Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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An American Editor
At the Detroit Free Press, Robert McGruder pursues
his vision while coping with strike
Robert McGruder has been executive editor of the Detroit Free Press
since 1996. He joined the Free Press in 1986 as deputy managing editor,
was named managing editor/news in 1987 and became managing editor in 1993.
A native of Louisville, Ky., he grew up in Dayton, Ohio. After graduating
from Kent State University in 1963, he started his career with the Dayton
Journal Herald. He joined the Cleveland Plain Dealer soon afterward and
worked his way up until he was named managing editor in 1981.
He is former president of the Associated Press Managing Editors.
Q: No interview with a Detroit editor can be complete without a question
on the strike. How does it look to you at this point?
A. The strike was easily the most painful time of my life as a newspaperman.
When I joined the Free Press in 1986, I found it to be a newspaper that
seemed to bend over backwards to be fair to its employees. Earlier in my
career, I had been a leader of a long strike in Cleveland and a union negotiator.
Many of us could not understand the forces that got us into such a horrible
situation. I was part of the Free Press negotiating team. Despite the differences
at the table, I did not think the issues were at strike level. But the
unions walked out July 13, 1995.
We knew we had to keep publishing — not under a joint masthead with
The Detroit News as it was in the first weeks, but as the stand-alone Free
Press. Failure to do that, we believed, could mean the end of the
paper. So we focused on the life and future of the newspaper.
To the credit of many — the managers who did not go out, the people
who came back to work very early in the strike, the people we hired during
the strike, and to the people who have come back since February 1997, when
the unions made their unconditional return, ending the strike — the Free
Press survived and is growing stronger each day.
There are unresolved issues working through the courts and at the bargaining
table. We have offered jobs to all but a handful of the people who went
on strike. We lost some of our best people; many of our best have returned.
We have tried to keep people focused on journalism and serving readers.
They have done that remarkably well.
Q: Through all the stress, how have you kept your equilibrium?
A. There was no choice. If I want everyone else to keep their equilibrium,
to focus on producing a newspaper, then I have to keep mine. I do it by
paying attention to things that are important during stressful times as
well as in better times: treating people fairly, insisting they treat each
other fairly, focusing on the job.
Since the strike we have: paginated; created three Web sites; started
an Oakland County edition; expanded the business section with a redesigned
personal-finance section and new pages on technology, autos, small business
and workplace issues; created new real estate sections; customized our
TV book for cable users; expanded the main news section; improved the feature
sections and coverage of local news.
So you see much of the stress has been channeled into positive things.
Q: What got you into the newspaper business?
A. I got interested when I started working on my college newspaper at
Kent State. It was the newsroom. There were all of these smart, fun people,
who welcomed me in and showed me how to write stories, take pictures, lay
out pages. Then we’d go to the print shop and produce it. That was exciting.
And then we’d go to a bar and talk about it. It was great fun. Then I became
the editor and they actually paid me to do it. It was incredible. I was
hooked.
Keep in mind that it was the early 1960s. There were very few blacks
working at newspapers. I went to work at The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, in
1963, and I was the first black reporter there.
Q. Looking back on your reporter days, what story makes you most
proud?
A. The story I remember best was one another reporter and I wrote in
Cleveland in the early 1970s. We wrote a story based on our study of city
financial records that warned that the city was going broke. Most people
did not believe it could happen, and they certainly didn’t believe a couple
of reporters could be right and all the city officials wrong.
Then it happened. Cleveland became the first major U.S. city to go bankrupt.
The important thing was not that we were right, but that reporters who
are willing to dig can give a community important information. That’s what
reporters should do. And communities should listen.
Q: Did you have a mentor?
A. As a reporter I did not have a real mentor. Jim Naughton was the
young star reporter at the Plain Dealer when I was hired. He welcomed me,
showed me around, helped me a lot. I read, admired and learned from his
work.
A few years later, the editors teamed me up with Don Barlett, the finest
reporter I know. I learned a lot from him.
But that was a difficult time for a young black reporter. For several
years I was the only one on the staff. There were no senior black editors
to go to. There was no NABJ. I was on my own.
I learned early on to squeeze everything I could from the talented reporters
and editors I worked with.
My other mentors tended to come from the community in Cleveland. These
were blacks who were not only sources but teachers. One concern I have
today is that too many young reporters look to the newsroom for mentors
and forget about the rich resources of the community.
When I became an editor, Gene Roberts was the editor I wanted to emulate.
