Last Updated: December 29, 2000
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An American Editor
Small paper has major league goals
Joe Distelheim tells reporters they can use the same
words in Huntsville that they use at the New York Times
By Arlene Notoro Morgan
Joe Distelheim has served as editor of The Huntsville Times in Huntsville,
Ala., a high-tech city of 180,000, since 1994. A former executive editor
of The Anniston Star, Distelheim currently serves as the president of the
Alabama Press Association Journalism Foundation and is a charter member
of ASNE’s Small Newspapers Committee. Obviously, Distelheim believes smaller
is better. But to prepare for his editing role, he cut his teeth as
a reporter and editor at the Wilmington (Del.) News-Journal, The Charlotte
Observer and The Detroit Free Press.
Distelheim’s leadership style is exemplified by reaching out to the
community through his editor’s column, which appears each Sunday and attempts
to explain the newspaper to its readers, along with efforts to develop
a more diverse news report. As the chair of ASNE’s Small Newspapers Committee,
Distelheim is helping to lead the latest ASNE initiative to improve minority
hiring and retention, especially in the small market, which traditionally
is the hardest of all recruiting grounds.
A graduate of Northern Illinois University, Distelheim grew up in
and near Chicago. He is married to the former Dottie Adams, who had lived
in the same Charlotte, N.C. zip code all her life until Joe decided Detroit
would be a nice place to winter for 10 years.
When Distelheim carves out time from his busy schedule, he
enjoys reading well-done suspense fiction (he still mourns John D. McDonald),
suffering with a bad baseball team (the Cubs; any team can have a bad century),
and any beach, anywhere.
Q. Small newspapers generally recognize that their newsrooms are
stepping stones for young journalists. What are you doing to
make your paper one of those coveted stepping stones?
A. We want The Huntsville Times to be a place where all our journalists
can do major league work. We tell them they get to use the same words
The New York Times can.
Q. How does an editor in this market give readers the consistency
and authority they need about their hometown if the newsroom is in
constant flux?
A. We’re lucky to have a good mix. Huntsville is a good place to live
and work, so many of our best staff members have chosen to make The
Times their career home.
Q. Explain the ASNE/ APME/Freedom Forum plan to improve minority
hiring and how you think small newspapers can make the plan work?
A. The Freedom Forum has committed to spending $1 million — just
the first year — to finance 50 fellowships of $20,000 each for journalists
of color who will go to work at newspapers under 75,000 circulation. This
is the first initiative of an effort by the Freedom Forum and the associations
to increase the number and percentage of minority journalists at smaller
papers. Those papers, the traditional starting point in “the pipeline”
for many newspaper people, have had trouble competing for bright young
people of color in the job market. We see this program as removing barriers
to getting those people into chairs in those newsrooms.
Q. What are the two or three coverage and workplace issues that would
drive a young person to join your paper?
A. We’re fortunate to have a good town for news and the resources to
cover it. Huntsville is an anomaly — a growing, prosperous town in perpetually
bottom-of-the-heap Alabama, a high-tech (the space program, etc.)
oasis in a part of the country trying to catch up with the rest.
Q. How do you help your staff develop the expertise they need to
write convincingly about these issues and still offer the blanket type
of coverage a small community expects?
A. Like any other newspaper, we juggle. The city editor didn’t
have enough reporters when I worked in Anniston. The city editor didn’t
have enough reporters when I worked in Detroit. No city editor worth her
salt does. But we always have projects of various lengths going, aimed
at giving readers (and reporters) more than the daily developments.
Q. When you send young reporters to “hang out” where are the typical
listening posts you suggest and why?
A. We encourage non-institutional stories, and play them well. A recent
successful series someone else could replicate: A feature writer, new to
Alabama, chronicled her “First Hundred Days” in an occasional series. She
wrote about getting a driver’s license, discovering local landmarks, dealing
with the public library, getting her kids enrolled in school, all the while
finding wonder in small things longtime residents no longer see.
Q. Realistically, do you think small newspaper editors have the time
and teaching talent to design their newsrooms as learning centers for young
reporters?
A. Sure they do. There’s more opportunity for the editor actually doing
journalism, meaning working with reporters, than at a place large enough
to have several layers of bureaucracy.
Q. What is the racial and gender makeup of your newsroom in comparison
to your community?
A. We're doing better than we have in past years in terms of gender.
Our editorial staff is about one-third female, with several women in key
management positions. We are not doing nearly well enough in racial diversity
— the percentage of black staffers is about half of that in our home county.
So I have a personal, selfish interest in finding ways to address this
challenge.
Q. What ideas do you have to improve that picture?
A. We think taking advantage of the Freedom Forum program, participating
in the Dow Jones and Chips Quinn internships, and working with the two
historically black colleges in town can help, short and long term.
Q. Explain why you think the latest ASNE initiatives in minority
recruiting and hiring will have any more of a impact in changing the demographics
of the nation’s newsrooms than previous attempts to diversify?
A. I’m optimistic about the Freedom Forum fellowships program. Smaller
papers are the traditional starting point for young journalists, but we
know that recruiting of minorities is a particular problem for those papers,
for a variety or reasons. The aim of this program is to remove as many
of those reasons as we can. One is finances; smaller papers have a hard
time competing. Another is showing the job candidate that training and
mentoring will be available. There’s a professional development component
of the program, too. And what I like about the program we’re starting with
is that it is direct: It will put people in newsrooms.
