Last Updated: July 28, 2000
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ASNE on the move
Should we accept non-newspaper sponsors?
NO
By Eugene Patterson
Please, please do not invite "syndicates, news services and magazine
vendors" to offer payola to ASNE. They sell things to us. If we take their
money that have a right to expect our body. Otherwise we're teases.
It's that simple.
To expect newspaper companies that traditionally have met these expenses
to "redirect their support to ... industry issues" is to miss the most
important industry issue. That is to keep the news and editorial side above
suspicion. Advertorials and infomercials and weaselings on the Web have
left it to the old professionals of ASNE to define what's straight for
the news media. And look what we are doing.
When I joined ASNE nearly half a century ago we were on the take from
these people. Even the closing night ball at conventions was paid for by
a syndicate. ANPA, as it was then named, did the same. But they were the
business side, accustomed to receiving and paying. In the 1960s ASNE decided
to stay poor but honest; we former floozies showed the johns to the door.
What we couldn't pay for we did without. That went for private sector and
government junkets too. We got clean and felt better.
Why the backslide now, when the technology storm is rising and all hands
are searching for anchor values?
Please. Who are we?
Patterson, 1977-78 ASNE president, is the retired CEO of the St.
Petersburg (Fla.) Times.
Yes
By Richard A. Oppel
Gene Patterson's letter is a beauty of thunder, majesty and clear-thinking.
I call for "independence and integrity" in an ASNE speech; he says we've
sold out.
But ASNE has not sold out.
Registration fees fall far short of convention costs in Washington.
We should bring national and world leaders before the nation's editors,
so box lunches in Tulsa are not the answer. Registration now is $500. To
cover costs, we'd have to bill $700, driving down attendance.
Newspaper companies once made up the difference. In 1998-99 as ASNE
treasurer-bagman I raised $150,000 from the companies. The next year one
company told Tim McGuire it would no longer support the eating and drinking
of editors at conventions. Other corporations suggested it was time to
kill off ASNE and let the editors be one more federation in that collection
of NAA federations.
We went to the syndicates. They didn't come to us. We grant membership
to senior syndicate editors. They supervise, recruit and edit columnists,
cartoonists and others who create content for our newspapers. I'd rather
have them inside the tent, hearing our concerns about fairness, integrity
and independence, than outside it rounding up celebrities to write columns.
The syndicates have no say in the content of the events they support.
Gene, the convention was no red light district.
Oppel, ASNE president, is editor of the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman.
