Author: By Arlene Morgan
Published: July 01, 2000
Last Updated: August 18, 2000
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An American Editor

An investigator rises in The Sun

Bill Marimow, a two-time public service Pulitzer winner for investigations, takes the wheel in Baltimore

By Arlene Morgan

William K. Marimow was named the editor of The Sun in Baltimore in April after serving five years as managing editor under John Carroll, recently named editor of the Los Angeles Times.

He joined the Sun in 1993 to resume a collaboration with Carroll that started at The Philadelphia Inquirer where they were on the team that brought the paper a 1978 Pulitzer Prize in public service for their investigation of police brutality. Carroll left the Inquirer to run the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader while Marimow remained to win a second Pulitzer in 1985 for investigative reporting after uncovering abuses by the Philadelphia police K-9 corps. Marimow earned his editing stripes by running several of the Inquirer’s zoned operations before becoming city editor in 1989. After that he did a stint as assistant to the publisher to learn the business side before moving south to Baltimore.

As the Sun’s managing editor, Marimow brought a drive for excellence to the paper that focused on project reporting, including the award-winning Reading By Nine project to battle illiteracy in the Baltimore schools.

A 1969 graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., Marimow grew up as a diehard Philadelphia Phillies fan, but says he’s “warming up” to the Orioles. Ask him a question about baseball numbers — try Robin Roberts or Richie Ashburn — and he’ll respond as if he were a league statistician. His penchant for such details, coupled with his strong ethical standards and reporting skills, makes Marimow a journalist that his peers — and his reporting subjects — never forget.

Q. What do you see as your mission as an editor for a paper that has such a long tradition for journalism excellence?

A. In my view, the Sun’s editor has to create a newsroom environment in which excellent journalists can pursue their stories freely, aggressively and fairly. The staff needs to know that we will publish their work — regardless of who is the subject of the story — provided that their stories are accurate, thorough and fair and that we have made every possible effort to dig out and understand both sides of the story.

Q. How can the Sun, and newspapers in general, differentiate itself in today’s multimedia competition?

A. By doing stories that other media — namely radio, television and the Internet — aren’t doing, either because of their lack of resources, expertise or commitment.

Q. The hot topic right now is convergence between online, TV and the newspaper. How do you think the Sun will grow in this regard under Tribune ownership?

A. I heartily endorse a close working relationship with other media owned by the Tribune Co. If we do great stories in the newspaper, which are posted on the Web and broadcast on radio and television, it will guarantee the greatest possible audience and make serious readers buy The Sun for the complete report.

Q. As a winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and many other awards, describe how your investigative work impacted the credibility of the newspaper in the community?

A. I believe that my stories about police violence in Philadelphia were the sparks that ignited criminal investigations by the Justice Department and the district  attorney’s office. In 1978, incoming district attorney Ed Rendell appointed a prosecutor (George Parry) for the sole purpose of investigating and prosecuting police violence.

When I wrote the K-9 stories in 1984, Mayor Wilson Goode ordered that the police department formulate guidelines outlining when dogs were permitted to attack citizens.

A federal grand jury was empaneled to investigate the K-9 unit; the dogs I wrote about were removed from the department; and the city settled civil suits by men and women who were attacked by dogs for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In general, I believe that the stories I wrote for the Inquirer put a spotlight on problems that required the attention of public officials. Sometimes, those officials took corrective action; other times, they blamed the newspaper and me for writing unfair stories in order to sell papers and win journalism awards. For many people in Philadelphia, especially African Americans who had walked the streets in the ’60s and ’70s, it was clear the stories were on the money and they forced public officials to take action that really improved the lives of the city’s citizens.

Q. We always hear about comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. How do you think papers who serve this role understand what the people need in terms of who to afflict?

A. It’s always been my belief that an excellent newspaper can shine its big spotlight on the problems of the powerless — people whose plights are being ignored by our government; people whose problems are unknown to the government; or people who have been mistreated by the government.

This could include men and women who live in group homes, where their supervisors are ignoring their medical or mental health needs. It could be someone who has been falsely convicted of a crime and sent to prison because of shoddy police work. Or it could be innocent men and women taking out FHA loans to purchase homes whose sales prices have been fraudulently inflated by real estate hustlers, making it impossible for the new owners to pay their monthly mortgages and do the repair work necessary to keep the homes livable.

Q. As the editor, what type of outreach programs or listening posts do you use to find out if you are being relevant to what the community and to what your readers want?

A. I believe in listening to as many of our readers as I can: This includes people I work with; the teachers my wife Diane works with; the maintenance workers at the Sun and the Downtown Athletic Club; powerful lawyers like Peter Angelos, the owner of the Orioles; and subscribers who call my office to complain about their delivery service.

Q. The newspaper industry is embarking on a major number of initiatives to build readership. What specifically is the Sun doing in this regard?

A. We have tried to add muscle to our suburban coverage, especially in the two suburban counties — Howard and Anne Arundel — where we are locked in competition with The Washington Post. What we’ve added has been based, in part, on what we heard from readers in focus groups, and this includes in-depth coverage of religion, business and recreational sports. In addition, we have tried to make certain that our coverage of education is both broad and deep, getting our reporters and photographers into the schools and reporting on what is working and what is not.