I knew him fairly well. He was such a giant in the field that I tried to
think of how he would approach certain stories or issues. There is also
Al Fitzpatrick, who at one time or another has been a mentor to almost
all minority journalists.
Q: As an editor, is there anything you’d particularly like to be
remembered for?
A. Certainly for producing a newspaper that was fair, accurate and gave
people the news. Also for helping to open the door for other minority journalists.
I have had opportunities to promote or hire a number of talented minorities
to their first management jobs or to higher responsibility in Cleveland
and Detroit. They went on to be editors or managing editors in Cleveland,
Boston, Miami, Memphis, Akron, and other cities. I think I have influenced
hiring decisions in many other cities.
The point is not that these editors or I have risen to top jobs at newspapers.
It is that all of us have the opportunity to influence the careers of other
minority journalists, that we have the opportunity to influence the way
non-minority journalists see things, and that we have the opportunity to
influence the coverage of minority people and communities.
Q: What is your advice for editors who want to improve the diversity
of their staffs.
A. Frustration and disappointment are constants. You won’t get some
of the people you want. Some of the people you hire and invest in will
leave. You’ll get some duds. Those things happen in all hiring, but editors
seem to make it a bigger deal when minorities won’t come, turn out badly
or won’t stay.
There are not enough minorities out there, even in a world where half
the newspapers don’t bother to hire any. Too much time is spent passing
talented, even less-than-talented, minorities from newspaper to newspaper.
Editors need to work harder at developing minority journalists, not just
moving them around. They need to help develop the interest in journalism
among minorities in high schools, help develop their skills in college,
help make them complete journalists once they are hired.
Hiring is not enough. Training, retention and listening are vital. Any
newspaper that is devoting all of its attention to hiring and numbers is
already on the wrong track. Editors also must worry about what opportunities
the minority journalists are getting in the newsroom, what the interaction
is between the journalists in the newsroom, how committed newsroom managers
are to diversity. Do all of that and still some will leave. Which means
there is room for someone else.
The Free Press had excellent minority representation in the newsroom
before the strike. Then we lost some talented minority journalists. We’re
rebuilding and I expect that soon we’ll be back above 20 percent (we were
at 16.3 percent this year), with many in key supervisory roles
I am just as pleased at the work we’ve done with young people in high
school and college. I’ve been at the Free Press long enough now to see
kids who used to come around my office when they were in high school, talked
to when they were in college, and now are working here and elsewhere as
professional journalists.
What else do we have to do? Provide mentors and clear career paths for
people in the newsroom. We have to accept input and even some harsh criticism
from minority staffers on how we cover the news. They might have a different
and very useful perspective. We have to help all newsroom managers understand
the role they must play in hiring and keeping talented minority journalists.
Part of that is helping other staffers understand the mission.
ASNE is going through a difficult time trying to deal with the question
of diversity. There is the temptation to broaden definitions and lower
expectations. I think that’s wrong. I certainly have no problem with a
broader definition of diversity. Diversity must mean inclusion, and fairness
and opportunity for all you have included.
But we editors make a mistake if we take ourselves off the hook, if
we allow ourselves a moment’s rest in the effort to deal with the real
issues — the color of our newsrooms and the impact of that on the way we
cover our communities.
Q: What concerns you most about newspapers today?
A. We are pushed in the wrong directions by television news or an easy
willingness to resort to the worst of tabloid journalism or just shallowness
— all in the name of giving readers what they want. I think readers want
more than that.
The lack of trust and confidence people have in newspapers concerns
me.
Arrogance concerns me. There are things we journalists don’t know, things
we get wrong and ways in which we are out of touch. But too often we won’t
admit any of that. Too often we brush aside the concerns and questions
of readers. Many editors are getting better about this but we have a difficult
time getting the message to our staffs. Letting that arrogance and carelessness
exist at our newspapers just moves us closer to the time when people find
us not worth their time, trouble or money.
Q: What would you like the Free Press to accomplish over the next
few years?
A. Get the pain of the strike fully behind us. Increase circulation
and readership to something closer to pre-strike levels. Insure that the
benefits of the current rebuilding of Detroit are shared by all, that it
does not happen to enrich the few at the expense of many, as has happened
in the past. Play a role in improving race relations.
Q: What directions would you like to see Knight Ridder take in the
years to come?
A. Continue to remember that customers are as important as shareholders.
Carroll, co-chair of The American Editor Committee, is editor of
The Sun, Baltimore.
