Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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A CEO’s point
of view
Before a wary audience, Mark Willes spells out his
vision of the future of the Los Angeles Times and explains the details
during a spirited Q&A session
Mark H. Willes, chairman, president, and CEO of Times Mirror Co., assured
the nation’s newspaper editors that his being new to the job of newspaper
publisher doesn’t make him new to newspapers. In fact, he called himself
a "newspaper junkie" of nearly 30 years’ standing, with a daily, multiple-paper
passion.
But Willes also made it clear that being on the inside, as publisher
of the Los Angeles Times since late 1997, doesn’t make him just another
insider. Responding to a question from Barrie Hartman of the Daily Camera,
Boulder, Colo., Willes said that, since coming to Times Mirror, he has
marveled that for "an industry which basically has its existence looking
out into the world, how insular it is — and this notion that there’s almost
nothing that can be learned from anybody else that applies to us.
"In every other business, those that are most successful are constantly
trying to find what’s going on someplace else that can stolen, adapted,
modified," he said. "You don’t give up your integrity, you don’t give up
anything important, by looking out there."
Many ASNE members came to Willes’ convention speech hoping to hear him
directly address such questions of integrity, and of the Times’ highly
publicized initiatives to change how the newspaper is managed. (After all,
the headline on the convention newspaper advance on his speech read, "Publisher’s
bridge between business, news troubles editors.") If so, they were not
disappointed; in fact, there wasn’t much he failed to face head-on, whether
in his prepared remarks or during an extensive Q-and-A session.
Willes got the crowd’s attention early by frankly assessing newspaper
coverage of his tenure at the Times—from his nicknames ("the corporate
El Niño" is his favorite, "because it at least implies that there
is some warmth in me") to his motives ("He has no commitment to the pursuit
of the truth," Ben Bradlee told The New Yorker).
"I find these statements surprising," he said, "in that they were made
from people who at the time had never met me, had never talked to me on
the phone ... that lack of ‘reporting’ (was) disappointing."
That said, he moved on to his own reporting — the due diligence — that
led him to decide that change is necessary in the newspaper business generally
and at the Times specifically. He cited the 200 newspapers that have gone
out of business in the last 25 years; the slide in newspaper share of ad
dollars from 27 to 22 percent over 18 years; and the decline in the number
of adults who read a newspaper daily from 81 percent in 1965 to 58 percent
in 1997.
"These facts seemed to me to be taken as a given by many in the industry,"
he said. "They should not be."
The facts specific to the Times are "scary," too, he said: "On weekdays
our penetration is only 28 percent ... and only 19 percent in the Latino
market. On top of that, in nine out of 12 market areas where we compete
head-to-head with other newspapers, we are number two.
"The question you might well ask at this point is, ‘What does any of
this have to do with great journalism?’ Some would say, ‘Absolutely nothing.’
I would say, ‘Absolutely everything.’ As Joseph Lelyveld, executive editor
of The New York Times, said in a series published this week in the Los
Angeles Times, ‘Great newspapering is not possible on an unprofitable newspaper.’
"
That view was consistent with what Willes said himself in an ASNE-week
series, by Times media critic David Shaw. "The things that are going to
grow the paper," he told Shaw, "are, first and foremost, editorial content
which is significantly better than anything else available to our readers."
And Willes told the editors that his highly publicized effort at the Times
to assign general managers to the major sections and editions is intended
to make sure resources are allocated to make that happen. (He even held
out the possibility that some sections may already be too profitable and
may need additional editorial resources.)
The general managers and editors of the various sections have, or are
developing business plans. While not every section must earn a profit,
he said, "every section must improve in some measurable way, including
— and especially — readership. ... I know that for many of you, this is
the crux of the issue: How far do we go to attract readers? I do know that
if we don’t interest more readers, we will cease to be a mass newspaper,
and cease to have the resources to keep us a class newspaper."
Both during Willes’ remarks and in the follow-up questions from the
audience, the subject of the church/state wall was always close at hand.
"While we’re persistently trying to reduce walls," he said, "we understand
very clearly there are lines that are not to be crossed. And if we did
not do high-quality, independent journalism, we would undermine the very
foundation of our success, and we will not do that."
The distinction between lines and walls got short shrift in the Shaw
series, by the way. The Times critic wrote, "(T)here is a difference. A
wall is impregnable and immovable — at least in theory; a line can be breached
much more easily, moved so gradually that no one knows it’s actually been
moved until it’s too late, and principles have been irrevocably compromised."
To Willes, though, the sort of editorial/business cooperation that the
Times is implementing is not all that new or revolutionary; "what, perhaps,
is new is that we have announced our intentions to the world," he said.
"By ‘going public’ with what we’re doing, we’ve put added pressure on ourselves
to maintain editorial independence and excellence."
The pressure was certainly in evidence throughout the Q-and-A, which
was moderated by Times editor Michael Parks. In answering questions about
hypothetical church/state conflicts, about the possibility of measuring
the impact of a gradual erosion in journalistic integrity and quality,
and about the relationship between excellence and profitability, Willes
remained focused on his theme:
"There have been some who have argued, and I think with great merit,
that you need a wall to protect journalistic integrity. I don’t happen
to think that’s true. I think frankly we’re better off to have more people,
rather than fewer people, have to think about all of those issues and deal
with all of those complexities.
"And I think in a strange sort of way you end up with more independent
journalism if you’ve got people, more than just the editor, saying, ‘Oh
my goodness, if we write about that group we’re going to lose a whole bunch
of advertising’ — and they find they reach the decision (to publish) themselves.
Because that’s what journalists do, that’s what a great newspaper does.
And all of a sudden you’ve then got embedded not only in the editor and
the managing editor, but down throughout the organization, the kind of
backbone that you have to have to have a truly independent enterprise."
The end point for his experiments, Willes suggested, is some distance
in the future: "We expect it to take about 12 months to put the new organization
in place, and several years to see if it really works. We are not talking
about a quick fix here, but a major shift in the way we think about going
to market with our daily newspaper." Based on this one April morning in
the nation’s capital, he seems certain to get exactly what he wanted in
at least one area until then: the rapt attention of the rest of the newspaper
business.
Youngman is director of interactive media for the Chicago Tribune.