Q. There is also a major push to get serious about diversity in both staffing and content. As the editor, how will you lead the Sun to reach your community demographics?

A. The way to make certain we reach all our readers is to make certain that we hire staffers from all backgrounds and of all races. To me, this means men and women, whites, blacks and Latinos, and people from all economic and educational backgrounds. More importantly, we — as top editors — have to stress the importance of making certain that we cover all the communities in the Baltimore area, not just  the wealthiest or the ones that work hardest to attract our attention.

Q. When you became an editor, what skills from your reporting career did you find useful in your new role?

A. I believe that I am a good listener and an effective interviewer. Having been a reporter for 18 years, I also believe that I know which stories are possible to get, which are likely to be doable and those which are — at best — long shots. I also believe that I can help many staffers strategize about how to get stories and how to organize the material in complex, in-depth pieces.

Q. What skills did you need to learn to become an effective editor?

A. Tailoring my expectations to each person’s potential. Realizing that management sometimes requires being tough with one’s colleagues.

Q. You are a role model to many who aspire to become investigative reporters. What advice can you give editors to help develop reporters who are interested in a watchdog role?

A. Make sure your reporters learn to cover a beat and — as Gene Roberts taught me — use that beat to spin out news stories, features, profiles, analysis stories and investigative articles. Also, teach your staff that getting the other side of the story is just as important (and sometimes even more important) than getting the story itself. In my opinion, a good investigative story should be like a criminal or civil trial in which the reader (or, to complete the analogy, the jury) gets both sides of the story and can make a judgment about where the truth lies.

Q. Why do you think readers value these stories?

A. These stories get closer to the truth than the more stenographic recounting of daily events.

Q. What have been your greatest successes as a reporter and as an editor?

A. As a reporter, the series on police violence by Philadelphia police during Mayor Rizzo’s last term in office; the K-9 stories in 1984; my stories on the bombing of the MOVE house in 1985.

As an editor, working with John Carroll on a series about a death squad in Honduras trained by the CIA, which was a Pulitzer finalist for public service in 1996 (by Ginger Thompson and Gary Cohn); working with John and Rebecca Corbett on the shipbreaking series, which won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 1998 (by Gary Cohn and Will Englund); and the stories by Wally Roche and Scott Higham in 1997, which led to the removal from office of Maryland’s most powerful state senator. It was the first time since 1797 that a state senator had been removed from the general assembly.

Q. The Sun received a lot of attention with the Reading By Nine project. Did it change how the paper looks at its other journalism projects as well as the day-to-day report?

A. This was an important project because it put the spotlight on the difficulties American schools have been having in teaching reading. To me, this was a classic public service project, and we are continuing the crusade. Recently, we ran a four-part series on the secrets of Baltimore area schools whose success in their reading programs defies the odds based on their rung on the socio-economic ladder.

Q. What were the downsides of taking on such a monumental task?

A. That people wouldn’t read it, and that it wouldn’t provide a spark to ignite action by city and state education officials to address Maryland’s deficiencies.

Q. Have you been surprised by the reaction in the community and the changes the project has inspired?

A. I have been impressed by the enthusiasm and by the depth of commitment of many state and city officials in terms of spending the money to train teachers who teach reading, to purchase textbooks that will be effective, and in measuring the results.

Q. Because of the Staples scandal in Los Angeles, the industry has been talking a great deal about the importance of “the wall” between the newsroom and the business side. How were you able to negotiate “the wall” in the Reading project so that the reporters were not compromised?

A. We formulated the stories we were going to do among a group of reporters and editors. The business side, working separately, came up with a company-wide tutoring program and sold advertising in which Baltimore area companies endorsed the campaign to improve reading skills among third graders. Several people in the newsroom did volunteer to tutor, but those who were intimately involved in writing the stories chose not to participate. As to the advertising, we learned about who was advertising when we saw the ads in the paper.

Q. Did you grow up wanting to be a reporter?

A. Well, I always dreamed of working for Sports Illustrated.

Q. Who were your role models?

A. I loved Sandy Grady when he was a columnist on the sports pages of the Evening Bulletin; I’ve always admired the reporting and writing of Gay Talese, David Halberstam, John McPhee (before he became obsessed with geology), and J. Anthony Lukas. As for editors, I learned a lot from Gene Roberts, though it sometimes took me years to understand the lessons he taught through his detailed and entertaining storytelling.

Q. Who are your heroes today?

A. Robin Roberts, the great Phillies pitcher of the 1950s; Chuck Bednarik, the Eagles center, who played 60 minutes in the NFL title game of 1960; my dad, who often worked seven days to keep the Oakmont Cycle Shop in business when the big discount stores like Kiddie City and Bargain City decimated his business in the 1960s.

Q. Do you have advice for a young student who is interested in a journalism career?

Make every story count; do something in every story, which shows you’re digging for facts and trying to write clearly and well. Study the work of newspapers and reporters you admire. Try to work for a paper that:

• Publishes stories which you would like to be able to write someday.
• Has editors who don’t just edit but also teach.
• Sends it best staffers to bigger and better newspapers when they’re ready to grow.