Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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Innovations
A staff interviews its boss in Hartford
In democratizing decision-making at the Courant and
other papers, staffers are called upon to study major issues and solve
them; managers agree to relinquish that power
By Mark Jurkowitz
The search for a new editor at The Hartford (Conn.) Courant veered a
bit off the beaten path. In keeping with tradition, publisher Marty Petty
did the initial interviewing and made the final decision, selecting Philadelphia
Daily News managing editor Brian Toolan. But in between, a host of other
Courant staffers — from senior editors on down to reporters — became part
of the process by meeting with editor candidates as they spent several
days wending their way through the newsroom.
This unorthodox editor hunt was an outgrowth of a major restructuring
at the Courant initiated several years ago by then-publisher Michael Waller,
who has since moved on to another Times Mirror-owned paper, The Sun in
Baltimore. More significant, it is part of a dramatic experiment to democratize
decision-making in an industry that has traditionally lagged far behind
corporate America when it comes to changing its habits. Suddenly, some
publishers are espousing the virtues of both empowerment of workers and
bottom-up leadership to herald a new era in newspaper management.
"I don’t believe in top-down organizations," Waller declared flatly.
"I think they’re not going to work in the future. The employees are going
to demand they don’t work."
But the flip side of this egalitarianism is a concern that it could
erode editorial integrity by inviting the business side of the newspaper
to become a partner in forging newsroom policy. That scenario conjures
up Mark Willes, the controversial Times Mirror CEO and Los Angeles Times
publisher who raised red flags with pronouncements about tearing down the
wall between editorial and advertising and with a Times reorganization
that matches up section editors with business-side managers for strategic
planning.
Under its leadership model, the Courant is divided into nine committees,
each including participants from different departments like advertising,
editorial, and circulation. These "cross-departmental" groups hash out
decisions on everything from technology issues to staff health benefits,
and according to Petty, about 95 percent of those decisions stand. A recent
move to start a weekly college basketball section, for example, was the
brainchild of the paper’s Operating Committee.
"All the senior people had to give up a ton of power," Petty said. "You’re
going to end up living with decisions you wouldn’t have made. And that
includes me."
Aside from the Courant, the major catalyst for these experiments is
the Newspaper Association of America’s Partners 2000 project. A bottom-line-oriented
program, Partners 2000 is a "response to advertisers telling us for years
that we are difficult to do business with," project director Christine
John said. But its proponents believe the model can be expanded to address
everything from circulation to newsroom deadlines.
Three papers of distinctly different size — The Dallas Morning News
(circulation 481,000), The Record in Hackensack, N.J. (146,000), and the
Billings (Mont.) Gazette (51,000) — are participating in the first Partners
2000 trial. At the Gazette, "cross-functional" teams, which include nonmanagerial
employees, are working with a management team on tackling advertising problems.
"We were not unlike a lot of other newspapers (where) each department operated
as a separate unit and communication broke down from department to department,"
said former Gazette publisher Wayne Schile, who was on board when the project
started. "There’s a lot more willingness ... to do things differently"
when people understand each other’s jobs.
At the Record, this team concept is being used on projects designed
to simplify advertising paperwork. "Building a team that is largely non-management
is new," said the paper’s president, Jonathan Markey. "Our more traditional
pathway (was) typically top down."
In Dallas, where a collaborative culture has existed for some time,
cross-departmental teams of employees have attacked the problem of streamlining
the ad-taking process. And Morning News president Jeremy Halbreich has
every expectation that this experiment is only the beginning. "We’re excited
enough about the whole process that we’ve literally introduced it" to everyone
on the staff, Halbreich said.
There’s a strong belief in the benefits of this "inverted pyramid" structure.
"I think for newspapers to really thrive and grow, everybody in the company
has to understand what we’re all about," said Petty, who sits on the Partners
2000 steering committee. "To me, it’s ... empowering the people who do
the work every day," Halbreich said.
The model certainly has broader applications that could affect the newsroom:
Eventually Partners 2000 plans to "apply the same improvement methods developed
in the advertising process to the paper as a whole." Halbreich said the
Morning News will use this cross-departmental model to look at issues like
the flow of stories through the writing and editing process. A recent Columbia
Journalism Review story headlined "It’s Not Just in L.A." reports that
papers like the Houston Chronicle and the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale,
Fla., have created "cross-divisional" teams to work on revamping some of
the papers’ editorial content: in that story, Houston’s advertising vice
president Dwight Brown said he considered Willes’s approach in Los Angeles
to be "brilliant."
But what about that nagging matter of whether subjecting editorial matters
to the influence of outside departments creates the potential for serious
commercial taint?
"There’s concern," admitted Gerard O’Brien, managing editor in Billings.
"But if we take it slow and look at each issue when it comes up, we can
work it out." Willes "made a decision to try it one way and we’ve tried
to go off our own way," said Petty. Halbreich acknowledged that "the news
coming out of Los Angeles ... did not take us by surprise."
All of which leaves the newspaper industry facing a number of serious
questions. Is Willes’s vision of closer, more formal cooperation between
journalists and their business-side counterparts the irresistible wave
of the future? Can the Partners 2000 model be used to open up the decision-making
process while preserving news independence? And is the newspaper business
receptive to the idea of serious change?
On that last question, there are mixed messages. According to John,
40 publishers showed up in St. Louis for a November informational meeting
on the Partners 2000 project. Yet, Waller said, "Most publishers vomit
when they hear this. They don’t understand what the hell I’m talking about
anyway."
Petty addressed some of her peers on the subject about a year ago, and
"they thought I had totally lost my mind."
"It’s simple," she concluded. "People aren’t willing to give up power."
Reprinted courtesy of The Boston Globe.
Jurkowitz is media critic for The Boston Globe, where this article
originally appeared.
