Last Updated: December 29, 2000
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A note
from the president
Traditional values will be our future advantage
By Richard A. Oppel
My dear friend Tim McGuire of Minneapolis was picking on me. He said
I wasn’t nearly as much of a backward traditionalist “as the reputation
you work so hard to cultivate.”
I took it as a compliment.
I do believe strongly in traditional newspaper values, as I know most
ASNE members do. I am passionate about accuracy, fairness, balance and
connection to community; about the power of strong reporting harnessed
to great writing; about depth, courage, independence and the classical
watchdog role of the newspaper.
I believe we editors must be persuasive and passionate in working to
sustain those values through changes in culture, technology, competition
and media ownership, knowing that our colleagues in other divisions of
the newspaper count on us to speak out.
But as the pace of change accelerates, the pressures increase.
For example, how does your Sunday circulation look? You are fortunate
if you’re holding steady. Editors tell me of losses against a year ago
of 1,000 papers, 4,000 papers — even 40,000.
Yet I’m optimistic about the future.
We editors have many reasons to be grateful for the enduring strength
of our newspapers. The industry is strong and robust. Our pages are more
substantive, brighter and more professional than ever. Advertising revenues
are strong.
We remain the most “mass” of all mass media. Television is being battered
harder than we by the movement to the use of the Internet for news.
But a newspaper editor can hardly take comfort in knowing his airplane
will crash slightly later than the other person’s.
All of this is why I created a Leadership Committee this year and asked
Jennie Buckner to chair it. Jennie, who succeeded me seven years ago as
editor of The Charlotte Observer, is full of energy and commitment in driving
one of ASNE’s most important groups. And leadership will be the theme of
the 2001 convention in Washington.
Jennie has drawn together a committee loaded with talent, including
key figures from three of our profession’s important academies, the American
Press Institute, the Newspaper Management Center at Northwestern University
and the Poynter Institute.
Buckner also has enlisted the assistance of the McCormick Tribune Foundation,
directed by Vivian Vahlberg, who has become an indispensable ally of ASNE.
Buckner and her committee have hired Dr. Sharon Peters, a former newspaper
editor and researcher, to prepare a questionnaire on leadership and management
that will be sent to participants at more than 20 newspapers. Peters will
have analyzed and interpreted the data when Buckner’s committee holds a
symposium at Cantigny, Col. Robert McCormick’s historic estate in Chicago,
on Dec. 4-6.
Some of our profession’s most successful leaders will convene for a
discussion of leadership. An edited account of that dialogue will
be produced for distribution at the ASNE convention.
Attendance at Cantigny is limited, regrettably, to about 40. But it
is our hope that the best of the meeting will be replicated at the 2001
convention.
Buckner describes her intent: “This is a call to action as an
industry. Are we doing all we can to attract a new generation of leaders?
Is newsroom leadership being valued and heard?”
When I look at my own newsroom today, I know the more than 200 staffers
are the best and most reliable journalists in Central Texas.
Today we do our work on newsprint and the Web.
I hope in 10 years that the Austin American-Statesman’s staff will be
larger, more skilled and more indispensable to our readers. But I know
newsprint will be of gradually declining importance. We must work harder
to extend our brand across other media, and figure out ways to make a profit
for our owners.
Newspapers in Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Minneapolis, Orlando, Sarasota,
Tampa and other cities are leading the way, but all of us will be affected
in larger ways soon.
Ultimately, our real competitive advantage will be those old values
of journalism that separate our work from the speeding slipstream of gossip
and unreliable information, untouched by an editor’s hand, flowing at citizens
in a world of disintermediated media.
Getting to that future state, with our hides intact, will be invigorating.
We hope ASNE can come along on the journey, and fight alongside you.
Oppel, ASNE president, is editor of the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman.
