Embracing change

By Arlene Notoro Morgan

Tonnie L. Katz, 55, has been editor of The Orange County Register in Santa Ana, Calif. since Oct. 16, 1992. She led the paper to a Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting, based on a series of stories that showed how well-known fertility doctors at the University of California, Irvine, were stealing eggs from patients and implanting them in other patients. The expose' was featured in a television movie and led to a major overhaul in the laws governing fertility clinics in California and in the nation.

During the past several years, Katz has devoted herself to diversifying the newspaper’s newsroom and its offerings to serve growing Hispanic and Vietnamese populations. People of color make up 20 percent of the staff.

A strong advocate of community outreach, Katz continually seeks ways to expand those efforts, from community conversations to a staff development program, led by Team Leader, Rebecca Allen, that focuses on understanding the levels of how the community works.

A native of Massachusetts, Katz is a graduate of Barnard College and Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she has served as an editor-in-residence for three years. The mother of two adult children and two stepchildren, Katz was married on July 4, 1999 to Tadek Korn, a math teacher and violinist in the Santa Monica Symphony. She is an active participant on ASNE committees, and served as the first chair of the Design and Presentation Committee

Q. What is the most exciting part about being an editor in today’s competitive environment?

A. The most exciting is the also most frightening: knowing you have to change to survive and thrive, and trying to figure out how to do that without throwing away what’s valuable about the past. Leading change is very difficult

Q. When you talk about leading change, how do you communicate that to your staff?

A. I don’t do it alone. It is really not as much about leading change as it is about embracing change. It has to be collaborative at every level. A good example is the rethinking of the paper we are doing now. This is not just a redesign. Redesign implies putting a new dress on the old lady. A rethinking means really trying to figure out what your customers want and need and how you can best serve them — first from a content point of view and then how to present that content. It is much more complicated than a simple redesign that changes the look of the paper.

Q. What makes that so complicated for the newspaper business compared to other industries?

A. You are questioning every assumption about what you did in the past and what your newspaper’s role is in your community. You can do this job three ways: Stick a small group of designers in a room; hire an outside consultant and say give me a new newspaper. They can present that in a couple of months, and the staff has no choice but to accept it and go on or you can do it yourself. In the past 6 months, we have involved every single person in the newsroom in the process of rethinking. They have had not only a voice but also a very real role in deciding what direction to go in, as have our readers and non-readers. We have involved them as well.

Q. How did you involve the community?

A. We did it traditionally, through readership studies and focus groups. But we also showed up in the community, at the county fair for example. Newsroom staffers went out to canvass Orange County residents about what they thought about the paper and what changes they would want.

Q. What did you learn from that?

A. Two key things. The public wanted to find subjects in the paper that they were personally interested in and they wanted to find those stories quickly. They do not have a lot of time and they wanted us to be more respectful of that. Second, over and over we found interest themes that people wanted us to pay attention to. Some times we were and some times we weren’t.

Q. How efficient was this process in getting your rethinking done?

A. It was not efficient. If speed was the priority, it was not efficient. But speed was not the priority. The priority was in listening and understanding our customers needs and wants, involving them and giving our staff a personal stake in the process. The staff became owners of the results. No one in our newsroom is going to be able to say they did not have a chance to have a voice or a role — that this was done without their knowledge. The input was critical to making them feel like stakeholders. In the end we will get a better newspaper.

Q. For you what were the benefits of this process?

A. It built a bridge of understanding between our staff and the people they serve. As a result, the newspaper will be more authentic and much improved.

Q. Was participation by the staff mandatory?

A. No, but you can’t go through our newsroom and not be aware that this process is happening. There are sign-up sheets everywhere for committees. All the different iterations of the paper are posted and people are invited to comment. There are post-it notes all over the prototypes — some with some pretty weird comments.

Q. The demographic changes in Orange County indicate that the county is one of the fastest changing communities in the country. How are you reflecting those changes?

A. Within 10 to 15 years more than half the people in the county will be Hispanic, 80 percent of those from Mexico. Another 17 percent of the county is Asian, the majority from Vietnam. The largest population of Vietnamese in the world outside of Vietnam lives in Orange County. We also have large populations of Koreans and Persians. For us to grow as a company we have to learn to serve a different population than in the past, but not lose our loyal readers. So we have to be more inclusive. Different kinds of people have to see themselves reflected in the Register and we have to create new products to serve these communities. As the county gets more diverse, it tends to fragment. We have specifically become the one institution that can knit the county together by pointing out what different people have in common and celebrate and explain their differences.