Q. Critics say that when diversity is on the ASNE convention
agenda, the room is half full. What would you do to get their attention?
A. The convention hall is half full most of the time the program doesn’t
have a big-name speaker; that’s the lure of the hallway and the telephone.
But I also think many editors think they’ve heard the message and they’re
doing as well as they can. I think the Freedom Forum program can move the
numbers, demonstrate success and put a charge in everybody.
Q. What could the ASNE leadership do to improve the diversity quest
in the newsroom and in the classroom?
A. Getting the best students from the journalism classroom into our
business is just part of the challenge. Another program ASNE’s involved
in is focusing on high school journalism, which needs reviving. And, as
editors, we need to take on college journalism as a responsibility. That
includes college newspapers. How many of us got really committed to this
business while skipping class to put out the college paper?
Q. How could you involve the reader or potential reader in promoting
diversity on a local level?
A. If we hold a mirror to the community — the whole community — and
give our readers an accurate image, we will demonstrate its diversity in
every sense. No other institution in town has that ability.
Q. Given the competition for minority talent in the business world,
what more do you think the industry could do to attract the minority talent
it needs to tell the full story of America?
A. As anyone who’s been hiring for newsrooms recently can tell you,
we need to dive into a competitive marketplace and demonstrate that ours
is the exciting, important and satisfying profession all of us know it
to be. We need to show that there always will be a need for smart
folks who can think and who can gather, write and sort out what’s news.
To do these things, we need to get involved early — in high school journalism,
in college papers, in getting bright young people into newsrooms.
The problem isn’t that good journalism students can’t find newspaper jobs;
it’s that there aren’t enough good students who want to come into our business.
Q. How is the new technology playing in your desire to make your
newsroom competitive?
A. Our major competition is for people’s time in an increasingly busy
society. The technology of recent years is adding to that competition —
for time spent gathering information, for time devoted to entertainment.
To succeed, we need to be compelling enough and essential enough to hold
our own in this environment.
Q. Many young journalists think small newspapers don’t have the resources
to teach them investigative journalism that will help their careers. How
do you counteract that perspective when you recruit?
A. We can show them the in-depth stuff that we’ve done. We can show
them, too, that we’re not too small to do important journalism, and small
enough that anyone on the staff can be a part of it. A couple of years
ago, we involved probably two dozen people in a week-long examination of
the health (not good) of the Tennessee River, which is vital to our area.
More recently, we’ve done a multi-reporter project on urban sprawl.
Last year, we sent a reporter and photographer to Mexico to trace the roots
of the burgeoning Hispanic population of North Alabama; we’ve sent other
reporters in recent years to Central America, the Caribbean, Russia, Bosnia.
Q. Aside from doing good journalism, what additional lures do you
think newspapers must use to attract the talent to capture new readers?
A. We need to figure out ways to expose young people to what we do.
Kids who don’t read newspapers are unlikely to wind up working for them.
Q. With the benefit of hindsight, what would you have done differently
to prepare yourself to become a top editor?
A. Kept my hair.
Q. What steps do you take to evaluate yourself so that you can get
better at what you do?
A. Open the paper. Read it. Kick myself for opportunities missed.
Q. Explain how you think your editor’s column has improved the paper’s
credibility.
A. I’m a big believer in such columns. (I hasten to point out that I
didn’t invent them and many editors do them, and do them well.) My goal
is to explain the newspaper — its goals, its decisions, and occasionally
its screw ups — to the readers. I also try to find a way nearly every week
to say “talk to us.” Over 10 years, enough readers have told me they appreciate
this that I believe it, firmly.
Q. What advice do you have for editor contemplating such a column?
A. Tell the truth, even when — especially when — the newspaper has done
something you’re not proud of. Readers know you’re not perfect, and appreciate
it when you’re candid enough to admit it and explain what happened.
Q. If I were to ask an average reader for ideas to improve your paper,
what would she say?
A. Not to be a wise guy, but I expect the answer would be “Get it there
on time, and dry.”
Q. What experience have you had with community forums and feedback
sessions?
A. We’ve tried them a variety of ways — at previous papers, too — and
I’ve never thought they worked particularly well. We’ve had the best results
when we’ve assembled a specialized group to deal with a specialized topic:
the stock tables for one, the TV book for another.
Q. Who were your role models and why?
A. I’ve mentioned Dave Lawrence and Jim Batten. I’ve been at five papers,
and worked with fine people at every stop. First, though, there was a journalism
instructor and newspaper adviser at Northern Illinois University named
Roy Campbell, a one-time police reporter from Nebraska who wore red socks
and a mischievous grin.
As teacher and friend, he showed a shy kid how to raise hell responsibly,
and brought out the passion that has been my working life. He’s been gone
for many years, but I still think of him frequently.
Q. How would you advise someone who aspires to become a top editor
to prepare for the journey?
A. Read the whole newspaper, all its sections every day, and think about
all its elements. Know the whole newspaper, all its departments, and how
they come together in the unique combination of profession/business/ingredient
of democracy newspaper journalism is. Spend time, energy and love on what
we do.
Morgan is director of workshops on journalism, race and ethnicity
at Columbia University.
