Looking for tales of today’s great leaders

A new book project and award will focus the spotlight on a new generation of newsroom leadership

By Paul Tash

At a cocktail party a few months back, a surgeon asked me whether newspapers are still producing heroic leaders. He knew the stories of the last generation — Gene Patterson and Ben Bradlee, of Otis Chandler and Katherine Graham — but where, he wondered, are the great examples of leadership today?

We propose to find them. The Leadership Committee of ASNE has launched two major efforts to identify and illuminate examples of editorial leadership that can instruct and inspire the rest of us. We need your help.

The first effort is a book, to be published by ASNE and The Poynter Institute, which will showcase the stories of men and women who have raised the sights and the standards of their newspapers. These relatively short chapters will fall into various categories that demonstrate the rich array of opportunities to make a difference.

The second project is the new ASNE award for editorial leadership, to be awarded for the first time at the 2002 convention in Washington. Our purpose is to recognize a chapter, or a career (or preferably, a chapter consistent with a career), of outstanding editorial leadership on behalf of an American newspaper.

Clearly, these two efforts will reinforce each other. Nominations for the award may surface stories for the book. Suggestions for the book may help us develop nominations for the award.

Our committee means to cast a wide net. We seek examples from throughout the breadth of American newspapers, large and small, and our search extends throughout the ranks of newsroom responsibility. We welcome the story of the assistant city editor as much as the example of the executive editor.

In fact, we look beyond newsrooms themselves, recognizing that business-side executives who devote their careers to the business of journalism are often champions of great journalism.

Courage will be one quality that shimmers in these examples, recognizing editors who made a stand in the face of personal or professional peril. Exceptional leaders lift their newspapers in lots of ways, and we also seek stories that show how other components of personal effort and character resonate through a news report.

These twin projects rest on the staple of journalism: the good story well told. At our last ASNE convention, the Leadership Moments stirred the soul with the stories of great editors — and publishers — who put their obligations to the truth above personal interest or security. Some of those same great examples may figure in our committee’s work this year.

But our business also needs new stories, some new parables, and we are confident they are waiting to be discovered. Even times like these — maybe especially times like these — present opportunities for extraordinary leadership on behalf of our newspapers.

Help us find them.

Tash is editor and president of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times