Last Updated: December 29, 2000
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An American Editor
Battling against the dinosaur label
Jeannine Guttman sees exciting times in newspapers
and challenges her staff to take risks
By Arlene Notoro Morgan
Jeannine Guttman has been editor and vice president of the Portland
Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram since October 1997. She was recently
cited as an editor “to watch” by Editor & Publisher for her newsroom
leadership, innovation and community outreach. As editor she
directs news coverage for the newspaper with a staff of 118 journalists.
The Sunday newspaper is the only statewide newspaper in Maine.
Guttman, 45, started her career at the San Bernardino Sun in California.
She joined the Portland staff in 1994 as the managing editor for reporting.
She is a graduate of the Kent State School of Journalism.
Q. What drove you to a career in newspapers?
A. I have always been a very idealistic person. People who know me best
say that I am the original Pollyanna. So much for the image of journalists
as hard-bitten, cynical and jaded. Like many of my Baby Boom contemporaries,
I wanted to change the world – or at least do as much as I could to make
it a better place. Journalism became a powerful outlet for me, starting
in high school, where I was inspired to write for and later edit my high
school newspaper, The Typhoon. The name was appropriate for the place:
I graduated from Kubasaki High School in Okinawa, Japan.
Q. Describe your typical day.
A. There is a steady diet of planned meetings with staff and other department
heads. I keep at least two hours a day open for staff who want to
talk with me or consult over a problem. When I first became the editor,
I remember the day that forced me to add “open hours” to my schedule. Three
reporters had approached me during different times, asking for a few minutes
to talk about a story. To all three I said: “I’m running off to a meeting.
Is later today OK?” I did manage to squeeze in all three meetings that
day, but I realized that talking to reporters and editors is one of the
most important parts of my job – some days, it’s the most important. And
I realized I had to set aside time for it so that my staff would know how
much I valued that interaction. You can’t live up to an “open door” policy
if don’t build in “open hours” as well.
Q. What have you learned about management since becoming an
editor and what do you think you would have liked to have known beforehand?
A. Editors need to set high standards and be demanding, relentlessly
so, but at the same time, we need to be flexible enough to allow for disagreement,
dissent and new ideas. Those may sound like mutually exclusive concepts,
but they’re not. In a business like ours, which attracts passionate, committed
and dedicated professionals, emotions can sometimes run high. There will
be conflicts. If managed correctly, that kind of creative tension can make
your newspaper better by forcing people to articulate and defend their
ideas and proposals. But you have to create a safe environment for dissent.
You have to be comfortable in welcoming people to disagree with you and
secure enough to change your mind, as warranted. People have to know that
your openness is for real. I have learned to change my decision, and back
another person’s proposal, even if it is not exactly how I would have done
something. It’s not that my way was better; it was just different. When
there isn’t a qualitative difference, I think it’s important to allow others
to make the call. It allows your editors to grow, it provides for broader
staff ownership of the newspaper process.
As for the thing I wished I had known: Every editor needs to develop
her own management and leadership style. When I first became an editor,
I tried to emulate the styles of my mentors and editors who had inspired
me. Over time, I realized that I had to weave my own leadership tapestry.
It was not something that I could inherit or copy. There is no script for
being an editor. I think that knowledge is especially important for women
because we still have very few female role models to guide us. We are still
in the early stages of making a profound mark on this industry. We can
do that by being ourselves, by speaking from our worldview, by mentoring
other women and by accepting that the female management and leadership
style can sometimes be different from the male model. Different leadership
styles should be cultivated and celebrated.
Q. What makes your newspaper innovative or “hot” in today’s marketplace?
A. We have done a lot of work in the area of civic journalism, which
I define as bringing the voices and perspectives of readers into daily
news coverage. By making that connection, by showing the impact of news
on people’s everyday lives, you increase the relevancy of your newspaper.
The news has a more authentic quality to it. It’s not just the what and
when. It’s the why and how. Sometimes, in deadline reporting, we miss that
latter step. Since 1994, we have held Reader Roundtables to listen to Maine
people’s views and concerns on a host of public policy issues: the New
England fishing crisis, public education, the 1996 presidential election,
the 1998 gubernatorial campaign, alcohol abuse, what it means to be an
American and sex education. Our current project, “On the Verge,” takes
an in-depth look at the world of teenagers. That series is running throughout
2000 and is being coordinated with our online newspaper, MaineToday.com.
In 1999, we launched our first Community Council, a nine-month reader
advisory panel that reflected a rich cross-section of our market.
Bottom line: I think we’re innovative. I think we challenge ourselves
every day to do better, deeper and more resonant journalism. I like to
challenge our staff to “blow things up”—try something new, something different.
If it doesn’t work, we won’t do it again tomorrow. I believe that journalism
is a very personal expression. The best newspaper, to me, is a rich collection
of unique voices and insights that reflects the diverse range of a community.
It is a buffet of compelling news and information. Its strength is its
diversity; its power is its ability to provide a common platform for community
reflection.
Q. You recently participated in Columbia University’s workshop on
the coverage of race and ethnicity. What is going on in Portland that made
you feel you needed to help in this area?
A. Portland and Southern Maine are experiencing historic change in terms
of demography. Maine is a refugee resettlement area and we have immigrants
moving here from around the world, particularly Africa, South America,
Asia and Eastern Europe. In addition, Maine has always had vibrant communities
of color, with the roots of Native Americans and African-Americans dating
back many generations. Still, as a state, Maine is about 96 percent white.
The majority of change is occurring in the Portland area. The challenge
to our newspaper is to keep pace with the change, report its developments
and help create a dialogue about racial issues in Maine.