Q. Specifically, what does that mean?

A. Besides additional coverage, it means we have had to change the makeup of our staff to reflect the new Orange County. We teach Spanish in the newsroom, and every top officer in the Register, including the publisher, is studying Spanish. Clearly the idea is not to just hire more Hispanic reporters to cover the community, but to have everyone understand the cultures of the people who make up our county.

Q. Provide some examples of the special things you do.

A. Here are all the things we are doing to change from a newspaper newsroom to an information center:

• Publish a daily and Sunday newspaper in English
• Publish 29 weekly newspapers, one of which is business-focused and one of which is Spanish language.
• Published three books last year, one of which was bilingual Vietnamese/English.
• Air radio programming in English and Vietnamese.
• Air television programming in Spanish and English.
• Target newsletters to certain communities on a specific coverage issue in the county. We hope to do more of these.
• Run two Web sites: OC Register.com and MyOrangeCounty.com, the portal site. Their ownership is shared by the Register and Freedom, which is our parent company.
• Publish two magazines, one on golf and one with a home and garden theme. There will be more specialty magazines next year.

Q. Where did the vision for this multiplicity of platforms come from?

A. It comes mainly from understanding the community we serve and having a visionary publisher in Chris Anderson who supports this and helps get the resources to make this happen.

Q. What is the reaction of the community to all these changes?

A. Enthusiasm! I have not seen any downside so far. We have always been a company where the only rule is that nothing is in cement. It has always been a very entrepreneurial, innovative, risk-taking place. Our customers seem to go along with that. We have tried to evolve these changes and have developed a pretty good partnership with readers along the way. We are constantly trying to improve and that is one of the key reasons why we are successful. Circulation is only one measure of success and we are successful with that. But I don’t think circulation is the only measure. All the products we offer show our growth. We will continue to grow along with the community.

Q. What would you advise editors who are embarking on the type of changes you have led?

A. The first thing would be to get a good team you can work with. You need people who share the vision and are collaborative, and executives who understand how to lead. In truth, our executive editor, Ken Brusic, is a visionary, and I feel privileged to work with him. I consider him my true partner. The rest of the newsroom executive team are talented, dedicated and understand the mission. They not only believe in it; they know how to execute it. We run our newsroom more as a board of directors. In fact, that’s what we call ourselves.

Q. Finding good editors is one of the toughest jobs in the industry. How do you find them and train or inspire them with your vision?

A. We have been lucky because this team has been together for a long time. More than five years. So I think consistency and building something together is one aspect of this. Every member, but one, was promoted up through the ranks. Our culture is in their hearts, not just in their heads. The other important piece of advice I have is to inform the staff about how you’re doing. Be honest with them about everything that you can be. Listen to their opinions and get them involved in the changes.

Q. What amount of attention do you give to the training and development issues of the staff?

A. Training and development is key to the whole thing. We also use the staff to train each other. For instance, you can mandate diversity and not get any buy-in. At the Register we have a Diversity Committee that is staff run. It is not run from on top and it is going great guns. You can’t mandate change. You have to encourage people to participate in it. We also run Register University and offer classes on everything from writing to First Amendment law and Spanish. When Chris Anderson came back to become publisher, he made Register U a company-wide effort, led by the Human Resources Department. It offers courses in computers, management training, technology, lots of things. Newsroom people can learn about news and cultural issues and they can learn about management and technology. Freedom just named a Learning Officer who will lead everyone in the company in a massive training and development effort. This company really understands that the people who work for it are its greatest assets.

Q. How have you personally taken advantage of training to help yourself become a better editor?

A. In the last year, I have been to Columbia, Northwestern and Stanford. I think I spent more time in the classroom in the last 18 months than any editor I know. I attended the Northwestern Media Management program and learned that I really do like the marketing side of the business. It was a terrific experience that exposed me to a part of the business I knew nothing about but am expected to understand and participate in when I have my senior V.P. hat on. This training really helped lessen the tension between my role as editor and my role as an officer of the company. It helped me — not to have any less journalism integrity — but to learn how the different parts of the paper work together. Ultimately, a successful newspaper leads to more successful journalism.

Q. If you had to write you own biography, what would your legacy of achievements be at the Register?

A. Journalism excellence and a newspaper that gets better every day. A talented and dedicated staff. But, I think the most fun for me has been my role in leading the diversity effort. The thing I value the most has been learning about the Hispanic community and how to serve it. I also learned a lot about myself in doing this. In the very same week we won a Pulitzer for the fertility series, we sponsored our first play in Spanish at our Spanish language paper, The Excelsior. It was free to the public. Many of the people who came couldn’t afford regular theatre or couldn’t understand English. I know it sounds silly, but it was almost as exciting reaching out to the 100 people from the community who came to that play as it was to win the Pulitzer.

Morgan is director of workshops on journalism, race and ethnicity at Columbia University.