicapped, and he’s not. He is actually advantaged by oversized ambitions. His parents told him he was just like everybody else. Between surgeries they made him take a paper route. Since he was obviously not going to dig ditches for a living, they said, “Son, you will go to college.” It wasn’t easy getting there, and in Catholic school McGuire remembers, “I climbed a fence and got my braces stuck in a fence trying to beat the asses of two second-graders.” He is a killer competitor.

Tim is an unrepentant gambler and likes to sneak off from Minneapolis to Las Vegas and the Kentucky Derby. He is a Catholic lay preacher. While managing editor of the Star Tribune, he spent evenings getting a law degree from William Mitchell College of Law, allowing him to fall into the two most despised categories of human endeavor.

It is said that he keeps both the Bible and the racing form next to his bed. Tim was managing editor of the Ypsilanti Press when he was 24. That was in 1973, when I was a young AP bureau chief in Detroit and first met Tim and his wife-to-be, Jean. I traveled a lot on the road. You know what AP bureau chiefs do. And I would always try to schedule my trips so that on Friday afternoons I would wind up in Ypsilanti, so we could go have a pitcher of beer, which neither of us do any more. And we couldn’t stop laughing.

Tim and I haven’t stopped laughing in 28 years, although there have been a few tears here and there. It has been reassuring in the past year to pick up the phone and seek Tim’s advice. He is a man of lightning quick intellect, passion, humor and occasional outrage. One minute we might be near crying and talking about a child, and the next he is storming at me with a declaratory phrase taken from the barnyard. Something like applesauce, but it is significantly more scatological than that. Without further applesauce may I present the editor of one of the nation’s fine newspapers, the Star Tribune of the Twin Cities; the father of Tracy, Jason and Jeffrey (and Jason, he’s the big guy now, the king, El Grande Taco); the new president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Timothy J. McGuire.

Tim J. McGuire, Star Tribune, Minneapolis: Thank you so much, Rich, for those very kind words. Congratulations again to all the award winners. Jay, thank you for that dramatic, pull-no-punches speech. We will all remember it.

And another special moment today, a special thank you to all the courageous leaders we have heard about this week, and especially Dave Offer, who make our business better and different than any other.

As I accept the presidency of ASNE, I’m honored and humbled. Yes, Diane McFarlin, I can be humbled. First, I am humbled to succeed my longtime friend Rich Oppel. When I met Rich in Ypsilanti, Mich., those 28 years ago, I knew he was smart, and it was obvious he was intense and determined to be successful. He is never, to be honest, as funny as he has been today. But what I didn’t fully appreciate, at the tender age of 25, was Rich Oppel’s journalistic integrity and his complete and total commitment to journalism. Through the years I have come to fully appreciate how thoroughly Rich judges every decision in light of what is journalistically right. That is his compass and his touchstone. ASNE is incredibly fortunate to have been led this year by a man for whom newspaper values are a way of life, not a slogan. Rich has lead ASNE with a calm, delegating demeanor. He has expected the best, and he’s gotten it. The work of his committees has been stellar, and his personal hand has been firm and committed.

Rich had the courage last year to make leadership the linchpin of his presidency. His call to action on Tuesday reminded us all of why we are in this business and why it is so important that we, too, lead with a strong hand.

I am delighted today to be able to make a major announcement that is a direct response to Rich’s commitment to leadership. Thanks largely to the efforts of Paul Tash, incoming chair of the Leadership Committee, the ASNE Board of Directors has approved a major ASNE award for leadership, which will begin next year. The award will be made to outstanding leaders in the newspaper business who show courage, commitment and leadership in tough situations. We hope that each year the winner of this important new award will set a standard for leadership in the newspaper business.

Rich, ASNE, the board of directors, the staff and Tim McGuire thank you for your bold leadership, your commitment to journalistic values and for Carol Oppel’s style. As a token of our esteem and admiration we award you the ASNE silver gavel.

I’m also humbled today because so many friends and family have joined me. My publisher, John Schueler; my invaluable assistant, Sandy McCalvy; my partner in the Star Tribune newsroom, Pam Fine; my close friend and the retiring vice president of McClatchy Newspapers, Gregory Favre, have all honored me with their presence.

I am immensely pleased and gratified and genuinely moved that all three of my siblings traveled from Michigan to be here. My brother Marty and his wife Jan; my sister Mary Beth, her husband Ron; my niece Sarah and nephew Kevin; and my brother David are all here. I am truly thrilled that they could do this for me. Could you please stand?

I am especially grateful for the presence of my sainted mother, who, along with my late father, told me repeatedly that even with casts and braces I could be anything I wanted to be. I am. My delightful, perky daughter, Tracy, and my chip-off-the-old-block son, Jeff, are both here. I could not be prouder of them. Could you two stand please? And my mother?

I know many say it, but I clearly would not be here on this podium were it not for my loving partner and my best friend, Jean Fannin McGuire. I deeply love you all.

Those of you who read the much too kind American Editor profile written by Mr. Favre know that I have not named everyone in my family. Careful readers know that I also have a very special son, Jason. Jason, would you stand please? The gods of ASNE, and coincidence, have deemed that this very special day for me would fall exactly 22 years to the day after Jason came into our lives. I am going to beg your indulgence and violate all the traditions of ASNE and ask you to sing "Happy Birthday" to the special young man who has brought so much joy to our family and his community.

Thank you so much for making Jason’s 22^nd birthday so special.

I am particularly humbled today because I come to the presidency of this great organization at a very troubled time in the newspaper industry. Readership, circulation and advertising revenues seem locked in an ugly downhill race. Our industry’s longtime effort to increase newsroom diversity has obviously hit a snag. Pressures on editors, our news products and our newsrooms seem overwhelming to many of us. Amid the railings, the whines and the frustrations, I think we have a responsibility to focus on three underlying truths. One, being an editor of a newspaper is a true blessing and a privilege. Our opportunities to do good, to stimulate debate and discussion, and to supply the glue of our communities makes what we do far more than a job. It’s a calling. That calling demands every ounce of our integrity and our commitment. Two, we are indeed in the public service business. We must be responsible stewards of the money business, but our obligations to our readers and our communities are editors’ fundamental responsibilities. We must never waver from those responsibilities. Three, creativity and resilience have characterized this industry for the last 100 years. The demise of newspapers has been predicted over and over again. Yet through innovation and commitment to principle we have survived and prospered. We now face a new century with new challenges, and it is time for us to create our future. It is time for each one of us to answer the call of leadership and the call of change. We must step up with courage, determination and innovation. We cannot continue to let things be done to us.

I believe with all my heart that ASNE can and will be a critical player in helping editors respond to that call.

My second major announcement today is that I have established a special board of directors’ committee, Creating the Future in Tough Times. The secretary of our board, Peter Bhatia, has answered my call to chair that committee. And several board members have enthusiastically signed on to play major roles. The committee will explore ways to help editors deal with the challenges of these tough times. And it will help editors create a viable future for our newspapers when we come out on the other side of this downturn. I hope this committee can help us engage in the kind of conversation that Jay Harris called for today. ASNE will not walk away from its members at this difficult time.

All of our excellent committee activities will be centered on that main goal, on helping editors create the future in tough times.

For 79 years this Society has helped editors deal with problems and opportunities. My personal pledge is that 2001-02 will build on that long, wonderful tradition. As always, ASNE will offer leadership, help and hope for a creative, resilient industry. That must be our calling this year.

The 2001 convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors is adjourned.