Q. What do you see as your greatest challenge as a leader in the
current newspaper climate?
A. Fighting the dinosaur label. I think that label is a lot of
hype. I think newspapers always will have a place in the minds and hearts
of American readers. I think it is very easy to create a bogeyman – the
Internet – and to run around like Chicken Little and think the sky is falling.
I worry that the next generation of journalists may turn their talents
to the Web as a result. And that very much concerns me. We need the best
and brightest in our business, to carry on the stewardship of journalistic
values and principles. The past 20 years haven’t been easy; the next 50
will be even harder.
Q. What’s your advice for other editors who want to create
a vision and strategic plan that has newsroom buy in?
A. In our newsroom we developed our goals and mission statement for
2000 during a series of staff meetings. There was broad consensus on our
goals for this year. I knew that I wanted us to create a list of shared
goals. What surprised me was the idea of a mission statement, which was
raised by one of our reporters. His initial idea was something simple;
he said the slogan for Federal Express is “10 a.m.” That says it all; with
Fed Ex you get delivery by 10 a.m. Our mission statement wasn’t that minimalistic:
“We are Maine’s must read – a daily news report that is accurate, fair,
timely and compelling and that reflects the communities we serve. We are
committed to defending the First Amendment and the public’s right to know,
to fulfilling our leadership role and to providing a forum for ideas.”
Five goals follow that statement. We designed a page that contains all
those elements and dozens are posted around the news department. It helps
us to keep our focus and to remind us of our desire to be as necessary
to our readers as oxygen.
Q. How do you handle dissension in the newsroom about the paper’s
direction?
A. I welcome dissent. In fact, I am suspect when it is not voiced,
because I think it always plays a role in human interaction. You need to
create a space for it and encourage it to be expressed, otherwise it can
do damage below the surface. My take on people who disagree is this: They
care enough to voice an objection, to risk disagreeing with their boss.
That takes commitment and chutzpah. I admire that. And my staff has saved
me from a number of blunders by speaking up and pointing out flaws in my
logic. I couldn’t do my job without dissenters, without people having the
courage and willingness to tell me when I’m out to lunch.
Q. Do you have any special programs to attract women and people of
color?
A. Women make up about half of the staff, although women comprise only
about 25 percent of our management ranks. I would like to increase the
number of women editors and journalists of color in our newsroom. We have
two minority summer internship positions and we just hired an African-American
journalist as a full-time reporter. This is an area that my publisher,
Chuck Cochrane, and I are committed to improving in the years ahead. We
are making progress and we have made a public commitment to continue building
on our successes. Increasing the number of diverse voices in our newsroom
will make our newspaper more of a reflection of this changing community.
Q. What do you think the industry could do to improve diversity that
has not already been tried?
A. I think many journalists of color enter the profession to tell their
stories, to cover the issues of race and ethnicity in a way that sheds
light and informs and prompts change. And I worry that newspapers fail
to see that need and desire. We overlook the resources in our newsrooms.
We fail to understand how powerfully such personal stories would connect
with our readers. Every journalist wants to tell stories and those stories
are, in some measure, a reflection of their values and lives. Although
we all view the world through a unique lens, most newsrooms, including
mine, have viewed the world through a largely white lens. In talks that
I have had with journalists of color and prospective job candidates, I
have made it clear that our newspaper wants to tell those stories and that
each reporter’s unique voice will be respected and represented in our journalism.
Q. How do you obtain reader feedback and how do you share that with
the staff?
A. Several ways: We send out weekly accuracy surveys, which we mail
to people who have been featured in news stories. We have the Community
Council of readers, which I mentioned earlier. Last year, we held three
community listening tours, inviting readers in Brunswick, Biddeford and
Portland to meet the news staff and talk about any issues on their minds.
This year, we are visiting civic organizations, churches and neighborhood
associations to gather feedback and story ideas. All of these events are
opportunities to put a face on the newspaper and to pick up wonderful story
ideas. I also write a weekly column, which provides another opportunity
to interact with readers.
Q. If you could change one thing about the newspaper industry, what
would it be?
A. We’re sometimes too stodgy. We sometimes mistake ritualized practices
for coveted traditions. We don’t embrace change very easily. I have always
been stunned by the controversy surrounding the concept of civic journalism,
for example. In an era when newspaper readership is declining, when people
feel disconnected from the press, why not seek out new ways of telling
stories? Why is that idea so threatening? And why do journalists who experiment
with civic journalism models to tell community stories always feel the
need to apologize?
I think our hide-bound attitudes are becoming an albatross. Why are
so many journalists leaving the print media for online jobs? Sure, the
money is a draw. But a bigger draw is the wide-open frontier that the online
world represents. The rules have yet to be written, the territories have
yet to be discovered. There aren’t folks standing in the wings, wagging
their fingers, saying it can’t be done because it’s never been done that
way.
That atmosphere of invention, of full-throttle creativity, of trailblazing
pioneer spirit appeals to many journalists; frankly, it appeals to me.
I think we can replicate that excitement and energy at our newspapers
by being more open to innovation and more receptive to new ideas. We need
to stretch and take risks and ask,“Why not?” instead of automatically saying,
“Let’s not.”
Said another way: We’re not dinosaurs, so let’s stop acting as if we
were. We’re not impervious to change. We’re not static, rigid institutions.
We’re an exciting business that hasn’t seen this much fundamental change
since Gutenberg came along. This is the time to kick into high gear, to
put the pedal to the metal, to encourage dreams and risks and to let the
fur fly. And to lede with it on Page 1.
Morgan is assistant managing editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer.
