Last Updated: May 26, 1999
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Are we editors anymore?
Today’s editor: marketer, cheerleader, parent
Job description is a little different than it was 30
years ago; perhaps worrying about what has changed, though, is taking editors
nowhere
By Cruise Palmer
I believe it was Yogi Berra who first was quoted as saying: "This is
déjà vu all over again." The assignment was the program,
"Are We Editors Anymore?"
And that’s where my déjà vu showed up, having spent my
entire working life at The Kansas City Star Company. I served in 1965 and
1966 as managing editor of the afternoon and Sunday Star and the next 11
years as executive editor of the Star and the morning Times.
I really felt that I was in friendly territory, having faced most of
the situations being experienced by today’s top newsroom managers — planning,
content, recruiting, turnover, budgets and pay. I had no doubt that the
job is tougher in the 1990s because the world is growing faster and there
is more of it to cover. Life was just simpler and slower paced back then.
To launch the session, N. Christian Anderson III, publisher of The Gazette
of Colorado Springs and ASNE secretary, recalled that a year ago, ASNE
members were thinking a lot about their jobs and their relationships with
their bosses, their staffs and their peers.
"We are here to ask a fundamental question: Has the role of editor changed?
Perhaps more important: How do we get re-enchanted with our jobs?"
Anderson introduced the moderator, William Boggs of Synectics Corp.,
a consulting firm that works with companies on management of innovation
and change.
Boggs drew the most humorous line of the day when he asked Susan Deans,
editor of The Sun News of Myrtle Beach, S.C., for a one-word title (excluding
editor) describing what she did every day.
Her answer? "Mom."
When order was restored, Boggs pushed on, "Why do you say ‘mom’?"
"Well, having been a mom, there are a lot of similarities," she said.
"You are constantly trying to nurture — in this case an organization that
puts out a new product every day. You don’t have much time to think about
it. You are never quite sure you are doing the right thing, and it takes
a long time and a lot of perspective to see whether you have succeeded."
Some other high points of the session:
"I love my job. I can’t imagine anything else I would want to do more
than this, or anything else I know how to do, frankly," said Robert W.
Burdick, editor of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. "It forces you to
be a good friend to people when things are going wrong for them. It forces
you to make hard decisions. It enables you to stay abreast of what is going
on around you, and it gives you that wonderful challenge of making the
decision now."
Edward W. Jones, managing editor of The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg,
Va.: "My situation with a family-owned independent newspaper is probably
idyllic by a lot of people’s estimations. ... But just coming into the
office in the morning and seeing my cluttered desk is how I would define
angst. It is this semidepressing anxiety I feel — not just the physical
clutter — but thinking about the items and agendas and objectives that
were really not part of my reason for getting into journalism."
Dr. Joyce Brothers, the famous psychologist, was able to provide some
answers for the editors. First and foremost: Lighten up!
"There isn’t anyone whose job doesn’t require and produce a certain
amount of angst, which is why psychologists are in a good business," she
said.
The key, she said, is to remember your reasons for getting in the business.
"I am not hearing much about the fun of being The Editor," Brothers
said. "You are the center of the universe: Everything goes through you;
you have the ability to educate people and give them important knowledge
in a way that makes it interesting and at the same time to lift and to
lead. I am not hearing any of the fun of that.
"Perhaps most editors are workaholics, but then most psychologists believe
that workaholics are the happiest of all people in the universe."
She added that adapting to change is the real challenge.
"Change is inevitable in life. Things are different now than they were
10 years ago. But it doesn’t mean different in a negative way."
Touching on Deans’ ‘mom’ comment, Brothers said that mothers have a
special place in the newsroom.
"Women bring to the newsroom and to the editor’s desk that wonderful
feeling of a mother, of caring about people who work for you," she said.
"Staffers are not just little cogs in a wheel. Women spend time thinking
about how to make their lives better and how to deal with other people.
I think this is a way of enchantment."
Palmer is a retired member who lives in Prairie Village, Kan.
